"They're independent;" "they're affectionate;" "they're loyal; they're beautiful;" "they're sagacious; they're mysterious;" "they're ineffable; they're inscrutable." "Cats are magic." "They really are magic." "Probably the most mysterious creatures in the world." "They're also very vicious;" "they're very cruel things." "That's another thing I like about them their ability to be one thing and then another." "The domestic cat harbors a sort of split personality." "Within even the most demure pussycat lurks a creature of the wild." "Even after thousands of years, we still know little about the behavior of domestic cats." "Now, scientists and laymen alike attempt to understand them to demystify this elusive feline." "For them, the domestic cat is every bit as intriguing to study as the lion or the tiger." "To share one's life with a cat is to invite a bit of wildness indoors." "Perhaps the writer was correct when he philosophized:" ""God made the cat that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger."" "Today, the Western world enjoys an unparalleled love affair between man and beast." "Cat coming through." "The cat now surpasses the dog as the number one pet, and annually we spend more on cat food than on baby food." "On any weekend proud owners display their pampered pets to thousands of fellow enthusiasts." "Some three dozen breeds compete longhairs, shorthairs, and some that seem to have no hair." "There are nearly 58 million pet cats in the United States alone." "While many are common alley cats of little monetary value, some exotic breeds sell for as much as $3,000." "And, although many people dislike and distrust cats, a far greater number adore and indulge them." "Keeping cats and their owners happy has become a major industry." "It's extremely durable It's synthetic fur." "Look at the beads in the middle there." "You see the beads?" "Oh, yeah." "Okay, listen." "You hear that little scratchy sound?" "Drives the cats crazy." "They love it." "This is one of our kitty condos." "We have a birthing area or a litter area." "Kitty pan comes down on the bottom." "It's made of solid0-wood construction stain-resistant carpeting..." "The cat, as you can see has a tubular body;" "everything is in line." "It's got the long body the long tail, the long head to go with the rest of the body." "Long bones." "The people keep it in wonderful condition, because he's very muscular." "He's not skinny at all; he's just slim and hard like an athlete." "Like a specter floating from the mists of prehistory into the shadows of modern times, two species of wildcats still prowl parts of Africa and Europe." "Presumed to be the ancestors of today's house cat, they even look like tabbies." "But wildcats are fierce and formidable animals, in no way tame." "In ancient times many became tame when farmers fed and sheltered them as valued rodent killers." "The farmers were Egyptian." "The time more than 3,000 years ago." "The cat became adored and revered in Egypt." "Never since has the cat's honored role been matched anywhere in the world." "One goddess in the form of a cat symbolized pleasure, fertility, and maternity." "Cats were also associated with the deity believed to start the sun on its daily course and one who symbolized life itself." "The Brooklyn Museum maintains one of the world's finest Egyptian collections" "Its curator is archeologist Richard Fazzini." "He divides his time between ancient ruins and ancient artifacts." "Prized in any such collection is a cat mummy, embalmed as were the ancient pharaohs themselves." "This pussycat has been this way since, well, he's hard to date, but let's say at least 2,300 to 2,500 years." "Now why, you might ask, did the Egyptians mummify animals?" "Well, because certain gods could appear in the form of certain animals." "And so it could be a pious gesture or part of some cult ritual to present a mummified cat to place it in a temple or to place it in one of the great animal cemeteries." "But the heyday of the cat was to pass." "Once sacred, the cat would come to be hated and scorned." "The same eyes perceived as the throne of the gods became feared as the seat of the Devil" "Believed by many to be the companions of witches, thousands of cats were tortured." "burned, and hanged, as recently as colonial times in America." "Veterinarian Michael Fox is Vice President of the Humane Society of the United States." "He writes extensively on cat behavior and human cat relationships." "It is intriguing that cats have been revered in history and persecuted." "There was one pope who had all cats killed." "This love-hate relationship, I think, reflects an aspect of the dualistic psyche of human beings." "We love things conditionally." "We love them if we can control them and they will bend to our will." "Or we love them because they are mysterious, that they're an aspect of nature's wildness, which the cat embodies." "The domestic cat is but one of 38 species of cats, most of them astonishingly alike." "Take away their spots or stripes their short or long fur, disregard the differences in size from four pounds to more than 600 and a cat is a cat is a cat." "Few pet owners are aware that most of the behaviors of their house cat have a parallel somewhere in the wild." "The cat is an enchanting combination of beauty and utility." "Its sinuous movements delight the eye." "Cats get some of their suppleness from their shoulder joints, which are so constructed that they can shift the front legs freely in almost any direction." "They have almost no collar bone and an exceptionally limber spine." "Ever fluid and graceful cats are marvels of strength and balance." "All cats advertise their territory." "Spraying deposits a pungent scent." "Scratch marks are visual signals and may also carry a scent from glands in the paws." "Glands on the face and tail deposit scents at home just as in the wild." "Sometimes more than one signal is left." "Territorial fights could be deadly between animals with such sharp teeth and claws," "so most disputes are settled by body postures and intimidating bluffs." "Friendly greetings are generally more fleeting and subtle a nose touch or body rubbing." "Exactly how and why cats purr remains a mystery." "We do know that both purring and kneading with the paws first appear in infancy to stimulate the mother's milk to flow." "Being hunter, cats must conserve energy whenever possible." "They snooze about two-thirds of the time, but always remain alert to sounds;" "hence, the term catnap." "In all cats ovulation the release of an egg, does not occur until mating triggers it." "After gestation of two to four months depending on the species, they give birth to one to eight young." "Kittens and cubs are helpless at birth" "At first they can neither see nor hear their life guided primarily by touch and smell." "Amazingly, each has a preference for one particular nipple, which it locates by smell." "In the wild this efficient behavior frees the mother to resume hunting sooner." "Excellent, protective mothers, cats will quickly move their offspring if they suspect danger." "To teach their young how to hunt and kill, many cat mothers bring home live prey for practice." "These caracals nicknamed "desert lynx"" "may seem to be playful or cruel, but they are merely learning." "Striking the prey stuns it, but the cubs are too inexperienced to deliver the fatal bite." "Cat mothers keep their young fastidiously clean." "The soothing sensation of tongue rubbing against fur is duplicated each time a human strokes a cat." "In this way a bond is formed, and cats come to regard us as surrogate mothers, a role we hold throughout their lives." "In the wild, as young felines play, they refine the predatory skills essential to survival as adults." "Whether domestic cats similarly practice stalking and hunting is subject to debate." "Many experts feel that play exists as a behavior in its own right, simply because it's fun." "With indoor cats many owners can attest to a phenomenon affectionately called the "evening crazies", when pent-up hunting instincts erupt into a frenzy." "Triggered by a prey's movements, even the most well-fed cat may hunt given the opportunity." "But the connection between making a kill and eating it has to be learned." "An inexperienced cat may attack with precision, yet not recognize its kill as food." "As hunters that rely on stealth, cats are always alert for cues that could mean food or danger." "While smell is not their primary sense, no odor escapes them." "They use smell mainly to find the territorial boundaries of other cats or to know if other cats have been in their territory." "To gather information about potential mates, cats use a second olfactory system in the roof of the mouth." "Inhaling the airborne scent while curling the upper lip creates the grimacing look." "Cats move their funnel-shaped ears to zero in on sounds." "They probably have better acoustical discrimination than either dogs or humans." "The function of a cat's whiskers is not entirely understood." "But if they are severed, the animal may lose its equilibrium and stumble into things." "It may even be unable to make a clean kill." "Whiskers also transmit information about captured prey." "To remove all traces of food, cats regularly groom." "Fastidiousness is one of their best known traits." "Coarse and abrasive liken sandpaper, the tongue is covered with hook-like projection that can even tear flesh from bone after a kill." "To writers, artists, and poets, cat's eyes have embodied all things magical and mysterious." "The scientist knows that vision is one of the cat's most vital senses, the key to its success as a hunter." "At Florida State University, the question of how cats see the world has been studied for more than 25 years." "Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology," "Dr. Mark Berkley defied cynics who told him the independent cat would never make a good laboratory subject." "He designed a system that not only works, but actually appeals to the cat" "Banking on the animal's inquisitiveness," "Berkley built a box that invites exploration." "And when it responds correctly, the cat is rewarded with food." "Generated by a computer, an image will appear in front of the cat on one side of the screen." "The cat must tell the researchers, "Yes, I can see that"." "It does so by poking the right-hand plexiglass panel when the image appears on the right, and the other side when the image appears on the left." "From the work of Berkley and others, we know cats cannot distinguish between human faces, have poor color vision, and like us, experience visual illusions." "But perhaps most noteworthy is their ability to see at night." "Under low light levels the cat is anywhere from six to ten times more sensitive." "That is, at a light level where we perhaps couldn't see anything, he still sees, not very will, but certainly better than we do." "I suppose it might be the difference between a starless night and a moonlit night, where under a starless night that might be the way it looks to us, but to the cat it might look as if the moon were up." "Able to pierce the darkness with vision at least six times more sensitive than our own, the night truly belongs to the cat." "The cat's earliest ancestors probably hunted both on the ground and in the trees." "To survive, they needed not only claws but remarkable balance, an aptitude all cats retain to this day." "In keeping with its reputation, the cat usually does land on all fours." "And scientists have come to understand how." "Slow-motion photography reveals that cats always right themselves in a precise order." "The head rotates first, based on messages from the eyes and inner ear." "Then the spine twists and the rear quarters align." "At the same time the cat arches its back to reduce the force of impact." "Despite its agility, the cat faces particular dangers in today's modern cities." "Here, although hundreds of feet above the ground, the indoor cat is just as attracted by moving prey as is any other cat." "If anything, it may be a stir-crazy bundle of energy." "So many cats actually careen through unscreened windows that the phenomenon now has a name "high-rise syndrome"." "At the Animal Medical Center in New York City, doctors were perplexed when they found that victims of higher falls often had less severs injuries than those that fell a shorter distance." "Good morning, Miss Pizano, how are you today?" "Fine, thanks." "Dr. Michael Garvey is medical director." "Hello, Harry." "Harry is recovering from serious fractures after falling just a few stories." "We'd been puzzled by the high-rise syndrome for a long time the name that we give for cats falling out of windows." "Our clinical impression is that cats that fall from medium-level stories are hurt much worse than cats that fell from even greater distances." "That seemed to defy our logic that cats that would fall farther would be hurt less." "So we undertook a study to examine the records on cats that had been admitted here for falling out of windows." "And it actually confirmed that our clinical impression was correct." "It seems that cats that fall from higher stories and have enough time to reach free-fall like a parachutist are relaxed." "And when you experience trauma when you're relaxed, you will probably avoid injury." "When you experience trauma when you are very rigid and very tight, you will tend to maximize injury." "The cat may not have nine lives, but its uncanny ability to sail through the air is almost certainly responsible for the myth." "Throughout its history, myth and folklore have enshrouded the cat." "Near Oxford, England, scientists have been exploring whether the legendary solitude of the cat is fact or fiction, or can cats adapt successfully to living in groups?" "Puss." "Puss." "Puss." "Bert Parker has kept farm cats for more than half a century, as many as 80 at a time." "Puss, puss, puss." "Come on." "Puss." "Puss, puss, puss, puss." "A good cat is worth a lot." "She's a valuable asset to any farm." "Our cats have increased." "There's few more than what we really need, but what do you do?" "You just let them go on." "They do keep the rats and mice down to a limit." "I don't say they have every one, but they do catch up with them at the finish." "But what happens when this usually solitary animal lives in close quarters with so many others?" "Oxford University Professor" "David Macdonald has studied farm cats since 1978." "Why is it that people have tended to typecast cats as anti-social, as solitary creatures?" "I think there's two reasons." "Once of them could be that the sorts of things that cats do socially are not the sorts of things that classically people have had in mind when they though about wild animal societies." "And I think that's because cat society is based on a rather subtle, covert language." "And the sorts of signals that pass between cats, and the one I personally think is important is this business of rubbing where one individual rubs its lips and its cheek against another individual happen very quickly, they happen very rarely, and if you're not tuned in to looking for it," "you just don't see it." "So I think people have spent their lives living amongst cats and formed an impression which hasn't taken into account the subtlety of the relationships that occur between the cats themselves." "It turns out that they are living in a society." "And, therefore, it's a bit irritating in a sense that one hears so many people saying," "Oh, the only sociable felids, the only sociable members of the cat family as a large group are lions." "That having been said, there are a lot of similarities between these barnyard lions that we have around here and the lions that we are ever more familiar with from programs and researches about the African lions" "Lions are the only wild cats that normally live in a group, called a pride." "At its core are the adult females, usually related." "Researchers have discovered that within a pride the females look after and nurse each other's cubs." "Here, three different females allow the same cub to nurse." "Though a lioness gives preference to her own cubs when they want to nurse, at times she will allow younger sisters or brothers, nieces, nephews, or grandchildren to join in too." "David Macdonald was intrigued that among farm cats the same communal behavior occurs." "It comes and spends a bit of time..." "A student, Warner Passanisi, often follow the cats around the clock, just as naturalists do in the wild." "...their litters together." "So we have, generally, the females taking a turn to suckle these kittens, again indiscriminately." "Any kitten that is there is suckled." "Although unrelated females may help each other in this way, generally the behavior only follows bloodlines." "Mothers, daughters, and sisters cooperate most often, but it is quite possible that other related females will also nurse and care for the kittens, much like an extended family." "Six weeks old, this kitten has begun only recently to explore on his own." "Today, he has accidentally become separated from his mother." "Out of hearing range, she knows nothings of her kitten's dilemma." "A related female hears him but does nothing." "He starts back uncertainly." "Out in the barnyard and still no sign of his mother." "He comes upon the related female, now nursing her own litter." "Hungry, tired, the kitten is willing to risk hostility to get close to her." "In the end, she accepts the tiny, distressed explorer." "Why should the females behave this way?" "Once more the behavior of lions held the clue... a behavior not of care and comfort, but of savagery and death." "In this graphic film footage, the cameraman bears horrified witness to a systematic and vicious killing." "As three terrified cubs huddle nearby, a male lion prepares to brutally attack and kill one of their sisters." "When there is a successful take-over of a pride, the new dominant male kills the cubs of the ousted male." "Thus, the female will come into heat sooner, the new male can then mate with her, and thereby perpetuate his own genes." "The barnyard, again, was to prove remarkably like the plains of Africa." "Macdonald recalls the events leading to a gruesome discovery." "As I watched at the communal den with these four sets of kittens altogether, nine kittens in total, the scene was really a very intimate one." "The kittens were, as you can imagine, a chocolate box scene in amongst straw bales." "Their nest was built in amongst a stack of bales, and a narrow passageway led into the kittens." "And they were all just piled on top of each other." "And each mother would come and go from that den, each suckling the kittens indiscriminately." "On this occasion I was watching this nest of kittens and in slunk the male." "And within just a few seconds this commotion brought the mothers running, but not soon enough." "Because by the time the mothers came back and chased had been in that communal den to start with, six of them were slain." "So I think we've come up with two answers, both of them perhaps rather surprising to why cats may benefit individually from living communally." "One of them is that they can look after each other's young by sharing the load of nursing, and the other is that females may be able to repel murderous males." "Thus, cooperative care by a number of females increases the likelihood that more kittens even orphans will be watched over and thereby protected." "What other unexpected parallels may exist between these barnyard lions and their wild cousins is yet to be discovered." "In another English village, the image of cats as ruthless killers was confirmed in a different way." "It began with a local teacher." "Peter Churcher has taught biology at the Bedford School for 15 years." "Those two have started before that one." "And of course it's important they all start at the same time, isn't it?" "Right." "So back to the beginning." "A cat owner himself, Churcher applied the discipline of his scientific training to explore the unseen world of the house cat on the prowl." "Throughout England, indeed in much of the world, cats are let outdoors to roam the neighborhood at will." "How much impact on wildlife," "Churcher wondered, do cats actually have?" "Unable to follow the cats, he did the next best thing and enlisted the help of their owners." "Well, the first thing was to go around the village and just find out who had cats." "And so I knocked on everybody's door and said," "Have you got a cat and were you willing to take part in the survey?" "And surprisingly enough, virtually everybody in the village did." "And that meant that I had something around 78 cats to start off with, which was a good number." "Oh, hello, Peter." "Good morning, Marjorie." "Have the cats caught anything this week?" "Yes, I have a body for you ready and waiting." "Thanks very much." "Well, that's nice." "Yeah, that's field vole." "Who caught it?" "Eccles." "Eccles again?" "Yes, the black-and-white one." "Quite a good hunter for us, isn't he?" "Yes." "The others don't seem to be catching very much." "Laziness, I would say." "Here you are, Peter." "I think it's a wood mouse, a field mouse." "I was very surprised at how cooperative the owners were in the survey." "I think a lot of people don't like the idea of picking dead bodies and putting them in polythene bags." "But most of the people in the village gritted their teeth and did it." "And some even went as far as to put them in the deep freeze, which was nice, because, as you can imagine, at the end of a week in the summer, often the dead bodies were getting rather smell." "And it was pleasant to have them put in the deep freeze before I got hold of them." "...take it to work and look at it under the microscope." "That's Wednesday." "When the specimens were labeled and the numbers of dead totaled," "Churcher and cats of Felmersham made headlines." "if the cats in Felmersham caught 14 animals each during the course of a year, we know there are about five million cats, domestic cats, in Britain." "So that means that 70 million small mammals and birds are caught by cats in a year." "And so, domestic cats, in spite of their reliance on man for food and a lot of other things, are still remarkably independent." "And I think what our survey has shown is that they're also very important as predators on the ecological stage." "Churcher does not propose that cats be confined indoors." "Others insist it is essential, not just for the wildlife, but for the safety of the cats themselves." "While debate continues, one thing is certain:" "In every well-fed cat by the fire lies a dormant tiger primed for the thrill of the hunt." "Because cats are seen as self-sufficient hunter, many people feel no qualms about abandoning them." "Nationwide, millions are dumped every year." "Near Oxnard, California, animal welfare activist Leo Grillo has tried for weeks to trap two cats living in this jetty." "Such brutal conditions are a death sentence for cats, and he devotes his life to rescuing them." "When the winter hits, these rocks are really cold and the waves are cold and the mist is cold and the fog is cold, The cats are cold." "And everybody thinks they have a fur coat, they're going to be fine." "And it's always like this, and when it's a bad winter especially, it's really pitiful." "Here, at the farthest tip of the rocks the cats have retreated from the taunts and bottle throwing of uncaring strangers." "But they are also completely cut off from fresh drinking water." "So Leo baits his traps with it." "Hi, Jet." "He has named the cats "Marina" and "Jetty"" "because of where he found them." "Come on, Jet." "Com on, Jet." "Come on." "It is not uncommon for Leo infinitely patient to return to the same spot week after week." "Marina" "To Grillo, these cats appear relatively tame." "Clearly, they were not born wild, but raised in the comfort of a human home." "But these same humans abandoned them." "The cats no longer trust." "For Leo it is always a waiting game to see which is stronger, thirst or fear." "Attaboy." "I'm coming down." "All right, Jet, all right." "Here you go." "When I get a cat, and those traps are set, and I get a cat to go in the trap and that door comes down and slaps, that is the most exciting feeling." "And that little saga, that little story, the trips to this one little rock to feed that one little cat is now over." "It has an ending." "After weeks of failed attempts this day would finally bring success." "Tired but exultant, Leo would trap both Marina and Jetty and bring them back to a world of care and love." "Grillo runs four licensed shelters in California." "But they are only for animals he himself has rescued." "An ever-changing number of cats and dogs live out their lives here." "If it gets too crowded, he says, I just expand." "Leo and family live nearby with 60 cats." "This ranch house is home to more than 150 at last count." "Dry food seven tons a year is left out at all time." "Canned food is fed twice daily, totaling more than 80,000 cans per year." "All of this is paid for by private donations." "There we go." "Come see Jetty and Marina." "After a trip to the vet for shots blood tests, spaying, and neutering," "Marina and Jetty are ready to meet the others." "But only from the safety of their cages." "J.J., Junkyard, come on." "Come see your friends." "Come on." "This cat is in ecstasy just to have food, real food." "Yeah, look at that." "Beautiful thing is they were caught together and they can tame down together, comfort each other" "For many people the cat is all but hypnotic soothing and calming just to behold." "Through the ages, an uncounted number graceful, beautiful, and mysterious have captivated the human mind and eye" "Scientists learned that simply petting a cat lowers human blood pressure." "Now, some go further and suggest cats may actually benefit our longevity." "In a small town on Long Island, one innovative woman is playing a role in the sweeping changes in health care." "When her cats helped her cope with an illness," "Joan Bernstein was inspired to reach out to others." "I became ill." "I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, at that time not knowing what it was." "The disease was not defined at that time." "And there were days when there was no way" "I felt like getting out of bed, crawling out of bed literally in pain, and feeding the cats, changing litter pans, and doing everything else that has to be done." "But I did it because the cats insisted that I did it." "Sometimes they'd just by my hot-water bottle or my comforter." "Whatever I needed them to be, they became." "So I became very aware of the value of the cats as a therapy." "Lonely, often forgotten, the institutionalized elderly have been cut off from a lifetime of friends and memories." "Ladies and gentlemen, one of the most beautiful Grand Champion, champagne mink Tonkinese..." "At the Brookhaven Health Care Facility Joan's Tonkinese cats are eagerly awaited every month." "Bred for their stable temperament and sociability, they offer therapy at many levels." "The warmth of the cat on her lap is very important." "Just holding the cat in her arms." "First of all, it's good exercise for her;" "she's utilizing the muscles in her arms and her hands." "So we have the physical aspect of it." "Look what I brought you." "You think she's trying to tell you something?" "Come on." "Okay." "She'll stay right there with you, Mr. Hook." "Patients who have difficulty with recall, with recall of the present, okay, in other words remembering the present from now to tomorrow, or now to next week, or now to a month from now, they will remember the cats." "She's a lot like the one I brought here one time who was sitting on your shoulder." "Remember?" "Yeah." "And I took a picture of you with the kitten sitting on your shoulder, and only half the picture came out." "She really is a good guy." "So soft and so pretty, isn't she?" "Some scientists believe cats touch people more than other pets do, literally and figuratively." "Their lithe and graceful movements are non-threatening." "And the cat's shape and size are basically the same as a human baby's for most people, an automatic invitation to nurture and love." "She is beautiful." "Aw." "I'd love to hold you call day and all night." "I really would." "Another world touched by Joan and her cats is a residential school for autistic youngsters." "The cause of autism is not fully understood and currently there is no known cure." "Locked largely in a world of their own the children are extremely difficult to reach." "Some, like John, erupt uncontrollably." "Easily frustrated, he often reacts with raging tantrums." "While no one pretends the cats are a miracle cure, they regularly bring about miraculous breakthroughs." "How can you tell me what color they are if you don't look?" "For John, the cats open a window on a bright, new world." "...game with me." "I know." "I think you're playing a game." "John, if she's red, then I'm from Mars" "Do I look like I'm from Mars?" "No." "No!" "She's brown." "And what color are her eyes again?" "Blue." "That's right." "How about looking at the eyes?" "How about looking at them?" "Oh, okay." "Did you want to give her a kiss?" "Okay." "Etta" "Etta, what have I got?" "Etta becomes very agitated as you can see from her rocking back and forth, a constant motion." "And the more she rocks, of course, the more agitated she is." "I can take the cat over to her, and at first she may thrust it away." "But if I'm persistent, sometimes I have to withdraw a little bit and come back to her." "But if I'm persistent, the cat can stop her." "Later, Joan will try again." "What have I got?" "Cat." "Is this a nice cat?" "Do you like this cat?" "I see them relating to the cat so much more openly, so much more freely, than they do to other people." "They can trust the animal." "With every individual I've worked with they have eventually reached out, and I think it's because there is again that sense of communication the says, 'Trust me'." "I won't hurt you." "Is she saying give her a kiss?" "Do you want to?" "Okay." "Do you want me to turn her around this way and give her a kiss back here?" "A little closer." "Good." "Okay!" "Joan senses she can approach Etta again." "By holding the cat and focusing her attention on the cat, she will stay still, and she will talk to the cat." "She's with us for several minutes at a time." "How about saying, 'Hi, kitty.'" "Hi, kitty." "Good!" "Hi, kitty." "Good!" "Okay!" "We're talking about therapy." "We're talking about hands-on, and we're talking about one-on-one and up-close." "We're also talking about cats that are capable of creating interaction or curling up in somebody's arms and saying." "I'm all yours." "Right this minute I belong to you." "You're special to me and I love you." "So hold me and feel good." "It was said that a long time ago, probably in our own Golden Age as gatherer-hunters, that we could talk to the animals and they would talk to us." "And I think part of understanding "felinese" is that we can learn the cat's repertoire and have a deeper communication and communion with our cats." "Love for cats is part of a universal love for all creatures, which impels us toward a reverence for all life." "Subtle, amusing, enigmatic... regal and serene... cats remain ultimately independent of their human companions." "They move among us as half-wild creatures, the only domestic animal man has never fully conquered." "Plain or fancy, barn mouser or lord of the hearth, they have fired our imagination." "But, we wonder, did we adopt the cat or did tabby simply deign to share his life with us?" "In the end, it is a tantalizing mystery, one that we, being mere humans, can never hope to solve." "The human mind has always had a fascination with worlds beyond our own" "Following the stars across the seas, early explorers imagined that they might meet weird creatures in undiscovered lands." "They never guessed that under their keels, drifting in the same currents that carried their ships, were life forms far stranger than anything they could imagine." "It's a world where the forces of pressure and darkness have given rise to creatures as different as on another planet." "Their whole existence is shaped by the great ocean currents, which sweep them endlessly around the biggest living space in the solar system." "At the edge of this alien world, here in Florida, one ocean drifter comes from the beach itself." "It can take these hatchlings three days to claw their way up from nests buried two feet deep." "They may look like land animals now, but sea turtles have evolved for 80 million years to be riders of the ocean currents." "These loggerhead turtles, no larger than a child's hand, are about to embark on a perilous 10-year journey around the ocean." "As they head down the beach, they're already reading the earth's magnetic field with their internal compass." "Only one hatchling in a thousand will survive to adulthood and ride the currents back to this beach to breed." "It's among the most extraordinary odysseys in nature." "This is the story of one loggerhead's journey into the unknown world of the ocean drifters." "Like a windup toy, the hatchling swims relentlessly out into the ocean." "The waves tell her which way to go away from shore and from predators stalking the shallow water." "Danger causes her to tuck in her limbs disguising herself as floating debris." "The shark doesn't see her and swims on" "As she heads toward the safety of deep water, the hatchling joins a rich tide of other marine creatures." "Every rock and weed is home to a different species." "Coastal waters are the fertile breeding ground for the oceans." "Florida may produce five million loggerhead hatchlings each year." "In some coastal species, 500 million offspring may come from a single female." "The eggs of this sea urchin and the smoky clouds of sperm from a nearby male swirl together in a fertility dance on the ocean floor." "Huge quantities of eggs and larvae produced along the coastline will be drawn into the ocean currents." "Most will become food for other marine creatures." "Setting their offspring adrift might not sound like good parental care." "But it's a valuable survival mechanism for many coastal species." "It lets them populate new areas and encourages the exchange of genetic material." "All through the night, instinct drives the loggerhead to push on." "The outpouring of new life on the continental shelf below her is just as persistent." "With the bellows like action of her pleopods, the spiny lobster sends 700,000 hatchlings seaward." "It's a reproductive blizzard." "The lobster's larvae have evolved a flattened shape;" "it suits them for the drifting life as ideally as a snowflake." "After 36 hours of swimming, the hatchling is growing tired." "In the clear water 30 miles off the Florida Coast, she reaches the edge of the Gulf Stream, and finds shelter in the drift lines of sargassum weed." "This plant spends its whole life floating on the open sea, held up by small air bladders." "The sargassum provides a haven in a vast, featureless world." "All kinds of creatures find harbor here." "For the first time in her life, the loggerhead can rest." "But the stillness is an illusion." "The winds have piled up the sargassum weed in drift lines along the edge of one of the most powerful currents in the world." "Just beyond, the Gulf Stream hurtles by." "Viewed from space, the Earth is alive with clouds caught up in the rhythm of the tradewinds." "These winds and the rotation of the planet generate the great ocean currents." "The loggerhead will be traveling for years in a circle of currents called the North Atlantic gyre." "Her journey starts off Florida in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, which will carry her north past Cape Cod." "Satellite imagery is teaching us that the Gulf Stream is a wild living carousel, spinning off side currents, and stirring up a broth of marine life" "The edges of currents are the great way stations of the open sea." "Plant and animal drifters are drawn into these fronts, one species making life possible for another." "For a hungry animal, it's an oasis in an oceanic desert." "The sargassum becomes a perch for goose barnacles." "They glean food particles from the plankton, the rich soup of plants and animals, many of them microscopic." "Even sluggish homebodies can be marvelously adapted for travel in the larval stage." "The glorious creature drifting on wing-like lobes is a snail." "Some snail larvae use tentacle like arms for feeding and to keep from sinking." "Some may by able to remain in this stage from months until they drift to a suitable habitat" "Everything is kept lightweight for easier travel." "Look closely and you can see the spiral of a transparent shell." "These beautiful drifters move so gracefully, you forget that the Gulf Stream is hurrying them along at 100 miles a day" "Microscopic larvae spawned in Florida could eventually settle on the shores of Africa." "And the next generation may ride the currents back." "The ocean drifters have little to eat except each other which they do eagerly." "So if the sargassum weed provides shelter, it also harbors death in an astounding diversity of forms, often wonderfully camouflaged." "The sea horse has evolved a mild and plant-like demeanor." "But it's still a predator and keenly watchful." "It drops down to ambush its planktonic prey." "Then loops itself back into the sargassum to avoid being ambushed itself." "The entire food chain is caught up in this dangerous game of deception and self-defense." "Small fern-like animals known as hydroids colonize the sargassum and feed on the most minute plankton." "A sea slug grazes in turn on hydroids." "The slug's camouflage doesn't fool a potential predator." "But the sea slug has armed itself with chemical defenses from its prey." "The file fish abandons the attack." "But another creature's camouflage will soon bring the fish to a gory end" "The drifting weed may look innocuous." "But look again." "A fish hoping to harvest hydroids from this leafy growth would find itself staring into a malignant eye." "Evolution has made the four-inch long sargassum fish the big bad wolf of this floating world." "Its extraordinary camouflage doesn't just mimic the coloration of the plant" "The white spots also mimic the tube worms and hydroids that grow on sargassum." "Its pectoral fins have evolved into prehensile fingers, the better to creep through the foliage." "It will eat creatures almost its own size, and its victims thrash around in its gut momentarily before they die" "The loggerhead swims directly under this hidden peril." "But the sargassum fish lets her pass by." "Hungry dolphin fish won't be so particular." "These big, fast-moving fish can devour all life on the weed lines." "The turtle scramble for a hiding place" "Now the loggerhead pushes onto deeper water." "Beyond the sargassum in the open sea, gelatinous drifters are the most abundant life form." "They may be the loggerhead's main source of food for much of her journey" "A jellyfish like this may be more than 95 percent water." "But the thin membrane of living tissue is still nutritious." "We know almost nothing about how the turtle or any other animal survives here." "We act as if this is our planet and we call it Earth." "But the oceans are so large and so deep that they constitute more than 99 percent of the inhabitable world." "Even for oceanographers, the open sea is an alien environment, tantalizing and yet largely unexplored" "Each creature in the currents has its own story to tell, its own extraordinary adaptations to life on the open sea." "Humans venturing into these waters with scuba gear study only the upper layers of the ocean." "They stay tethered to a rope, like astronauts walking in space." "It's a 500 mile swim to shore." "Richard Harbison and his colleague Larry Madin are among the few researchers studying how these ocean drifters behave in their own environment." "The air tanks limit them to 25 minutes per dive." "So they get just a glimpse of how these high sea drifters really live." "Harbison and Madin specialize in creatures of incredible delicacy known as jelly plankton." "This underwater world changes by the hour." "Many species stay away from the brightly lit surface by day, so these researchers dive round the clock." "Under the cover of darkness, a whole new world of creatures rises from the depths." "It is the largest animal migration on the planet, and it happens every night in the oceans." "This sea snail joins a glorious host of species as they ascend to feed at the surface." "Life as a jelly is an ingenious adaptation." "There are no hard surfaces to run into on the open sea, so these drifters don't need a sturdy body." "The gelatinous form gives them the same buoyancy as the water around them" "They've evolved for life at sea by becoming organized seawater themselves" "Near the surface, the smaller drifters feed on minute plant life that's been growing all day in the sun." "Bigger animals come up to feed on them" "The great oceanic food chain begins here and everything else depends on it" "This weird apparition is a killing machine for small crustaceans." "The writhing arms of this comb jelly startle its victims, which flee straight into the wing like feeding lobes at either end and become entangled." "It's easy to become mesmerized by the delicate structures of some ghostly creature turning gently in the currents." "You can see the beating of the heart through the transparent shell." "Its mouth parts are like an easterlily." "Ocean conditions have reshaped it beyond all our notions of what a snail should be." "Look in another direction, and there's a salp chain grazing on small plant particles." "This jelly can reproduce with extraordinary speed to take immediate advantage of a new food source." "The salp sprouts new individuals like a chain of paper dolls." "The gelatinous form makes for efficient feeding." "It allows this siphonophore to spin out lengthy tentacles like fishing lines." "It twitches its crustacean-like lures to entice its prey." "In the boundless world of mid-ocean, with the sea bottom miles below and no other surfaces nearby, a jelly is the only niche for other species." "One animal's body can become the whole world for another." "A crustacean deposits her offspring on a comb jelly." "As they grow, they devour their host." "Crustacenas eat jellies, and jellies eat crustaceans." "It's a banquet where it's difficult to distinguish the guests from the dinner." "The jellies also prey on one another." "The jelly plankton even have their own great white shark." "The three-inch-long beroe is a jelly with jawa." "Its mouth is lined with sharp, tooth-like hooks." "The beroe latches onto its prey and then expands to engulf it." "This ability to stretch is another advantage of the gelatinous form." "Though scuba researchers are limited to working in the upper layers of the ocean, with this submersible, an oceanographer can study drifting life forms down to 3,000 feet" "There the world of the ocean drifters becomes even more fantastic." "Edith Widder studies creatures living in the deep sea currents." "Her pilot maneuvers skillfully as he collects samples with a battery of scientific equipment" "On the way down, they may be the first humans to see creatures that have drifted here for millions of years endlessly strange and wonderful." "A siphonophore spirals out into the watery darkness, like a galaxy." "It's maximizing the feeding area for its fringe of stinging tentacles." "Scientists have only recently discovered this football-size comb jelly." "They call it Big Red." "This fish isn't sick." "In these dark unbounded depths, with no top and no bottom, everything simply behaves differently." "Like this squid suspended in the stillness." "Or this squid which has developed a transparent gelatinous body." "All the rules are different down here." "Researchers freely admit that what they know about almost any of these animals is less than a paragraph." "Scientists have given this newly discovered deep-sea octopus the nickname Oumbo." "Wider specializes in bioluminescence, the ability of living creatures to communicate by producing light." "To study this phenomenon, she measures what happens when bioluminescent animals drift into this screen." "She must shut down her own floodlights and use special cameras to see how they respond." "The pitch blackness of deep water suddenly explodes in a fiery light show" "A sea cucumber looks strange enough just before it makes contact with the screen." "Then it turns on its own lights, and rolls off unharmed." "Almost every animal uses bioluminescence in the pitch dark of the deep." "Given the abundance of life in the oceans," "This may be the most common form of communication on earth." "The clouds of bioluminescence can be so bright that they light up the instruments inside the submersible" "If attacked some animals try to confuse their predator with sheer incandescence, like a flashbulb in the face." "Others illuminate the predator in the hope that some larger predator will come along like a cop and take it away." "Some use light like a lure to draw their prey close, or to attract a mate." "In this world of darkness, the language of light is so important that a moment's flickering may determine whether an animal lives or dies." "But what we know about bioluminescence is limited by the difficulties of ocean research." "Even a submersible stays underwater for only about three hours." "The promise of oceanography is tantalizing." "Bioluminescent chemicals are already being used in medicine." "But reaping the potential benefits is dangerous work." "In many ways, it's like the grand adventure of space travel." "But we've mapped the barren surface of Venus in far more detail than our own deep ocean floor." "Is it worth exploring the depths of this planet?" "In one area the size of a small living room, deep sea researchers recently discovered 460 new species." "Who knows what secrets we have yet to discover in the oceans?" "Even back on the surface, the limits of our knowledge can be painfully apparent." "In the complex ecosystem at the very skin of the ocean, a whole other world of creatures lives both in and out of the water." "As it moves, the stinging tentacles of the Portuguese man o' war stream out to gather food." "By raising its gas-filled sail, the man o' war can travel at varying angles to the wind." "It's an elegant system for dispersing animals not just where the current takes them, but across the face of the ocean." "Nothing about the man o' war is simple" "It's neither an individual animal, nor a colony, but something in between" "Joined together under the gas bladder is a kind of cooperative assembly of stomachs, tentacles, and reproductive organs." "Other species add to the complexity." "One fish, called nomeus, hides out among the deadly veil of tentacles." "The man o' war toxin is more potent than the cobra's." "But perhaps because of a protective mucus layer or greater immune resistance, nomeus can dine unharmed on the man o' war itself." "Other fish aren't so lucky." "The man o' war can stretch its tentacles out more than 50 feet, and each tentacle is studded with batteries of stinging cells." "Nomeus may help out the man o' war by herding these fish toward their death." "Triggered by the fish, the stinging cells fire slender threads lines with barbs." "The victim is lassoed, hog-tied, and injected with paralyzing poison." "Then the digestive organs move in." "Like some monstrous lifeform, they wriggle and twist as they fasten their flexible mouths onto the victim." "Gradually, they engulf the fish and dissolve its flesh." "After half a year, the young loggerheads odyssey has taken her to mid-ocean." "But she still has a lot to learn." "All the activity around the man o' war catches her eye." "She just wants to grab a few fishy tidbits and doesn't seem to notice the nasty business overhead." "For a moment, the turtle looks like a puppet on a deadly set of strings." "But it's the man o' war that's in danger." "The turtle turns her hungry eye on this intriguing new possibility." "People talk about the first brave human who ate an oyster." "But what a tangled and spicy meal the man o' war must make." "The turtle's skin may be too thick for the stingers to penetrate." "But no one knows what protects the turtle's eyes and mouth." "The loggerhead soon pushes on in search of a meal that's not quite so challenging." "One of the strangest inhabitants of the harsh world between air and water is the drifting nudibranch named glaucus." "This upside-down sea slug swallows air bubbles to hold itself at the surface." "With its pointy appendages, it latches onto anything it's lucky enough to bump into." "But what it's really after are the deadly tentacles of the man o' war" "It coats its mouthparts with a mucus layer to protect itself." "The smaller less powerful stinging cells get digested." "But the most virulent stingers remain intact." "Amazingly, they pass directly to the nudibranch's extremities and it uses them for its own defense." "But these surface drifters must face adversaries even more formidable than each other." "A storm is brooding up across the water." "It's a reminder of how unstable life must be on the very face of the ocean." "One moment these creatures are being scorched by sun and wind, and the next they're tumbling in storm-tossed waves." "As the storm passes, they get pelted by icy rain and have to endure the dilution of their salty home." "Yet the animals living in the ever-changing surface can seem so delicate." "This drifting snail builds a fragile home of air bubbles sealed in an envelope of mucus then hangs on for dear life." "If it lets go, it'll sink into the abyss." "The raft is also holding up the snail's offspring, in these egg capsules." "It's a cradle at the top of a hostile world." "When it's done laying eggs, the snail builds a new raft for itself and cuts its 50,000 offspring adrift." "Natural debris also drifts in the surface currents." "It's always been a means of dispersal for some plants." "A coconut from the Caribbean may ride the Atlantic currents thousands of miles to take root on some distant shore." "Fish are drawn to this kind of flotsam for shelter." "A drifting crate can turn into a small ecosystem," "Where fish lay eggs or find their food." "But the little things we throw away add up, and the supply of garbage begins to seem endless." "One study estimated that 13 tons of trash per minute was being heaved overboard by ocean-going vessels alone" "A recent treaty now regulates the practice, but it's rarely enforced." "Whatever goes into the ocean gets drawn into the currents, and it builds up in the very places where marine life is richest." "Animals encrusted on debris may rouse the loggerhead's hunger and curiosity." "For her, drifting objects have always been a natural food source." "Until recently, a loggerhead could safely eat almost anything she came across." "Nothing in her evolution has prepared her for this wealth of deadly new choices." "To her, it makes as much sense to pick at the festive remnants of a balloon as at a man o' war." "Fragments like these can choke turtles to death." "Plastic blocks their digestive tracts and causes starvation." "This time, she's unable to tear off a bite." "But she'll face many more opportunities as she swims on." "Almost every dead turtle found has plastic in its gut." "Millions of seabirds also die each year because of garbage like this gannet tangled up in debris absent-mindedly discarded by sportfishermen." "Commercial fishermen lose thousands of miles of net each year, which spread out all across the oceans like a deadly web." "There may be no way for the loggerhead to learn about these new perils until it's too late." "The turtle has survived her first year" "But in the long seasons before she circles home to Florida to lay her eggs a more sinister peril may threaten her" "Everything out here is absorbing a swelling tide of chemical wastes" "even the plankton." "Though they may seem insignificant, the lifeforms here are important to cloud formation." "They even help regulate the global climate." "These microscopic plants and animals have always struggled against enormous odds to reach maturity" "Now they must also absorb heavy metals sewage, pesticides and petrochemicals." "Plankton is the base of the food chain and every marine animal depends on it." "If our carelessness disrupts this vast drifting tide of life, will it imperil the entire ocean?" "Will it affect the food we eat and the very air we breathe?" "No one has yet spent enough time traveling in the loggerhead's world to find out." "It may be that we humans will always find it easier to turn our imaginations away from the oceans and out to other worlds" "But as we peer up at the stars, we should keep one truth in mind" "All the alien life forms we know and perhaps all we ever will know" "are here adrift on planet Earth." "December 8, 1963 a day like any other." "At Alldinga Beach, the annual South Australian spearfishing championships are set to begin." "23 year old Rodney Fox, a life insurance salesman from Adelaide, and former champion, takes to the water." "He sets his sights on a large reef fish." "Little does he know that he himself is being stalked..." "By a great white shark." "Through a series of near miracles," "Rodney Fox arrives at Royal Adelaide Hospital in under an hour." "The vascular surgeon there has just returned from an international conference with the very latest in surgical techniques." "They go to work on the mutilated body delivered to the operating theater." "The shark has punctured his left lung, left clavicle, and diaphragm." "The jaws have bitten through all his ribs, gouged skin and muscle from his left side, and exposed several major organs." "According to one surgeon, had Rodney arrived five minutes later, he would have bled to death." "Sewn back together with over 450 stitches, he lies bedridden for two months with the pain, and the awful memory." "Do you hope to continue skindiving one day?" "I'll get in the water somewhere sometime, but I don't know whether I'll go in this gulf here where there's been two or three attacks in the last few years." "That was Rodney Fox then..." "And this is Rodney Fox now." "Seldom has a single event so radically transformed a person." "I n a way, the great white shark that attacked him 30 years ago took his young life but gave him another." "I n three decades, Rodney Fox has grown from a fearful shark victim into a shark champion and protector." "I think that sharks and the shark world is really beautiful and interesting." "The shark gets a raw deal, and people just hate it because they don't understand and they fear it." "I love to see them flying and gliding through the water, and I think that most people would really enjoy it too, if the realized they weren't going to be eaten alive." "This from a man who was himself nearly eaten alive." "Rodney's life since the attack has been a continuous challenge to overcome his fear by facing it." "Today, documentary filmmakers and marine scientists from all over the world travel to Australia to go looking for sharks with Rodney." "His knowledge of living sharks is unparalleled." "Marine biologist Eugenie Clark" "People who hear about Rodney's shark attack go, wow, he's an ordinary man like one of us and yet he's had such a terrible experience, and on top of that, he's telling us that sharks aren't dangerous," "they're good, we should preserve them." "So this is what's so wonderful about Rodney, the someone who suffered through such a terrible incident can now defend the animal that attacked him." "It wasn't always that way." "Reliving the shark attack story has been a continuous epic in my life." "So many people want to hear how I survived, how I stuck my fingers in the shark's eyes, how I put my arm around it so it wouldn't bite, and how I went up to the surface and it followed me." "And after about eight or nine years of telling the story," "I read the original Readers' Digest First Person Award the" "I had written immediately afterwards, and I found that I had changed the story a little." "I was telling people what they wanted to hear, and not necessarily the truth." "Time often affects memory." "Here the story is only two days old, and not nearly so heroic." "All I remember is this big thing pushing me through the water," "and it seemed to let go a bit when I pushed my hand up at it, and it still wouldn't let go." "The pressure of the water might have been holding me in his mouth." "And I managed to put both arms right around him and I was looking for his eyes with my fingers and after awhile, he managed just to let go and" "I managed to get to the surface." "Very luckily there was a boat just coming over to see what was going on because there was so much blood and disturbance in the water." "And they quickly rolled me into the boat and I had to keep both arms just like this so they wouldn't rip my arms off." "As they came to shore on this incredibly rough area there, they drove the boat up onto the shore." "And they loaded me onto a bit of a stretcher, and a car, the only car in the whole area that had been in this beach for about four or five years was available, and they drove it out over the reef with 10 or 20 guys lifting it" "over the big lumps and the rocks through here." "Loaded me in the back of it, took off toward Adelaide." "It was an absolute miracle, especially when they unloaded me out of the boat." "As they did, my wetsuit slid open and my stomach, actually, loops of intestines, came out which seems funny now." "I've got a good friend who actually tells me every now and again that he stuffed them back in with his fingers." "They bunched me up." "Rodney's wife Kay." "I didn't know how bad it was for many days afterwards, but by then he was up and breathing and talking and so, you know, it's only later when they tell you all the things that were wrong" "that you realize just how close it was" "But everybody in the hospital thought he was dying but I knew he wasn't." "His attack drew worldwide attention." "Rodney became a sensation almost overnight." "The public notoriety would set his life on a brand new course." "Three months after the attack, escorted by Kay," "Rodney began his return to the sea." "But it wasn't easy to forget his attack." "The fear of the sharks when I went back in the water was huge." "M y first time my head went underwater," "I imagined in my mind sharks running in from all directions and I said," ""stop it, you've got to control that."" "Things would never exactly return to normal for Rodney." "His love of the sea was now overshadowed by a terrible fascination with his old nemesis the shark." "I n 1965, he organized the first expedition to track the great white." "The adventure became a docudrama." "But danger in the unknown makes man himself the quarry of the most savage hunter of the deep" "the great white shark the white" "great white death." "Come on you bastard, attack." "This is some of the first footage ever shot of a great white under water." "Coming in now!" "That doesn't taste so good, that wire mesh." "The theme is revenge a crusade to rid the seas of evil sharks." "Death and the battle's almost over, a second maneater who's jaw will never again menace an unsuspecting swimmer." "I n those days, people feared sharks because they knew very little about them." "They thought that every shark was a bad shark and there was a big saying at that stage that the best shark was a dead shark." "The first film was followed by a second." ""Attacked by a Killer Shark" is about Rodney his attack and recovery." "Again, it shows Rodney wielding a speargun, bent on revenge." "Time out to reload." "The cartridge inside the head explodes on contact." "The tremendous concussion is transmitted into the body, killing instantly." "But it does twist the truth just a little." "I wasn't really after revenge." "What I was frightened of was going back in the water and being bitten again." "And so I was quite keen to try out the new explosive powder head that had been invented." "And I went underwater and I shot some of these sharks on file to show that man could protect himself underwater." "Rod's on a killing frenzy, intoxicated with his successes overriding his fears." "This is exactly the scene he had been in need of." "I n fact, Rodney's attitude was beginning to change a fact obscured by the dramatic film script." "I didn't realize or understand much at that time but I thought, that's not the right attitude." "We've got to look at it further than that." "We've got to learn more about them and understand them and learn to live with them." "As Rodney's appreciation for the great white began to grow, so too did his expertise as a shark tracker." "I n 1969, he was called into work on a shark movie unlike any that had gone before." "Has that cage been checked out?" "Film Producer Peter Gimbel turned to Rodney to deliver the sharks for his cameras." "Well, generally, after they've had a taste, they start really to tear into things and really start to be active." "And then you'll let us get into the water." "I'll push you." "The result the critically acclaimed documentary," ""Blue Water, White Death."" "I n the crew was diver cameraman Stan Waterman." "The two men would become lifelong friends." "There's gotta be 12!" "Oh, yeah." "Rodney had already done two films about the great white and Rodney probably knew more about how to chum in the great white very important that, chumming, the putting out of what was called burley in Australia to attract them." "So that Rodney was the natural man to set up the scene for us." "Rodney didn't have a cage back then." "Gimbel had the cages." "Rodney knew where to find the burley, the chum, and set up the boats." "And way back then, in the beginning," "Rodney was your man in Australia if you wanted to film the great white." "Sorry about you cage, fellah, wait 'til you see it." "How bad is it?" "What a mess." "He bent the cage, Stan?" "Oh, wait 'til you see." "The carnage of earlier films was not repeated." ""Blue Water, White Death" marks the beginning of a new kind of relationship between white sharks and human beings one that allows the sharks to survive the encounter." "For Rodney Fox, the occasional filmmaking stint was not enough to support his young family." "So he took up abalone diving, a dangerous but lucrative profession." "It would put food on the table for 18 years." "But always, the sharks weighed heavily on his mind." "One of the hardest things to do over that 18 year period when I was abalone diving was when I had to return to abalone diving the week after I'd been out filming sharks." "We had attracted maybe 10 or 15 great whites around the boat during the week period." "We had them biting on the cages and taking baits and showing these enormous teeth." "When the film crew had left and everything had quieted down," "I had to make my living again, and go back in the water only a few miles from where we'd seen all these sharks." "I had to put on another hat and say to myself," "Sharks don't like abalone." "They generally don't eat humans." "You'll be okay." "But the first couple of days" "I imagined those sharks were looking at me." "And sometimes when my knee would hit a soft sponge," "I wondered whether that was a soft shark's belly and whether it was biting my leg off." "But I knew that it was fear in myself." "The danger to abalone divers was genuine enough." "Some of the best abalone beds were near seal colonies where white sharks liked to hunt." "But instead of killing the sharks," "Rodney and his colleagues designed a protective working cage for the abalone divers." "Then they tested it in shark infested waters." "Watch out for that..." "Hurry up!" "Break a leg!" "It really proves that the cage is safe to abalone divers because you've been involved with five sharks down here swimming around, attacking it, and they've only taken the hose." "And if you've got enough air to survive and you can get up to the surface, you'll be safe." "Makes the adrenaline pump, doesn't it?" "The adrenalin really started to pump in 1974 when Rodney was contracted to coordinate the filming of live sequences for the greatest shark film of all time." "He had had experience with filming great whites in the wild, but "Jaws" was a different kind of project." "They had sent over a small stuntman, a midget diver and a small cage so that the sharks would look bigger because Jaws, of course, Bruce was a 25 footer and our sharks were only 14 foot." "And as we were dressing the little guy one of the sharks came in and grabbed hold of the propeller on my boat and actually shook the boat physically and it was well over 14 feet long, and a very strong shark, and as it swam along the side," "I'm saying to Carl, Quick, get in the water, get in the water!" "The cameraman's ready, here's the shark, and he kept saying, No, no, no!" "The stunt diver wasn't the only one who didn't want to go in the water." ""Jaws" was great entertainment, but the public was terrorized, and the perception of sharks went from bad to worse." "Nobody realized at that time that it was going to be a horror film that was going to frighten so many people, including a lot of my friends, out of the water." "I had people say to me," "I wouldn't even go in the bath now after seeing the film Jaws!" "For Rodney, "Jaws" was the turning point the moment he finally realized that the sharks needed a champion." "And so he set out to debunk the old myths." "He started a business an expedition business taking filmmakers, scientists even tourists out into the South Australian seas for face to face encounters with the real great white sharks." "These days, his business serves two ends it contributes to marine science and it satisfies Rodney's rather large appetite for adventure." "Some experience, I'll tell you!" "This scientific expedition will drop anchor in the Neptune Islands off the rugged coast of South Australia to find, film, and study great white sharks." "Rodney's son Andrew has taken over the necessary, if noxious, chore of mixing the key ingredients of burley a kind of foul stew that sharks seem to find irresistible." "Blood, ground tuna, and a little sea water that's the recipe." "Andrew will create a smelly slick stretching several miles down current from the vessel." "Any sharks in the area will find the invitation very attractive." "Marine scientists from the University of Adelaide want to test the strength of a great white's bite, and to identify the telltale sings of shark attack for forensic purposes a grisly but necessary study." "The sharks must be induced to bite a specifically designed pressure plate." "First, they need to be worked into a biting mood." "Ready now?" "Okay, drop her in, Andy." "Now that the shark has the idea, he gets his tuna on a plate." "Keep it in the air anyway, because he's a bit cranky!" "Running tests on the great white sharks in the wild is always unpredictable." "We should have an impression on plate!" "The plate is designed to measure pounds of pressure per square inch." "That is amazing." "We're looking at the test strip now and that looks as if..." "This one is 500 kilograms, 1, 000 pounds." "One thousand pounds." "That one's more than 1, 000 pounds." "A thousand pounds per square inch enough to puncture metal plating." "But what exactly is it that draws a great white and prompts it to bite?" "Is it the smell of prey, or the sight of it, or the vibrations it sends through the water?" "That's a crucial question for divers so Rodney helps set up another experiment." "What I hope to do here is to really work out whether the great white sharks are interested in humans, whether they can actually see that there's an unseen shield there, whether they may be interested in fish or sound" "Just to see what they are interested in." "They swim around and around so many times the cages without biting and haven't had any true results." "I n order to test sight, Rodney will use a cage of quarter inch" "Lexan plastic to give the sharks a clear view of his shape." "An underwater speaker will test for sound, broadcasting low frequency vibrations to simulate the vibrations made by moving prey." "A thawed tune will provide scent." "Will the sharks show any clear preference?" "Which one will attract them the most?" "The adrenalin that rushes in you as you go down there and as the shark comes in when you're in the Lexan tube gives you a real rush that excitement all over again." "It's like the first time in my shark cages." "It's exciting and my heart you can feel it a little higher in you beating a little faster as you realize that you are part of an experiment, that the sharks don't really know whether or not they can get at you or not." "It was quite unnerving really, because I felt like I was naked in the middle of the street in the shop window with everything exposed..." "Again and again, the circling sharks pass Rodney by, and return to the source of the sound vibrations." "The proof is clear at close range, underwater vibrations, not sight or smell, are what attracts the shark." "Rows of sensory cells along the flank are especially attuned to these stimuli" "Well, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind they're far more interested in the low vibrations than they ever were in me or the tuna..." "The more Rodney has studied them, the more he has come to learn about sharks, the great variety of sharks all 370 species of them." "I get lots of pleasure from looking at the different species of sharks, from the carpet shark that lays on the bottom with its frilly mouth" "to the nurse sharks that seem to rummage around and sleep a lot" "to the beautiful whaler sharks and the bull sharks and the silkie sharks." "There's so many of them the mako sharks and the great white sharks." "All of them have a different feel, a different way to swim, a different way of life." "But they're all beautiful the way they swim and glide and fly through the water." "And the biggest and most mysterious of all: the whale shark." "It's not just the largest of the sharks it is, in fact, the largest fish in the ocean." "But despite its menacing size and appearance, this is among the most gentle and benign of all sharks." "It eats plankton, not people." "Few in number, slow to reproduce, the whale shark is one of the great and vulnerable wonders of the oceans." "Whale sharks to diver have been one of the greatest pinnacles of sharks in all the oceans of the world." "They were the largest shark, they were a docile shark, they were a shark that you could hitch a ride on, a friendly shark, all the things that the great white shark wasn't." "Growing to over 50 feet and 20 tons, the whale shark is so big that it supports other fish, like these remora." "They hitchhike harmlessly on the whale shark and eat the food it leaves behind." "Ironically, the most visible fish in the ocean is also one of the least understood." "No one can say where or when these sharks reproduce, or even how old they grow to be, but some scientists believe they live as long as we do," "Roaming the tropical ocean in search of food and occasionally, each other." "Now imagine a shark this big with teeth to match a massive, meat eating predator." "At one time, such a shark did exist:" "carcharadon megaladon 50 feet of carnivore lived during the Miocene ear some 20 million years ago." "It was the largest ocean going predator that ever existed." "Rodney traveled to South Carolina to find out more about the megaladon." "He and naturalist Vito Bertucci will dive in the Cougar River off Charleston." "It's a dangerous dive." "But this was a hunting and dying ground of carcharadon megaladon and his fossilized teeth lie embedded in the river bottom." "The most important thing to worry about here is just to work you way into the current and down the anchor line and then once we get down, you have to be aware that there are sharks and turtles in this area and an occasional alligator," "and if you do come up on one, not to be startled by it and if you ignore them, they usually ignore you." "Alligators, the only danger with them is on the surface." "If you see one come at you at the surface, all you have to do is dump your air and go down." "And they won't come after you." "The sharks, if they come up to you, just give them a shove and they'll take off." "Well, I got my knee pads on for praying" "I hope this turns out alright." "Here goes." "The water is cold." "Visibility is nil." "The darkness is decidedly spooky." "I had some incredible images of monster sharks swimming around." "I n these gloomy water, a monster carnivore would be right at home." "Within minutes, Rodney finds the first traces of these ancient killers." "Luckily, of course, it's the teeth, not the shark." "You okay?" "Yeah, why?" "I dunno if I can get up here very easy." "Just leave your gear on the floor." "How do I get this helmet off?" "I feel a bit like Houdini." "Why are they different colors?" "This one was in the sand." "On the sand?" "Yeah, it the sand and these were in the mud." "You know, when I was heading down there with you for the first time," "I thought, "what am I doing here?"" "It was dark and crazy and I'm pulling and I'm spinning sideways on the rope down there and it was only when I saw the bottom come up slowly that I realized there was a steady bottom there and I thought, "I cannot give up now because I gotta get back in the boat."" "And then I went on and then when I saw that first half a tooth down there I thought," ""Ah, this is worth it."" "And then I started looking, looking, and I forgot about all the problems that you told me about down there and started looking, looking, looking for teeth." "And, you know, you can get carried away." "Down in Jacksonville, Florida, Dr. Cliff Jeremiah is taking Vito's fossil teeth and reconstructing a megaladon shark jaw." "It will be the largest shark jaw in the world big enough to swallow a small car." "And it has an entire set of properly matched teeth." "It has taken Vito 19 years to collect the full set." "Some 200 fossilized teeth will line the recreated jaw, adding almost 300 pounds in teeth alone." "Shark teeth, of course, stand out so much that white pointy ivory things knives against their gray body." "And of course, if you had somebody in a room pointing a revolver at you, you would look at the revolver too, because it's the sharp pointy end, the point that's going to cause all the trouble." "Shark teeth are compelling." "It's difficult not to admire them and react with a shudder." "The only part of the shark's skeleton that's not cartilage, these razor teeth are used to dismember and devour prey." "But despite our worries, only rarely is that prey human." "First of all, the word shark is such an enormous pull on people." "Sharks three or 400 varieties of sharks in the world, all go together as one name shark and that spells out fear." "Research was done and shows that the word shark had a higher reaction on the nervous system of people than any other word in the English language." "And so the general public, when they talk about sharks, they talk about something they cannot understand and something they fear." "I n fact, sharks are not all scary." "Only a handful are any kind of threat to people." "What they are is vitally important to the oceans." "As top predators, they help maintain the entire balance of the underwater world." "Rodney's fascination with these great hunters has taken him all around the planet." "His quest: to learn still more about sharks, and it's quest that never ends." "Alright, we're gonna place the mask on and the way to do that is to put your chin in first and then we'll pull this strap over the top." "Here at Walker's Ca in the Northern Bahamas," "Rodney and Dr. Eugenie Clark have come to swim with reef sharks in the wild." "On this dive, Rodney and Eugenie are wearing special masks that allow them to communicate underwater." "No metal cages, no Lexan tubes, just a swim alongside the sharks to show that if you know what you're doing, you have nothing to fear." "They've picked a dive center where frozen fish remains are put out to lure large numbers of sharks for the divers." "It's just beautiful to be here and watch them." "The nurse sharks are the first to arrive." "They certainly don't seem to be paying any attention to us, do they?" "What sort of food or fish do these nurse sharks normally eat?" "The nurse sharks eat the food on the bottom shellfish, clams and any kind of fish they can get ahold of." "Genie, he's eating your hair." "Watch out!" "They're trying to eat your hair, Genie." "Trying to eat my hair?" "I really like that, Rodney." "He just stopped then and wanted to be scratched..." "While the nurse sharks are fairly docile, the blacktips that follow are much more aggressive." "That one just tried to bite me on the camera..." "How about staying close to me?" "It's getting a bit exciting here." "How many species do you think we're seeing, Genie?" "Well, it looks like three species for sure the gray reef or the reef shark, as it's called in the Caribbean, a lot of these nurse sharks, and then the blacktip." "I don't know if there are two species or one of the blacktip." "Yet, even the blacktip and gray reef sharks seem more interested in the food than the humans." "There are almost 80 sharks feeding simultaneously." "And for the most part, they simply ignore the divers." "Funny how when we're down here with them, the way we are now, we've both stopped feeling that there's any danger at all in the situation we're just so fascinated with watching them." "I n fact today, people threaten sharks more than sharks threaten people." "Sharks are being killed sometimes purely out of hate they don't even use them." "I n some of the shark tournaments, they just go out and kill sharks." "But I think we're getting away from that." "There's too much now on television and magazine articles and books and people like Rodney Fox who are... telling people what good sharks can be and who are living examples of how, if you understand a shark, you can go on swimming with them," "and they are not to be feared and hated." "They're like puppy dogs, aren't they?" "Some sharks you can swim with, some you can't." "It takes some education, experience, and common sense to figure out which ones are safer than others." "Silkie sharks, for instance, are on the safe list." "And with silkies, there's a twist, as Bahamian Stuart Cove will show Rodney." "And when we go down there, you're going to twist its tail?" "Yes." "It's important when we're swimming around with sharks to keep our hands down, because they do have teeth, but when they swim by us, if we grab their tails and twist them gently, it will paralyze the shark and when you do that," "you can actually roll them over and stroke their bellies." "We use this maneuver to actually remove fish hooks and so we sort of do the sharks a little bit of a favor and we remove the fish hooks and it doesn't seem to bother them." "Paralyze the sharks and then release the sharks, they'll come right back to you and you can do it again." "Well, I'm game." "Let's try it." "Silkie sharks are so called because instead of the usual rough shark skin, theirs is smooth as silk." "Reaching up to nine feet in length, they inhabit the waters off Nassau, to the south of Walker's Cay." "Grabbing silkies by the tail might sound tricky, but divers in the area have been doing it for awhile, ever since they first set out to remove the hooks of careless fishermen." "That's when they discovered the silkies' special weakness." "It's called tonic immobility, and it's a quirk of the sharks' nervous system, a kind of temporary paralysis, brought on by twisting the sharks' tails and flipping them over." "I don't believe that." "Those sharks are so friendly." "They're right behind you." "They're all around..." "It's incredible." "I've never experienced anything like that before." "So silkies are friendly." "Nurses are okay." "What about any others?" "You got any others?" "We've got no dangerous sharks in the Bahamas." "Unfortunately, two weeks ago, we had a longline boat come into our area and target our shark dive, up in the reef area on the inland sites and caught 35 of our shark population and they had different names." "They were like our kids." "It was like having your pet dog killed." "And we had a great affinity, a great affection for all these wonderful sharks." "Well, after that great white shark got me," "I really knew nothing about sharks." "This is one of 350 varieties of sharks in the world." "And you just have to find out which ones are potentially maneaters, or manbiters, as they say." "I'm less frightened now than I was before my shark attack, because I've learned to find out which ones are dangerous and which ones aren't, which ones you can handle, which ones you can swim with." "I think they're beautiful." "Hi Joe" "Felicity, Margaret boys and girls, many different shapes and sizes." "Come on." "It's my belief that education will stop this massacre of all the sharks and the massacre of our oceans." "There's a great upwelling amongst people now to say," "Hey, let the sharks live, let's learn more about them, let's find out how we can enter the water without having to kill them all off." "And it's the education of our younger people now and I see a large uprising of it young six and seven years old saying," "Don't throw any plastic in the water, don't do this, why are you killing that shark, why is that photograph of a dead shark?" "It's really great to see that we are starting to let our seas live." "For Rodney Fox, the past 30 years have been a journey, a journey with the shark." "It was a voyage that started in one terrible instant, a voyage into the face of fear." "Over 30 years, Rodney has traveled from terror and death to understanding and life, from the early days when killing sharks seemed right, to the present when harming them, even accidentally, seems very wrong." "I n a way, he was chosen on that awful day 30 years ago to speak for the sharks, chosen for a special lifelong bond." "For while the great white would put one mark on his body, the next 30 years would leave another on his soul." "Thirty years ago, I had no idea" "I'd be dragged into a whole lifetime of the study of sharks." "And when I look back now, I realize and feel quite proud that I've worked with so many interesting people." "And what I've tried to do over that period of time is to get the respected filmmakers... and the scientists that know what they are talking about to learn more about the great white and get them to portray that the shark isn't a bad shark," "that we have to learn to live with it, and not just kill it." "And I look back over the 30 years to find that slowly it's been happening and working and all of the people agree with my philosophy:" ""Let the sharks live!"" "In Ireland, horses are an indelible part of the landscape... of history and memory, of a past and present where the ancient magic of the horse still weaves its spell." "Their presence is pervasive, as if horses help to define what the Irish people are." "Horses are the Irishman's sport..." "Ireland is the birthplace of steeplechasing." "Horses are Ireland's tradition." "Showjumping originated on this green land." "Horses are Ireland's business." "This is the Irish National Stud." "Horses are Ireland's pleasure." "Here people still ride across fields and farms to the hounds... and thousands of families keep horses for recreation." "This romance of the Irish and their horses was born of the land, nurtured by necessity, and fostered by ancient bonds." "It is one of the oldest love stories on earth:" "The Ballad of the Irish Horse." "Ireland" "Ireland of myth and mystery, of wild shores and soft rains, lush pastures and rich soil, where the past still lives." "Even today, Ireland remains, as it has been for thousand of years, largely agricultural." "Here, the story of man and horse stretches over the centuries..." "A saga woven of threads of tradition and history, custom and religion, that binds them inseparably in the fiber of Irish life." "While the rest of Europe was transformed by the Industrial Revolution," "Ireland remained essentially untouched and unchanged." "Until only 40 year ago, most families in Ireland needed a horse to plow the fields through the week." "On market days, the farmer hitched the horse to a wagon to haul his produce." "On Sundays, horse and wagon took the family to church." "In remote areas of the west, the old Irish ways and language survive." "And the people of Ireland keep horses in their lives and on their landscapes." "Here, people still go ton fairs at villages and country crossroads to buy and sell horses as they have for centuries." "In Napoleonic times, quartermasters from European armies came here to buy the famed Irish horses for their elite cavalry regiments." "Today at the Great October Fair in Ballinasloe, the flavor of a lost age lingers." "If she's there for 50 pounds, she's there." "The trading is still punctuated by the slapping of hands a middleman still brings buyer and seller together." "And a bit of earth on the horse's hindquarters still shows that a bargain has been struck." "Like his father and grandfather, John Daly is a horse breeder." "He came to this fair with his father." "Now he brings his son, Alan, knowing the boy will follow in his footsteps." "And today he has come to buy Alan a pony." "We'll go and see something else anyway." "Stand back a minute there, lads." "What do you carry on the book down there?" "Fourteen two." "The man says seven." "I'll give you eight." "Give him 1,000 pounds." "Give him to him for 1,000 pounds and that's the price." "And after that, say no more." "I'll give you 800." "Well, I look at it this way." "Your lad will be getting a good pony, and he's a good rider." "And I like to see him getting the pony" "If you tell me you'll take it for them" "I'll divide it the last 200 pounds." "That's 900, right?" "Give him 1,000 pounds." "Go on, give him 1,000." "I tell you what I'll do." "I'll go away and leave you for an hour to think about it." "And you might get a better lad." "I'm here to sell him." "That'll be 1,000 pounds, the both of yours." "You're fiddling around there like a fiddler." "That will be 1,000 quid and get the money." "Give him a check then for 1,000 pounds." "Will you break the board?" "Go on." "Give him to him now." "Sold." "Hold out, hold out." "One, two, three, four..." "God bless you." "After a few pounds are given to the seller for luck," "Alan leaves the fair with a Connemara pony... symbol of his future and his heritage." "Some 9,000 years ago, man made his way here, crossing a land bridge that once linked Scotland and Ireland." "Horses arrived about 2,000 B.C., brought by Neolithic people who introduced their farming culture to this fertile land." "The island's placid existence exploded around 500 B.C., as a wave of Celtic warriors invaded their battle chariots drawn by hot blooded horses." "When the bloody days of plunder and murder subsided, the invaders became settlers, and their Celtic legacy imprinted its indelible stamp on the soul and style of Ireland." "The blood of their fiery mounts mixed with that of the indigenous ponies, producing a better, faster horse." "Over the centuries, successive tides of conquering peoples and ideas were to sweep across Ireland in her poignant and tumultuous history." "There were Vikings, Normans, and Englishmen." "There were St. Patrick and Christianity." "All would create permanent changes on the face of the land and in the hearts of the Irish people." "But certain things would never change." "For thousands of years and hundreds of generations, man and horse continued to share the soil of Ireland." "Today, in the west, Connemara ponies still run free over the wild countryside." "Here at Lough Mask in County Mayo," "John Daly has kept two stallions isolated on an island through the winter." "The island is a short trip by boat from the lakeshore and Daly's stud farm" "Connemara ponies are, in fact, small horses, muscular and strong boned" "Perfectly adapted to the rugged western landscape, they retain the iron constitutions of wild horses the ability to forage, the strength to survive on their own in an untamed wilderness." "But now, in spring, it is time to reunite the gray stallion with the mares." "Come on, boy." "Easy, boys..." "Easy, good fella." "With a gentleness and expertise attained from a lifetime shared with horses," "John quickly gains the stallion's confidence." "There is evidence that spirited spanish horses, some imported, some shipwrecked off the coast, mixed with the native ponies to create this hardy breed." "Once used as both pack and plow animals in a rough and roadless countryside, today the intelligent, docile Connemara ponies are bred for riding." "Daly will release the stallion with the herd, allowing him to mate with any of the mares that are in season." "Mares come into season only nine days after foaling... but are quick to let a stallion know if his advances are unwelcome." "Her posture and stillness indicate this mare's receptiveness." "So the blood of native Irish horses, strengthened by the demands of wild coast, tempered by centuries of work with the Irish people, is passed into the future." "And if all goes well, in 11 months there will be a new foal in the daily herd." "At Tulira Castle in County Galway," "Lady Anne Hemphill began breeding" "Connemara ponies some 25 years ago." "An avid rider from the age of three," "Lady Hemphill wanted her children to share her lifelong enthusiasm." "Her husband encouraged her to organize classes in horsemanship for the local children." "Two decades later, she is still teaching the County Galway Hunt Branch of Pony Club." ""Now if the pony's at grass, what should he have in the fields?"" "Water." "Yes, fine." "What's another reason, David?" "Shade." "Shade is most important, isn't it?" "Are you looking at his teeth?" "Yes." "If he has a full set of teeth, he's over seven years." "Well done." "Good Girl." "There are pony Club branches all over Ireland providing an opportunity for both country and city children to learn not only riding, but sportsmanship and proper care of the animals." "I think it's a very good foundation for them because it's getting away from this usual thing of being in the cinemas, the discos, and what have you." "Can you manage, Mark?" "No, no... it's a long way up." "I don't know if you'll be able to hold him, will you?" "Keep away, keep away from that." "Go out here in the middle of the field so that other people can get through and get mounted." "Now, come on." "I'll give you a leg." "Ups-a-daisy." "Hold on." "Good boy." "I find it very rewarding, and it's more rewarding in that when some of the children that were members of this branch when I first started." "They're doctors, or they're solicitors, or they're business people now." "And they're coming back, and they've got children." "I call all their children my grandchildren." "I haven't got any of my own grandchildren, but I got a lot of grandchildren." "Use your legs." "Take him on." "Now, take it easy." "Just come back, Gay, and take it easy." "Use your legs." "Good boy." "Now don't go so far back." "Now just trot into it." "Good boy." "Well done." "Good man." "Woops!" "All right?" "You're fine." "Next." "Shorten up your reins." "You haven't got much contact, have you?" "Come into it trotting." "For a small branch we've produced the winning Pony Club championship teams." "We've gone to England three time." "It is quite something." "I don't want any racing, and I don't want anybody going into hospital." "So for goodness sake just take your ponies down." "You will trot down across the field to the river." "I'll show you which way to go." "I love seeing these children with their happy little faces." "But it just gives me the greatest pleasure." "So a keen horsewoman passes on the joy of riding, and the children of yet another generation forge new links with their ancient Irish heritage of horsemanship." "Racing horses was the Celts' favorite sport." "This plain still bears the name Curragh, derived from their ancient word meaning" ""a place where horse racing is held."" "Keep her going now on to the next one." "Living at the edge of the Curragh, the Hutchinson family retains the Celtic passion for horse racing." "In the paddock behind their home," "Caroline, age 15, is coached by her father, Pat." "He was an amateur jockey." "She dreams of becoming a professional." "Whoa, lass." "Whoa, lass." "That's all right." "Pony races are held throughout Ireland" "Though the jockeys are young boys and girls, the betting is serious business, with part of the proceeds going to charity." "Six to four on..." "My father always had about a hundred horses." "And he was one of the biggest dealers in the country." "Had a couple of thousand acres of land and I used to ride all our own horses." "And now, thank God, the kids are following on." "Caroline is one of four Hutchinson daughters participating in this competitive world" "Mrs. Hutchinson is active too, for the pony races are a family affair much like Little League Baseball." "Some of Ireland's leading jockeys began their careers in the pony races." "Sure, Caroline is very good." "She's courageous, she has ability, she likes the game, and she loves horses." "And I don't think she'll ever, no matter what I say or anybody else says, she won't do anything else." "She rides to win, and I think that's the secret." "I'd live to be a professional jockey when I get older." "The biggest challenge for me anyway is that I'm girl." "I don't think race riding is wonderful for little girls." "But they do like it." "They love it." "They live for it." "They don't want to go to the disco." "They want their pony." "They want to be a sport." "You're always thinking of where you are and thinking ahead of the next bend whether it's sharp or how to ride the next bend." "And especially if you're on a pony that's slow earlier on and comes on fast at the end." "Because of her consistent winning," "Caroline is sought to race other people's ponies as well as her father's." "When you're in front and when you have won, the owners come running up to you and say, "Well done" and all that." "It's just great to see their happy face from winning on their pony." "And then your friends come up and say, "Well done"." "It's just a great feeling." "I'm delighted that I won the last race." "That was a female race." "And I'm just thrilled that I won it and that I had a good pony." "Winning against both girls and boys," "Caroline raced closer to her dream when she became champion pony racing jockey for an unprecedented fourth consecutive year." "In 1752, with the steeples as starting and finishing points, a Mr. O'Callaghan raced a Mr. Blake from the church at Buttevant, jumping walls and fences, across farms and fields, to the church at Doneraile... thus running the first recorded steeplechase." "Today, some of Ireland's most popular steeple chases take place at the Galway Races." "Thousands gather daily to bet on the horses in this week of festivities held at the same time of year that the ancient Celts assembled to honor their god of horseracing." "The National Stud was established to foster the Irish thoroughbred industry by providing breeders with good stallions at reasonable fees." "The record of thoroughbred breeding dates from the publication in 1793 of the first English Stud Book which listed three Arab stallions and the Royal Mares." "Every thoroughbred on earth is descended from them." "A sire is selected by the breeder on the basis of bloodlines, tracked back through the stud book, his conformation or appearance, and the number of races he has won." "Six-year-old Raja Bab horse." "He's a tremendous individual." "A great mover, tremendous quality." "His first crop are now foals." "He won four group races, including the Corkanorry Stakes at Royal Ascot in course record time." "Dr. Maire O'Connor is deputy manager and resident veterinarian at the stud." "We're just starting to build her back up again... for a couple of days." "Yeah, yeah." "She's walking very well now." "Ireland is well known as the European nursery." "We have the climate and the soil for rearing horses." "There's a tremendous closeness and a tremendous understanding of the horse in the Irish people." "Among her responsibilities is determining when the mares are ready for covering." "Every step of the procedure must be carefully monitored in the breeding of these delicate and valuable animals." "Eighteen days after the covering, a sonogram is made by a visiting veterinarian and Dr. O'Connor." "With this sophisticated device they can see inside the mare's uterus and determine if there is a live fetus" "You can see it there..." "at about 10 o'clock." "Heart beating." "The heart's beating." "Within the white spot, the pulsing heart of the tiny fetus is clearly visible." "The mare's gestation period is 11 months;" "the birth usually takes less than an hour." "A member of the staff acts as midwife." "For Maire O'Connor and the staff, the hundreds of births they have witnessed in the past do not diminish the wonder of this moment." "Within the hour the age-old instinct to stand and run with the herd is already stirring in the foal, and the fragile new life is given human help." "These spindly legs, now trembling and weak, have centuries of speed bred in them." "When they are three days old, healthy foals are ready to go outside." "Each is examined daily." "Those with special problems get special attention." "Up you come." "There's a baby, there's a baby." "That's good." "Okay." "Come on." "There's tremendous limestone in Ireland and you get a tremendous amount of minerals coming through the grass to the horses." "So you get very good bone development." "And, of course, race horses need their legs." "So you want good bone in a race horse." "Born to race, these foals carry within them the urge to run." "Among these new lives there are future champions, bred at the Irish National Stud to thunder home to victory on the race tracks of the world." "Here at Goffs, the finest thoroughbreds are offered at auction." "A yearling, still totally untried as a racehorse, may bring close to a million dollars." "At 260... any more now, about $300,000 at 260, at 260 one more time." "At 260 that's what I sell her for this time..." "Millions are spent as buyers stake their money on the animal's pedigree and conformation." "Vincent O'Brien is the greatest racehorse trainer in the world a magician who transforms horseflesh into gold." "An international group of investors depends on his uncanny eye to select potential champions." "His reputation began to soar in the '50s with three consecutive wins at the world's most difficult steeple chase:" "England's Grand National." "There is stubborn refusal here by Glen Fire." "And now for a most unhappy landing." "Those were the leaders at the 27th jump, but alas, this fence accounted for the gallant Sun Dew and Martuvu." "No, there was not to be a royal victory this year." "At the last fence, Tudor Line jumped wide but Quare Times made no mistake and galloped away in great style." "Neither Tudor Line nor Kerry's Cottage who will finish third, could possibly catch him now." "It was Quare Times' Grand National all right." "And it was the third successive National win for trainer Vincent O'Brien." "These Irish!" "Triumphant in the classic races of steeplechasing," "O'Brien next turned his wizardry to flat racing." "Son of a farmer, fifth of eight children, he started his remarkable career with a rented stable and three horses." "I must have had a natural liking for horses right from the start, and that developed then over the years." "Eventually I started training." "I don't think I would be happy doing anything else." "Today his empire spreads over nearly 1,000 acres." "Ballydoyle is the world's finest private training facility, with magnificent barns, covered rides, gallops each 14 furlongs in length, a 19th century Georgian home, a helicopter pad, and stables of thoroughbreds worth millions of dollars" "all under tight security." "O'Brien retains a percentage of every horse he trains." "Among this season's crop of aristocrats are seven sons of Nijinsky three of Alleged, and nine of Northern Dancer." "O'Brien's extraordinary powers seem to spring from an almost magical ability to sense what each animal ends to develop and succeed." "It is very important to make a study of each individual animal because they're like people they all differ." "Some horses have got a very easy, calm disposition, and they have no mental problems." "But others have, and they give them special attention." "They're specially trained, so as to try and keep them settled and at ease in themselves." "O'Brien's success as a trainer is legendary:" "His race winnings alone have been as high as a million dollars in a single year." "But it is after a hose's last race is won that its big moneymaking career may begin." "Today O'Brien focuses on training colts." "After a few major wins of top class races, the best are retired to stand at stud." "Sold to groups of investors for more than 25 million dollars each, these stallions earn huge fees in their years as sires." "So, the mystique of a man and his thoroughbreds becomes big business an important component of modern Ireland's economy." "In the 18th century," "Irish farmers began to breed tough, powerful, work animals able to pull both plow and cart." "Today, the blood of the robust Irish Draft horse mingles with that of the fiery thoroughbred to produce horses with the stamina needed for jumping and hunting." "The hunt, as a gentlemanly pursuit, attained its present form and popularity in 18th century England and was brought here when Ireland was under English rule." "Michael Dempsey is master of hounds of the world famous Galway Blazers Hunt Club." "Tempo, get in." "Tempo, come in." "Get in." "My grandfather was interested in, my father was interested in horses, and my uncle." "They used to both hunt." "At that time, you see, we used to do all the work with horses on the farm." "There were no tractors." "Once the exclusive province of the aristocracy, today the hunt's traditional style is enjoyed by thousands of ardent Irish riding enthusiasts." "Dempsey, a local boy, grew up dreaming of becoming master of hounds." "But I think I was about either 13 or 14 years when I said," ""One day I will hunt those Blazer hounds"." "That was my ambition." "Yes, all my life was to hunt those hounds." "A farmer of modest means, Dempsey is paid by the members' subscriptions to hunt the pack." "Oh, I love those hounds, and I know all of them individually." "And they're all of a character and they all are different." "I see them every day to get very close with them." "You have to be very close to your hounds before they'll work with you." "Farmers have long considered foxes to be vermin." "Hounds were bred to scent the wild foxes that his in fields and farms." "Hunters "riding to hounds" followed on horseback, and so, this sport evolved." "When you get out there and your pack of hounds are going together and you hear their voice, that is the greatest feeling I know." "And a good horse beneath you." "To be able to gallop right across the country behind them, and they're really running on and speaking." "I think it's the best thrill that anybody could ever get." "I don't know what it does to you the voice of those hounds it just gets your blood really up." "The first fox of the day is scented and pursued." "Often they lose the fox." "Sometimes, they lost their seat and occasionally they lose their way." "Are you hurt?" "Off you go." "Well, where do I go?" "Go on, go on across there." "Go on and get on to it." "When the last fox outruns the hounds and the hour grows late," "Dempsey calls a halt to the day's hunting." "Home now." "We go for the beer now at Raftery's." "The hunters head for a traditional last stop:" "a pub called "The Blazers"." "The Galway Blazers have a reputation for recklessness." "It is said that a group of hunters from Galway once reveled so boisterously in a certain hotel that is burst into flames thus giving the group its name." "Tonight, this pub is ablaze with traditional Irish pleasures:" "the pints, the laughs, and the songs." "Every year the town of mill street hosts international show jumping competitions." "Show jumping began in Ireland a century ago." "Contests to see how high and wide the horses could jump over fences and walls, they offered prizes to those judged most suitable for hunting." "This competition is called "Carroll's Boomerang Finder"." "It was named in honor of Boomerang, the horse that this man," "Eddie Macken, rode to fame and fortune in the world of international show jumping the horse that made him a national hero." "Macken's great successes with Boomerang began in the mid 70s." "Soon horse and rider were labeled" ""the most exciting partnership show jumping has ever seen"." "The Hickstead Derby, English, 1977." "Winner in 1976, now can he beat this time?" "He'll have to do fantastic turns to do it, and there are few riders more likely to do it than Eddie Macken." "Come on, Boomerang..." "Yes 27.3!" "Boomerang was everything I am." "I just was very fortunate to meet him at the right stage in life." "He was probably fortunate to meet me." "We came together and developed a great partnership;" "and he put me right at the top of the world of show jumping in a very short period of time." "All eyes are on the brilliant Irishman Eddie Macken." "He just pauses." "He's in plenty of time." "He's absolutely right for it." "Go on, Eddie!" "What a magnificent performance by Eddie Macken." "Incredible to think that he's now won his fourth British jumping derby in a row." "This trophy was commissioned after Boomerang had won his fourth consecutive Hickstead Derby." "The Hickstead Derby is probably one of the most difficult competitions in world showjumping to win." "For a horse to win it once is an achievement, be he actually won it four times." "In 1980 Boomerang broke a bone in his foot and Macken retired him." "But Hickstead brought them back for an emotional farewell tribute." "It was a sad moment for Eddie as they left the show grounds for the last time." "Three years later, Boomerang's condition became so painful he had to be put down." "He is buried on Macken's farm." "I never knew a horse that could mean as much as Boomerang." "And the possibilities of ever finding one with as much talent are very, very slim indeed." "The loss of Boomerang still haunts Macken's life." "With his wife, Susanne, he searches for a horse with the unique talent and temperament to replace Boomerang." "Okay?" "All right." "All right." "Buying, feeding, training, and caring for a stable of horses is an expensive and time-consuming responsibility." "But the Macken animals get the best..." "Including, for some, a bit of Guinness Stout three times a week on the theory that what Irish doctors prescribe for old people and pregnant women must be good for horses." "Youngest of five children," "Macken is the son of a small-town butcher." "Is he ready to go?" "Yeah." "He's fine." "Yeah." "You want to leave him for me in the morning." "I'll ride him." "A superb, natural rider, he has grown to be a trainer with a special feel and touch for a horse." "This animal seems to have a muscular problem." "Macken examines him to see if a veterinarian is required." "He's starting to get a bit of a thing about this now that I'm fiddling around." "Yeah." "He's just anticipating it." "Very tight there." "Will, Robin's coming this afternoon again anyway, isn't he?" "He is, eh?" "Can you not work that other hand on top of his hip and save yourself?" "There's definitely something catching him there." "Yeah." "It's just a really worrying thing for the horse anyway to have somebody contracting his muscles without..." "Eddie himself has acknowledged that a horse like Boomerang comes along only once in a lifetime." "But together, he and Susanne continue their quest, hoping to find to create his next great show jumping partner, and soften the loss of Boomerang, a gallant champion and noble friend." "You remember that chestnut foal we bought at John V. Donna?" "Oh, do you remember, yeah?" "All over Ireland, boys who would like to grow up to be the next Eddie Macken are practicing and competing with the intense hope and fervor of youth." "For them, young riders like Philip and Trevor Dagg, success demands more than practice it requires financial and emotional support from the entire family." "As they often do, their parents devote the weekend to the boy's competition." "The weather's going to break now, too." "How many more do you...?" "Ten more, ten more, and he goes again." "Philip was once junior champion in pony show jumping." "Now he trains his 13 year old brother, Trevor, who began competing just last year." "You come down into it." "You're just going down the hill." "And the horse just tends to go a little bit deeper because you're coming down the hill." "So you just want to sit him up so he can..." "Compensate for the downhill." "You're going too slow and you're half asleep." "Now come on, waken up." "Come on." "Philip has already committed himself to a career with horses, and coaches other young competitors as well as Trevor." "Just give him a little kick." "Come on." "That's good." "We'll just go up above and give him a puff, and then we'll go in." "Now let's have two awake people to jump clear rounds." "All right." "You're going to win, okay?" "You're going to win." "You're going to win, okay?" "You're going to win." "And we will trot, trot." "Oh, crikey!" "We're going to win today, aren't we?" "Yes, we are." "We're going to win." "Good boy." "Let's go see Philip." "Okay?" "Good lad." "Every competition is an opportunity to grow in skill and experience." "But in Ireland, all competitions are prelude to the most exciting challenge of the year:" "the Dublin Horse show." "Ireland's greatest horse show, it has been attracting champions for more than a century." "All of the riders have qualified to participate by winning at a number of competitions throughout the year." "Held at the Royal Dublin Society show grounds, the Dublin Horse Show has long been considered the nation's premiere social event." "Enthusiasts from farms, villages and cities across the country join international visitors as 1,000 horses and riders and teams from five nations stage five days of fierce competitions and showmanship." "Michael Dempsey is here to demonstrate the obedience of the Galway Blazer hounds..." "And Trevor Dagg has an opportunity to compete in the same arena used by the international teams." "And you'll be all right." "Okay?" "Don't worry about it." "It'll go all right when you get out there. okay?" "Okay, give him a pop." "And this is George Dagg's Beau Brummel." "To win the championship," "Trevor must clear all the obstacles and jump the course in the shortest time." "Oh, no." "Good man." "Well done." "Oh, no. it's gone." "A caring brother had hoped for first place." "But for Trevor, this yellow ribbon may be a harbinger of future successes" "It was here that the world's first show jumping competitions were held." "This year Eddie Macken is one of four riders to set a new Irish jumping record." "In this great yearly celebration of horses and horsemanship, the ancient spirit of the Irish people is aroused a new, to stir and soar." "Within each individual, the warmth of the age old connection with the animal that has helped shape his nation's history is rekindled." "I think we have produced a lot of really world class horses on the international scene." "And we've become famous obviously from that." "But I think the greatest asset the Irish horse has is that as a pleasure horse and for the amateur, he seems to be more clever, more easy to deal with, to handle, to ride." "And he seems to give a longer period of enjoyment than the Continental horses do." "Myself and my family, if we have no breakfast, today, tomorrow, some other day in the future, we'll still look after the horse." "We would give the horse our breakfast." "We were with horses for generations, and Irish people, whatever, they're Irish." "They'll talk about horses, they'll have horses, they'll keep horses." "They'll never get rid of them." "A tremendous appreciation of the horse runs through the Irish people." "Ireland is an island." "We are an island people, and as a result, the traits that were in our forefathers are still present today after many generations." "In the quite of the countryside a new Connemara pony enters the world." "Only minutes old, still weak and wobbly, he is born with the ability to stand alone, to survive in the lean land of the west." "Within himself he carries the strength of thousands of years on Irish soil." "The saga of the Irish horse continues in the 20th century because to the people of Ireland, horses represent a link with old ways, old values." "A traditional past they want to preserve." "So the children of Ireland grow up with these animals, each generation adding new chapters of challenge and hope, triumph and love, to the timeless story that is the ballad of the Irish horse." "Thank for your watching." "Sir Francis Bacon wrote, God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures." ""Cultivators of the earth," according to Thomas Jefferson, are the most valuable citizens." "They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous." "Or, as my aunt Mildred said," "Never throw meat in the compost pile." "Hi, I'm Leslie Nielsen." "Welcome to my garden." "I'm sure it's a lot like yours cool, serene, completely under control." "Time to wake up and smell the roses." "The backyard is a killing field." "It's a realm of stalkers... serial killers... aerial combat... venom... death." "So, if you're looking for peace and quiet... stay away from the... savage garden." "A garden is a little slice of nature where you get to call the shots." "You see:" "A raked lawn." "A well-skimmed lily pond." "Perfect rows of vegetables." "Voltaire once wrote, or was it Martha Stewart?" "We must cultivate our garden." "Well, they're both wrong." "Pruning, planting, whacking your weeds?" "It's all beside the point!" "Because the place cannot be controlled" "So give it up!" "Ask not what you can do for your garden." "Ask what your garden can do for you." "Because with the right approach, your backyard can expand your mind." "But you need the right tool for the job." "A famous gardener once said," "I like to watch." "Because when you're "gardening," you're too busy to see anything." "And you're missing all the strange and wonderful wildness of a place that's close to home." "And I don't mean the mall." "Now this may come as a surprise, but I wasn't always this wise." "But I came face-to-face with the naked garden and I was forced to open my eyes." "What I discovered wasn't always pretty but it was always fascinating." "Let me tell how it happened." "It began about a year ago." "I felt like a pretty observant fellow then." "I ran a tight ship." "Yeah, I thought I was in charge." "Still, the vegetable patch held to its own pace... always about a month behind my appetite!" "Every day, until my tomatoes were ripe I'd be there, watchful and proud." "I felt like a maestro, and the vegetables were my orchestra." "And we made beautiful gazpacho together." "I never suspected that even among my precious tomatoes, a trespasser ran amok." "It was a shrew." "This ravenous pipsqueak needs to eat his weight in food every day." "For his size, he's one of the fiercest predators in the world." "But a year ago, I didn't even know he existed." "My mind was in the mulch." "I was too busy savoring the fruits of my labor." "I don't like to brag, but I thought I knew my onions." "Now all the while, this little fellow he weighs no more than a wet tea bag had the run of the place." "Like it or not, shrews are among the garden's most common mammals." "They love to dig around for worms and beetles, spiders, snails." "They work day and night, hunting one hour, then napping the next." "That's a schedule I could settle into." "Shrews operate at such a furious pace that just missing a meal could kill them." "When they're on the go, they really live life in the fast lane." "Under stress, their hearts beat up to 1, 300 times a minute like mine during my last audit." "It's safe to say that no perfume maker has ever been inspired by a shrew." "Glands on their bellies put out a musky smell." "Only a predator with a strong stomach will take one on." "The garter snake is tough enough for the job." "He's one of the backyard's great hunters at home in the water as well as on land." "He tastes the air with his tongue and picks up a whiff of a shrew." "Following the trail, the snake closes in." "His weapon: a steel-trap jaw." "A fight is coming, but my little shrew is no babe in the woods." "Predicting a winner might be hard." "The snake has no venom, but his quarry does." "The short-tailed shrew is the only North American mammal with a poisonous bite, except for my Aunt Mildred." "In this fight, the first bite wins." "The shrew strikes for the neck." "His cobralike venom quickly starts to subdue the snake." "Muscles go slack, breathing slows." "Paralysis would soon set in if the shrew weren't so hungry." "The snake has been vanquished by the one creature in my yard there is no taming of." "What a place my garden was!" "I'd reached for the suburbs and ended up in the Serengeti!" "Something awful seemed to stir in every crevice." "This beetle is emerging after three years underground." "She's an acorn weevil a subversive devil about the size of a grain of rice." "I felt like her goal in life was to wreck my oak trees." "As soon as she dries off her wings for her maiden flight, off she'll go... gunning for my acorns." "But I didn't know any of this back then." "I had other fish to fry, like keeping my daisies from drooping." "Of course, now I know..." "I didn't even have control of my own flower patch." "Just below me, an earwig was laying her eggs." "This forbidding insect seems to have had a charisma bypass." "But don't sell her short." "The female cleans each egg to protect it from deadly fungus." "Otherwise she might lose the entire nest to athlete's egg." "Earwigs like to hang out in warm, dark spaces." "But that bit about hiding in people's ears?" "Just a tired, old myth." "I hope." "A terrible threat approaches..." "at its own pace." "The earwig nest is about to be slimed." "There's nothing a caring mother can do." "A hungry thrush spots the snail." "Her next meal will be escargot." "Remove the snail from its shell... delicately." "Then tenderize by pounding on a rock." "The footage you are about to see contains scenes that may be disturbing to some viewers." "Now if you can't stand the heat, get out of the garden!" "Speaking of the heat, I'd like you to meet a fire ant." "These South American invaders work in huge colonies." "They run an efficient operation." "A quarter-million ants that's one extended family, can get by on two meals a day." "Here's the appetizer." "And now for the main course." "An ant attacks." "The dragonfly shakes a leg." "Reinforcements are quick to arrive." "The dragonfly makes a desperate move." "It's too late." "Again and again, the dragonfly is stung with a caustic venom." "It's death by a thousand fiery jabs." "And I thought paparazzi were bad!" "Piece by piece, the ants dismantle their captive, like a scene out of Gulliver's Travels" "Make that Reservoir Dogs." "For the ants, it's Tails I win... heads, you lose." "Decapitation is the final insult." "Some say the world will end in fire ants." "For the dragonfly, it just did." "I thought the garden was mine, but in fact, creatures had claimed it all!" "My yard was divided into warring camps!" "Each shrew controls its own patch." "And being some of nature's crankiest creatures, shrews do not like to share." "My little shrew's neighbor is sleeping just over the scent marked border that defines their territories." "But while these little fellows have a great sense of smell, they have poor vision and can sometimes bump right into each other." "It's usually a nasty surprise for both." "The winner of this battle may gain the other's territory." "The loser may end up as lunch." "They move faster than Aunt Mildred dealing blackjack." "It's extreme wrestling on a tiny scale" "Time out while they play to the grandstands." "Now back to the action." "No one knows if shrews are immune to their own venom." "But if they're not, they really shouldn't be doing this." "A battle can last over half an hour, but my little shrew settles this one quickly with a well-placed nip." "No turf will change hands today." "And both scurry back to their homes." "I used to do battle in the garden myself." "I felt it was my territory, and I had to defend it." "Sure I had big weapons." "But I was starting to worry about the little things." "Something was bothering me." "I couldn't put my finger on it." "Lucky for me." "Black widows were living in my shed." "The male is outweighed 30-fold by a no-nonsense female." "He approaches, tapping carefully to woo her and to avoid her lethal bite." "If we could understand his vibes of love, it would go like," "Please baby, please baby, please don't kill me!" "So far, so good." "She lets him insert sperm by hand." "I mean, by palp." "Part of the limb may snap off to be left inside." "Ah love, For this glorious moment, he's ready to give an arm and a leg." "Now the female lays her eggs." "She secures over 200 of them in a silky sac." "Not one to put all her eggs in one basket, she'll eventually spin about five." "In only two weeks, a thousand new spiderlings will invade my yard." "Black widows may have colonized my shed... but I was more worried about what was going on outside." "I was prepared to fight the good fight with chemical warfare." "As I was saying," "I had no idea the enemy was living in my armory." "It was bad enough outside." "My stems were being sucked!" "My leaves lacerated!" "My petals perforated!" "It was more than a man could bear!" "Who could blame me if I practiced tough love?" "Smells like... victory." "But I was no winner." "My insecticide, long expired, had all the kick of a Shirley Temple:" "And just as well, because the mantis loves to munch on the munchers I was trying to murder." "The way things were going," "I didn't have a prayer of taming the savage garden." "I used to call 'em as I saw 'em." "When I saw 'em, if I knew what they were called." "Trouble is, some of these pesky little critters were neither fish nor fowl." "Like the daddy-longlegs in my shed." "They're familiar and strange at the same time." "But what are they?" "Think it's a spider?" "No." "Insect?" "No." "They're called Opiliones from the Latin meaning "aphid sucker."" "Yeah!" "Aphids are perfect suckers, really, when it comes to my rose stems." "And a lot more than one is born every minute at least in my backyard." "In fact, aphids can reproduce without having sex!" "There's one of nature's lousier ideas." "Daddy-longlegs has arrived for the hunt!" "Make that mommy-longlegs." "She has legs up to here!" "Each is slender as a thread and works partly by hydraulics." "She even hears, tastes, and smells using her legs." "Reminds me of... never mind." "I now know there's a lot to admire in this creature." "She has pretty good manners." "She chews her food before eating it, granted, outside her mouth." "She sucks up the juices through a flexible tube." "She also flosses after every meal." "I prefer unwaxed mint, myself." "Why are daddy-longlegs' legs long?" "To keep their plump bodies high above predators." "If that's not enough, two legs put out a nasty smell to discourage hunters." "But trust me:" "If you can smell them, you're too close." "The smelly legs also have built-in seismographs." "And she's keeping her legs peeled for approaching enemies." "Like the tiger beetle." "A killing machine." "An orthodontist's nightmare." "The beetle attacks and grabs a leg." "It's a tug-of-war." "And then built for quick release the leg pops off." "Special muscles close off the stump." "The tiger beetle, no genius, hangs on to its prize." "The daddy-longlegs hobbies off." "But at least she's still alive and kicking." "In the middle of all the mayhem, beauty still flourished in my garden." "I never could train my vines" "Where flowers grow, bees abound." "In a naughty little quid pro quo, bees handle the flowers' sex life in exchange for a drizzle of nectar." "The life of a worker bee is measured in distance not days." "It's like a frequent-flyer program in reverse:" "fly 500 miles, and then you die." "Now, I've been in a "B" movie or two, so I used to think I had a way with these critters." "But then came the fateful moment when I realized that all of the garden was not under my spell." "One day a bee came up to me and stopped to pay her respects." "But this cheeky bug was testing the boundaries." "It was a small infraction, but it threw me." "If she could question authority, what else was going on in my little Eden?" "Well, plenty." "I'd only seen the tip of the iceberg..." "lettuce." "No creature was safe, not even the little upstart of a bee." "She was being watched by many eyes." "Eight to be exact." "They all belong to a jumping spider." "It never hurts to have eyes in the back of your head... even if they're only good for seeing movement." "To see what is moving, the spider must turn to face her prey." "She's caught sight of the bee." "Two large front eyes track the prey." "She can't move her eyes as we do." "But she can swing her retinas back and forth inside her head." "It's like holding your eyes still and then trying to look around by moving your brain." "Don't try this at home!" "There: you can see the eyes lighten and darken as the spider looks around." "Being among the smartest of spiders, she doesn't head straight for her prey." "Instead, she approaches deviously." "She's an accomplished stalker." "Like a slasher film victim, the bee is unaware of danger." "Good luck for the spider:" "the bee flies even closer." "The spider creeps up." "The spider is now within range." "Meanwhile, the bee laps up nectar with her remarkable tongue." "It's long and hairy, like mine the morning after a guacamole festival." "The spider must judge the bee's exact distance." "Just one false move and the spider will suffer a sting, lose her meal... and perhaps her life." "The spider definitely got the jump on the bee." "Poor bee: she had a good 80 miles left on her." "Earthworms as big as fire hoses." "Bald eagles snatching up babies from strollers." "Woolly mammoths taking down a Seven Eleven." "Well, you will not be seeing anything like that in this film." "But you will be seeing the hard cold truth about the garden." "To me, my garden was filled with sneaky, willful creatures that seemed to enjoy getting my dandruff up." "And worst of all, they didn't respect me." "So I didn't respect them until" "I learned to pay attention..." "close attention." "Now that's harder to do than you think" "Now some people can have their eyes wide open and see nothing." "Other people can have their eyes closed and watch reruns of Bonanza, but that's not a problem I want to discuss right now." "Or you can have this eye closed and this eye open." "Or you can have this eye closed and this eye open." "And either way it gets you... nowhere." "As I was saying, respect your garden." "Watch it closely." "I wish I had learned these lessons sooner myself." "At the time, some lessons were too elevated for me to learn." "Even above my garden, trouble was brewing." "The acorn weevil was back." "Sure enough, she found my oak tree." "She's looking for a good meal." "And when it comes to acorns, she knows the drill." "What a "schnoz"!" "It's longer than her body and tipped with tiny jaws." "Reminds me of my first agent." "After a three-year fast, she's eating my acorns." "Kind of like my second agent." "There goes the next generation of oak trees, I mean." "Her little jaws are smaller than a printed period." "Helvetica twelve point." "Through her strawlike proboscis, she sucks up liquid fat from the acorn." "It's a perfect diet for a weevil, but don't even think about it if you're on Jenny Craig." "Next she'll lay her egg inside, but only if this is the one kind of oak tree that suits her." "Finicky, this little pest." "Ah, evening was coming." "A heron approached my pond." "Don't even think about fishing here!" "Sometimes even the darker side had a gentleness about it unless you're a slug." "Dusk was the time for creatures large and small to rest and enjoy the harmony of our domain." "Especially the lucky few that had escaped my iron-fist policy." "What a piece of work is man-tis!" "One of the so-called "good" insects, he excels at inactivity:" "he spends two-thirds of his time motionless much like my third agent." "Still, he's an alert animal, with two big goggle eyes and three extra gemlike eyes." "He spends over an hour a day grooming every part of his spiny body." "Why?" "Because he can." "This evening, my garden was about to disappoint me as it never had before." "I heard a strange new sound." "It was a hungry bat, and she was about to shatter my peace of mind." "The mantis takes flight at just the wrong time." "The bat hunts with a kind of sonar." "From her nose, she beams a high-pitched sound." "Listening to the echoes tells her the position, speed, and direction of the mantis." "Some sanctuary!" "It was Top Gun in my own backyard." "Where's Tom Cruise when you really need him?" "The mantis has a single ear right in the middle of his belly, much like Aunt Mildred." "It's tuned exactly to the bat channel." "The mantis hears the bat throws his legs forward... power dive!" "Narrow escape." "But not for long." "The bat is gaining." "She sounds louder than ever." "Desperately, the mantis flies straight into the ground." "I cheered for the underdog." "The mantis escaped again!" "All right!" "But there's no deus in this machina, buddy." "Death and destruction everywhere." "I'd set out to build a paradise, and here, I had a ringside seat at Armageddon." "I thought this was my darkest hour." "But that was yet to come." "At night." "After the sun went down, some of my backyard's most unsavory creatures appeared." "To find them, all you have to do is follow your nose to the herb patch." "There are eight million shrews in the naked garden." "This had been one of them." "It was my little shrew." "No need to suspect foul play." "Shrews run like mad for a couple of years and just keel over." "But the dearly departed seemed to be coming back to life!" "Nope, still dead." "The burying beetles have come." "For them, the late shrew is a windfall" "It will be food and more." "But hungry competitors are all about, like other beetles, maggots, and raccoons." "It isn't first come, first serve in the savage garden." "So to secure their prize, the beetles conduct a kind of funeral." "Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh." "Lying on their backs, they walk the shrew forward." "I hope this doesn't catch on in my aerobic class." "Literally excited by the smell of death, the pall-bearers take time out to mate" "Couldn't they find a roach motel?" "The beetles drag the shrew several feet to an abandoned burrow." "And just in time." "Because the maggots are frisky tonight" "They're turning a dead mouse into an area rug." "The burying beetles are settling into their underground home." "And it's not from the pages of House and Garden." "It's more like Morticians' Monthly." "The beetles now have a major home improvement project." "Call it "This old shrew."" "The carcass will be converted into a nursery, an edible nursery." "As at better funeral homes, the body is shaved." "Next, to seal in freshness, the beetles embalm the shrew with secretions." "My shrew, may he rest in peace, is finally prepared." "The female will soon lay her egg near his remains." "Just above, raccoons patrol the garden" "After a few pull-ups and a cool drink of water, they search for food." "The grass is definitely greener on the other side." "An earthworm tries to escape from the raccoon by burrowing." "Poor choice." "But, as Charles Darwin wrote of the worm's mental abilities," "There is little to be said." "A mole, cousin of the shrew, eats the earthworm by squeezing it out like a tube of toothpaste." "I think I'll stick to baking soda." "Of all the things Aunt Mildred brought with her from Europe, why did she have to bring a mole?" "I'll never forgive her." "The mole barrels thru her tunnels with catcher's-mitt paws." "But when she comes up to an obstacle, she won't be stopped." "Now she's poking my parsnips." "I hate when that happens." "I'd had enough trouble in the herb garden." "My whole idea of the backyard was decomposing, much like my poor little shrew." "I wanted to forget about the gruesome burial, but just one week later," "I paid an accidental visit to the grave." "What a change had taken place!" "Babies!" "The morgue had become a daycare center!" "Burying beetles have hatched and scrambled on top of the shrew." "And here the young beetles live like so many chicks in a nest." "They even beg for food!" "Mom's on her way." "First she'll eat what's left of the shrew." "Looks like Aunt Mildred's shepherd's pie." "Next she calls to get her babies' attention." "And now she regurgitates to feed her young." "She offers one a succulent shrew slurpy!" "And I thought I had a rough childhood." "Burying beetles make some of the best parents of any insect." "That's not saying much:" "the mother will happily eat some of her young if the dead shrew is too small to support the brood." "Home sweet home." "As the shrew dwindles, the grubs grow fat." "In a way, burying beetles practice reincarnation... con carne." "High up in my oak tree, an acorn has gone bad." "The tree senses the damage and can cut its losses." "By now, I was expecting something weird and wonderful." "Okay, just plain weird." "Inside, the old acorn weevil's baby has grown up and eaten itself out of house and home" "Good riddance!" "The grub can feel the impact with the ground." "That's the signal to move on." "But it's no easy matter to get out of an acorn." "The young weevil more or less has to perform its own C-section." "It's already cutting an escape hatch." "But it can take three days to get out!" "How do you get out of a hole the size of your head?" "It sure helps to be a living accordion" "Portrait of the Michelin man as a young grub." "The young weevil must now hide itself." "But a hungry shrew is nearby." "The grub will start to dig underground where it will metamorphose and wait perhaps years before emerging to continue its seemingly pointless cycle of life." "On the other hand, look how we're spending our time." "The shrew is intent on finding grub." "I mean, a grub." "Hiding and sneaking, amputation and slaughter." "I was beginning to think my garden was trying to tell me something." "And at this point, like the mantis, I was all ear." "Heh, heh." "I was off-balance, confused." "And I was about to come face-to-face with a force so... vital... so unstoppable..." "I could never look at my garden the same way again." "Shrews!" "A female seems to be accepting a male's overtures." "Is she so hot a shrew as she's reported?" "Humph." "I had no idea I was listening to a love song." "But the young couple was actually off to a good start for what can be a taxing business." "Mating is as hectic as the rest of the shrew's life... often 20 times a day." "Your mileage may vary." "What a sight!" "They looked so... vulnerable." "I was amazed that two shrews - two recluses could put aside their grouchiness." "Suddenly, I realized I had been obsessed with the darker forces of nature with savagery and death." "True enough, for the male shrew, even love can be a drag." "But now I saw my garden's other side." "It was really about love and life and renewal." "Mostly, it was about copulation." "My garden wasn't the scene of an apocalypse after all;" "it was more like... genesis." "The wonder." "The wonder." "The wonder." "What I discovered is that there was a problem in my garden." "And I was the problem." "I was spending so much time trying to control the garden that" "I wasn't seeing things that were right in front of my eyes." "Look down here." "A female shrew's been nesting." "Let's see how she's doing." "Ah, baby shrews." "Some of the smallest and most helpless of newborn mammals." "It would take nearly 5, 000 of them to weigh a pound!" "But they'll sure grow fast." "They'll leave the nest in three weeks." "A couple of weeks later, they'll be looking for mates themselves." "It's a beautiful thing." "Don't worry." "I'm not going New Age on you." "But I couldn't help feeling that one of them was smiling at me." "You know, I have a way with the garden's creatures." "So here is my advice about the garden." "Give up the slightest idea that you can control it." "Leave yourself open to delight." "Keep your eyes open." "And enjoy the wonderful flavors that you'll have..." "Ohh!" "Well, and of course, you must share your garden!" "That was a very good tomato." "Stay away from those trees!" "A volcano on the equator in the Pacific Ocean;" "and on its very rim, among the lava boulders life;" "a giant tortoise." "Inside another, in its very throat, an iguana climbs down the walls to lay its eggs on the floor of the crater." "Yet this is one of the most active volcanoes on earth." "Closer to the coast, molten lava spouts from yet another vent." "And here, alongside a lava flow, lives another iguana." "Like creatures from some creation myth these reptiles manage, astonishingly, to live among the fires that build the earth." "The Galapagos Islands are home to the only sea-going lizard in the world the marine iguana." "In spite of the crashing surf, the iguanas manage to graze on lush growths of marine algae that flourish around the coasts." "After an hour or so in the sea, these lizards have to come to land to warm up again in the sun." "Getting ashore is not always easy." "This is the coast of Fernandina, the most westerly and the newest of the Galapagos Islands and home to the biggest concentration of marine iguanas." "It's January, the beginning of the hot season, the time for them to begin to breed." "Big males roam aggressively through the herd of females, establishing their breeding territories and that means battling with rivals." "Shaking the head is a challenge and one that has to be met." "While the larger males were fighting, a subordinate has moved in to mate with a female." "The big male regularly surveys his territory and he's spotted the trespasser." "This cannot be allowed." "He drags the female away and carries her off to the center of his domain." "Once the female receives his sperm, she will become unreceptive and will not mate again this year." "The intruder will have to try again elsewhere." "The iguanas congregate in herds around the coastal areas where there is easy access to the sea and the riches it contains." "There are fifteen main islands in the Galapagos archipelago." "In contrast to the sea around them, they are largely barren and dominated by craters and lava fields." "All, over the last five million years, have been built by volcanoes erupting from cracks in the earth's crust, deep below on the floor of the ocean, a process that still continues today." "Rivers of molten rock pour down the volcano's flanks, lighting the equatorial night with their glow." "Nothing can stand in their path as they flow inexorably downhill into the sea." "When dawn comes, it reveals that the lava has run right through a grove of palo santo trees, the home of a pair of Galapagos hawks and a large colony of land iguanas." "Some of the survivors are making their escape across the cooling fringes of the lava but at the cost of scorching their feet." "Others were not so lucky." "On the coast, the lava created more havoc among the wildlife." "Birds lost their regular roosts but they were able to fly to safety." "Many of the marine iguanas, however, were boiled alive in the sea." "Only a few escaped and now a completely new landscape faces them and the flightless cormorants." "It's February." "On a nearby beach, the female marine iguanas are digging holes." "Four weeks ago, they had mated and now it's time to lay their eggs." "Hawks have appeared in the mangroves beside the beach." "The arrival of the hawks has not gone unnoticed." "Out on the beach, the females are exposed and exhausted from digging." "It's time for them to leave." "As the hawks take off, the female iguanas run for a place where they'll be safe... the sea." "The hawk may have tackled too heavy a victim." "The outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion." "The female will still have a chance if only she can get to the water." "And finally the hawk gives up but the iguana is dead." "The males, being bigger, are usually safe from attack and have been basking in the sun before going into the water" "They have particularly long claws that enable them to cling to the rocks and resist the pull of the swell as they rip off the algae." "Although these are air-breathing animals, they regularly remain underwater for ten minutes at a time." "But they seldom stay out at sea for longer than an hour because they get chilled and lose their energy." "Little wrasse swim alongside them, gathering the small creatures disturbed as the algae is pulled up." "Schools of baitfish have appeared." "They are pursued by sea-lions, descendant from immigrants that came down from California in the distant past." "Sea-lions, like iguanas, are air breathers." "But being mammals, they generate their own body heat and so they're able to spend long hours in the water." "March and warmer waters flow down from the north, raising the temperature of the sea." "Evaporation from the ocean surface increases and clouds build up above the islands." "Soon there will be rain." "All the inhabitants of the Galapagos seem to appreciate the refreshment that it brings." "For the land iguanas, inland from the coast, it brings the rare chance of a drink." "Isabela, the largest of the islands, has had rain for several weeks and pools have formed on the floor of its central volcano, Alcedo." "The giant tortoises take in gallons and store it in their bladders as a reserve for the droughts ahead." "The hawks are beginning their courtship flights." "The tortoises too, after feasting on the newly sprung grass, will soon begin their mating." "The males are all somewhat bigger than their mates, but this one has picked a particularly diminutive partner." "A young hawk seems baffled by these heaving boulders." "It's trick and apparently exhausting business and the groans of the males carry for miles, echoing around the crater." "Alcedo is only one of six large volcanoes on the island of Isabela." "Each has its own population of tortoises that, being separated by barren fields of lava have in isolation, evolved their own individual characters." "Fernandian, west of Isabela, once had tortoises too but none survive there today." "It is, however, a stronghold of the marine iguanas and the eggs they laid on the beach, warmed by the sun, are now hatching." "For the great blue heron, this is a good time." "For the hatchlings, there is hundred meters of open sand to cross before they reach the safety of the water." "Herons are not the only enemy they have to face." "Galapagos snakes don't kill their victims with venom... they squeeze them to death." "But first they have to catch them." "In order to reach the sea, some young iguanas must first cross an old lava flow." "The snakes know this and several of them are there, waiting in ambush." "The snake can unhinge its lower jaw and engulf prey that is stouter than itself." "Death comes to the young iguana from suffocation." "Some iguanas find safety in deep cracks that have formed in the lava." "That crack was just not narrow enough." "The ancestral iguanas are thought to have arrived in the Galapagos as involuntary passengers from South American, on floating vegetation, several million years ago, and while one branch of their descendants stayed beside the sea, another took to the hills." "In patches of vegetation on the lower slopes of Fernandina the land iguanas are now gathering to breed." "Each male has dug a number of burrows and the females come to inspect them." "Her nod, however, is an aggressive 'no' rather than a submissive 'yes'." "But he persists." "Now she seems almost indifferent to him." "She allows a mockingbird to clean her by picking off dead bits of her skin-which it then eats." "She makes a meal from one of the plants growing on the male's land." "He's beginning to lose patience." "This is not the place to mate." "It's better to take her to the center of his territory, where he is least likely to be interrupted." "His contribution to the partnership is almost finished." "When they separate he'll stay here and wait for another female to turn up." "But her labors are only just beginning," "For now she sets off on a quite extraordinary journey." "She starts to ascend the flanks of Fernandina going up to towards the crater." "She'll have to climb up to fifteen hundred meters above sea level and the journey to the top will take her ten days... or more." "Close to the rim of the crater, steam spouts from fumaroles and this keeps the ash warm and moist the perfect place though that town to inherit eggs." "She follows a well-worn path up to the nesting ground." "Hundred have already been this way in the last week or so." "Suitable ground is limited and much of it already occupied." "She spots an area that seems vacant... but it's not." "There seems to be no room for her here" "The sun is beginning to set." "At this altitude, the nights can be very cold and that's bad for a reptile" "She has to find shelter." "A small cave just the place." "Others are already inside, but nonetheless she's allowed in." "The temperature begins to fall dangerously." "But steam, percolating from below, keeps the dormitory snugly warm." "In the cool morning air, steam swirls upwards," "Heated from the magma chambers below." "But the nesting ground is fully occupied." "She and other late comers have to move on." "There's only one place to go now over the lip of the crater and down into it" "Fernandina crater I immense." "Eruptions emptied the lava chamber deep below and the top of the mountain collapsed, forming this huge caldera." "No-one knows when it will explode again." "The walls of the crater have not yet stabilized after the last eruption and are continually collapsing." "She and her companions start on what seems to be a suicidal journey." "They descend into the crater." "The crater floor is almost a kilometer below." "The walls are steep and dangerously unstable." "The slightest disturbance can send tons of rocks hurtling downwards and each year the iguanas have to find new paths down." "Many of the migrants are killed each year but still they come." "At last they reach the crater floor." "Ash lies thickly here." "In some areas steam from below keeps it warm and there, just below the surface, it's a constant 30 degrees centigrade the perfect temperature to incubate iguana eggs." "There is more room down here." "But any attempt to dig in a place that might disturb the eggs already been buried there will lead to violence." "She must be cautious." "A place of her own at last." "Even after all this, there is no certainty of success." "Some years, an eruption will destroy all the eggs... nor are the females' labors yet over." "They still have to climb out of the crater and trek ten kilometers down the volcano back to their home grounds." "July brings relief from the hot season" "Trade winds from the southeast drive cool air up the sides of the volcano and the moisture they carry condenses into low-lying fog." "This is the garua." "For the next six months, these mists will be the only source of moisture on the islands." "Twenty-five kilometers to the east of Fernandina lies the Alcedo volcano." "There, the arrival of the garua is the signal for the tortoises in the crater to climb up to the rim and collect the liquid the mists bring." "There are several kinds of birds up here." "A finch collects ticks from the tortoises, just as mockingbirds pick skin from the iguanas." "And tortoises invite them to do so by adopting a special posture so that the birds can reach every possible part of their skin." "Tortoises, after all, can't scratch themselves, neither can they clean their nostrils, so this arrangement suits both parties" "In the western part of the archipelago the garua sweeps around the slopes of Fernandian and over the lava fields, blocking out the sun for several hours each morning." "As the mists burn off, the marine iguanas begin their daily trip down the beach to the sea." "At this time of the year, cool currents sweep in from the coast of South American, a thousand kilometers away to the east and cold rich waters from the central Pacific often well up from the depths, producing lush growths of marine algae" "The algae grow with phenomenal speed." "And they need to, for along this stretch of coast live tens of thousands of marine iguanas." "The hatchlings are now three months old and they feed on the algae exposed on the rocks at low tide." "Sea-lion pups of around the same age don't go out to sea either." "They stay in the shallows, playing boisterously with one another." "And no only with one another." "For them, an iguana seems to be yet another toy." "By early afternoon, most of the iguanas have finished grazing and are sunbathing to get the heat they need to be able to digest their meals." "Some of the hatchlings stay together on their own patch of the beach, but others mingle with the adults." "And that is the safer place to be." "The hawk won't tackle a full-grown male iguana it's too big and powerful." "A young hatchling, however, is a different matter." "A young reptile dies..." "and a young bird is kept alive, for this is also the time that the Galapagos hawk breeds." "There are two chicks in the nest." "The bigger one is always fed first." "Only when it is satisfied will the smaller one get any food." "But this year has been a good one for the iguanas, so there's plenty of food for both chicks." "Back on the coast, the sea-lions too are giving birth." "The mother tears away the birth membranes so that her baby can get its first breath of air." "As it breathes, so it calls and that is vitally important, for the two must learn to recognize the sound of one another's voices and so be able to find one another in days to come." "The sea-lion's afterbirth is high grade protein and both crabs and iguanas are quick to claim it." "The rich up welling nutrients along the coast stimulate the boobies to begin their courtship." "A blue-footed boody needs to show its mate that it has blue feet and is not any other kind of boody, and their courtship dances certainly make that quite clear." "In some areas the boobies are breeding where the marine iguanas traditionally spend the night and the reptiles have to run a gauntlet of beaks to get to their dormitories." "As the iguanas settle down to sleep, they continually spurt liquid from their noses." "This is a salty fluid that drains into their nostrils from special glands that excrete the salt they take in with their meals of sea-weed." "The sun begins to sink, the day cools and the iguanas cluster together to keep warm." "During the night, the garua rolls in across the summit of Fernandina." "At dawn, mist clings to the coast because of the continued presence of cold water." "It's signal for the penguins to gather and court." "Like the blue-foots, penguins only breed when food is plentiful... and it has arrived." "The rich waters along the coast have attracted huge swarms of baitfish." "Penguins love baitfish." "One of their tactics is to drive a shoal into shallow water where there's less room for the fish to maneuver." "Forced near the surface, others can dive in from above." "Pelicans." "Once the pelicans have drained the water from their pouches, they can lift their beaks and swallow their catch without being pestered by penguins." "But now there are others to trouble them" "Noddy terns." "The blue-foots can fish much farther out to sea." "They often detect the presence of a shoal near the surface by the activities of dolphins... who are searching for the same thing." "The sea-lions also follow dolphins." "And when at last the prize is discovered," "There's a frenzy of feeding." "Harried from below by dolphins and sea-lions, the shoal rises towards the surface and gives the blue-foots their chance." "Back on the cliffs, the young blue-foots are exercising the wings they've not yet used and playing with the marine iguanas." "Such activities all help to develop the young boobies' skills of manipulation and build up their wing muscles in preparation for the time when they too will need to catch fish." "The hawk chicks, well nourished on their diet of young iguanas are now two months old and almost ready to fly eager, doubtless, to go and find food for themselves." "Last year's broods of hawks gather from all around the island and demonstrate their competence in the air above the summit of Fernandina." "They're keeping a sharp eye on the floor of the crater below, for their biggest feast of the year is about to begin." "It's now October, a hundred days since the female land iguanas were here laying their eggs." "Those should now be on the verge of hatching." "All the hawks are aware of what is about to happen and all are determined to claim their share." "The first of the hatchlings emerges." "Though totally inexperienced, they obviously sense the danger posed by the hawks." "The eggs in each clutch hatch almost simultaneously and the youngsters will stand a better chance if they all run for cover together." "One decides to make a break for it." "The others see that the attention of the hawks has been diverted." "It's hot work, waiting around." "The ash is now 50 degrees centigrade." "There are just too many talons around to escape them all." "Once they reach the crater wall, there is more cover." "But the hawks can still outwit them." "They are only six inches long;" "they have not yet fed and are dependant for their energy entirely on the little yolk that remains in their belly;" "And they still have to climb a crater wall a thousand meters high." "The rim of the crater at last." "But this is only a brief triumph." "Neither the journey nor its dangers are over yet." "A short distance below is the steaming fumarole and nesting area which their mothers passed three months earlier on their way into the caldera." "Up to a dozen snakes have gathered here." "Some slither into the burrows where the females had laid their eggs, listening for the vibrations made by hatching iguanas as they dig their way up to the surface." "The hatchlings can outrun the snakes if they get a reasonable start." "But the snakes are everywhere." "There are few that make their escape climb up a plant or a boulder every now and then to get a better view of the way a head there is a long way to go get" "Their final destination is the vegetated slopes of the volcano," "Thirteen hundred meters below." "Down on the coast, their cousins, the young marine iguanas, are now six months old and increasingly confident as they graze among the waves." "It will be several years yet before they're big enough and strong enough to join their parents cropping on the sea floor." "The reptiles of the Galapagos live in an isolated world." "But it's no island paradise." "They're surrounded at all times by danger from the land, the sea and the sky." "The very rocks they live on regularly split apart and erupt fire." "But it's these very perils and privations that have changed and refined these species to such a degree that today there are no other creatures anywhere else in the world like the dragons of the Galapagos." ""Wild Passions"" "It's not a nine-to-five job." "It's not about forgetting about your work when you get home from the office" "Only on three occasions have venomous snakes actually gotten me." "The thing that can go wrong is if we mis..." "It's not really work, is it?" "Yeah." "It's just a way of life ." "A way of life for us." "When I get to see something that nobody's ever seen before, that's a thrill that I don't think I'll ever get over." "It's getting that image in a way that it's never been captured before." "It's like gambling." "You go out and you never know what you're gonna get." "And more than likely, you're not gonna get anything." "But the payoff is that we live in paradise." "And we have a life that nobody else has." "They're images that enchant." "Through them, we're face to face with creatures we've never imagined... witnesses to the stark drama of struggles for survival" "voyeurs of nature's most hidden moments" "What does it take to capture those images?" "Who stalked that lion?" "Confronted that cobra?" "Swam with that shark?" "You're about to meet some of the world's most talented filmmakers." "On any given day, they're at work on wildlife films for National Geographic." "You'll learn what they do, how they do it, and what it takes to bring back unforgettable images." "I think a lot of people think it's a dream job." "In many ways, it is, I suppose." "But it's a helluva lot of hard work." "It used to be much harder." "The first wildlife filmmakers were true adventurers." "The wilderness was wilder then, and conditions were much more primitive" "Filmmakers often developed their own film in the bush." "And transportation was more often four-legged than four-wheeled." "Early pioneers even had to invent their own equipment." "Those intrepid explorers brought back images that were a revelation to the public." "People had never seen moving pictures of animals in the wild." "The footage was hard-earned, but it was guaranteed to keep audiences amazed and enthralled." "Today, dependable cameras, hi-tech gear, and all kinds of vehicles make the job easier." "But the challenge has gotten tougher." "The public sees incredible things on film every day." "In fact, they want to see more incredible things." "So we in the business are actually pushing the pinnacle of perfection higher and higher and higher." "We're competing against ourselves." "We're making it more difficult for ourselves to come out with new things." "And when you're doing film work there's a certain amount of pressure to get the shot." "And you tend to do things that push the envelope a little bit." "Sometimes, you can push a little too hard." "For the first test of National Geographic's Crittercam, the camera was attached to the fin of a shark." "But the shark swam off prematurely, and things took a horrific turn." "A fisherman tried to help by hooking the shark." "He didn't realize that cameraman Nick Caloyianis was just ten feet away" "But the shark did." "Wanna keep pressure on these points, now." "A little more pressure." "Up over here." "Up over here." "The shark tore open Nick's hand, and bit his leg to the bone." "Nick was medevaced out and went through nine operations in 21 days." "It took him three and half months to recover." "And then he returned to work on another film about sharks." "Accidents do happen." "It certainly wasn't the shark's fault." "I would never blame the shark for what happened to me." "Nick's attitude isn't unusual." "In fact, most wildlife filmmakers don't think it's dangerous work." "I don't think it's dangerous work." "I think it's certainly not dangerous work if you're considering the animal." "We've gotta remember that snakes are on the defensive all the time." "They're not an offensive animal who's gonna attack you." "You would think there'd be things down there that are constantly stinging and biting, but surprisingly, that's not the case." "Press them harder, though, and they'll admit to their share of close calls." "I lost a finger to a puff adder, first of all, in handling that for photography." "Very nearly lost my life." "I got spit in the eye by a spitting cobra." "And then, no, actually I got bit by a coral snake, and the coral snake died." "I fell out of the tree in Guyana 55 feet." "I was bitten by the insect that gave me" "I was caught up in a war in Rwanda." "I've been charged by elephants and hung up with microphone cables and couldn't get away." "Oh, I dunno, you have to be careful." "Some years later, I was bitten in the backside by a leopard." "I'd jumped down off a cliff and I landed right in front of it, and it came out and got me in the butt" "I got out of the car." "The cubs were playing to the one side, and the female, the mother was lying on the other side" "I started walking towards them with the camera, and the next thing, the mother just came at me." "She actually stopped probably five meters away, growling and hissing and then moved off." "I got in the car." "The other thing was African bees." "We were attacked by African bees to the point where we thought we were going to die." "All of us were stung 40, 50, 60 times in the head and the face." "A couple of years after that," "I was filming underwater in this crystal clear spring in January 8th, 2001" "Two males started a fight." "In the confusion, one of the male hippos charged and got me by the leg." "Shook me around like a rag doll for awhile." "I had a hole through my leg big enough to stick a coke bottle through." "But danger doesn't deter the best wildlife filmmakers." "They'll go to incredible lengths or heights to get the shot." "That's what Neil Rettig is famous for." "Here, he's climbing 150 feet up to film the world's most powerful bird of prey the harpy eagle." "It has a wingspan of more than six feet, and talons the size of bear claws." "The harpy will attack any intruder that gets too close to its nest including a precariously perched cameraman." "The first time an eagle flew at me, I was scared to death." "The problem is if you're climbing up, and you don't know where they are, you have to look in a 360 degree radius around to try to spot when they're coming, because if you didn't see 'em, they'd definitely hit you." "They're incredibly powerful." "If you weren't roped in, they could knock you right off the limb." "leatherjacket that was totally shredded by the end of it" "It was just like a big hole in the back, you know." "How do you end up in a spot like this 150 feet up, warding off attacking eagles?" "Like most filmmakers," "Neil's been following this path from his earliest days." "I grew up in an area that had a lot of wildlife." "My parents were very supportive." "I would collect turtles, and salamanders, and snakes, and so forth." "And I really had an interest in birds of prey especially." "Today, when he's not on the road," "Neil spends every spare moment raising hawks on his Wisconsin farm." "You're a good boy." "I got into falconry in the late '60s and early '70s." "Birds of prey are just so free and fantastic." "Neil's hobby became a career back in the 1970s, when he learned of a giant eagle that had never been photographed." "A complete novice at the time," "Neil shot the first film ever made about the harpy." "Now a highly-respected old pro, he's returned." "He's spent six months here, hoping to capture the first flight of a young harpy chick." "I think all of us have a lot of experience sitting in a blind for weeks at a time, and not shooting a single inch of film waiting for something to happen, and maybe it never will." "The young harpy spent weeks testing its wings and Neil's patience." "And then one day he went maybe 60 feet out into the canopy of the nest tree" "and I was ready, you know," "I had my finger on the shutter release and I was ready to roll the camera thinking," ""This is it." "We're gonna get this first flight."" "And it just took him forever." "He slowly walked down the limb and he kept walking." "And I go, "Oh, my God, he's gonna walk all the way back."" "But then, finally, he just suddenly flew." "I was rolling the camera and I got the first flight." "Some unusual skills are required for filming birds of prey." "Everybody ready?" "Did it go over?" "Neil uses a cross bow to rig cable for tracking shots through rain forest canopies." "We have a vertical tracking system where we can lift the camera from the ground to the top of a huge tree." "We have a horizontal tracking system." "You get a floating sensation, tracking through the forest." "All these things take a lot of time and it's a lot of hard work." "Neil became known as a man who could film in high places." "For awhile, every phone call I was getting from producers had something to do with climbing." "No climbing was required when Neil went to film in the Arctic." "A plane put him down on top of remote Prince Leopold Island." "But the job did call for someone who wasn't afraid of heights." "It was just incredibly bleak." "I mean the cliff just falls away, a thousand feet straight down." "The cliffs were bathed in sun the day Neil arrived." "But things went downhill after that." "We had the worst weather I think I've ever experienced out on the field." "I mean blowing gales, and sleet, and freezing rain, and howling wind." "Trapped in their tents by the harsh weather," "Neil and his soundman were going stir crazy-Arctic style." "All the eggs have fallen off the cliff" "All the eggs have fallen off the cliff" "All of them." "When the weather did clear, Neil had other problems." "He was trying to film a colony of murres, nesting in crumbly stone on the sides of the treacherous cliff." "To get the shot, Neil had to go right to the edge." "The wind literally would buffet you and, you know, it threatened to blow you right off the cliff." "Of course, you're not going to survive falling 1,000 feet." "So we're talking about this 200-pound apparatus that we had to set up right on the edge of the cliff with these rocks that are flaking away" "And to get the shot, we wanted to actually sweep the camera out with a wide angle lens to sort of give you a birds-eye view of what it'd look like to look straight down." "Neil got the shot and then, a bonus." "There were thousands of nest sites spread out along this cliff face." "And there was an Arctic fox that used to raid the nests, but he never came to the area where... we were filming, which was the ideal spot for filming." "One day, the fox came along and I was just thinking," ""God, wouldn't it be great if he started raiding these nests right in front of the camera?"" "And sure enough, he went in front of the camera, raided the nests, maybe 10 times, 10 different nest sites." "I mean, it was just like perfect choreography." "And that was probably the most rewarding sequence" "I've ever done in the wild." "It was just luck." "It just happened while I was there, you know, that's a rarity." "Today, filmmakers like Neil Rettig are well-established professionals in what could actually be called a career." "But it wasn't like that when renowned African filmmaker Alan Root started out" "Wildlife photographer wasn't something you could find in any career guide's booklet." "Fortunately, because the whole business was in its early days, the standards, I have to say, were pretty low." "So anything a cut above home movie footage would get onto television, because it was all new and exciting to them." "And I really appreciate that, because the youngsters today have a much harder nut to crack to get in." "Actually, just drop me down here." "I think there is more pressure on me because this is my first film and I obviously want it to be a good film." "Go right, Pete, go right, go right." "But as long as I'm learning, that's the key thing." "Still running, still running." "Matt Aeberhard's here in Tanzania to make a National Geographic film about jackals." "Stop!" "They're a tough animal to keep in frame." "Missed it." "Missed it." "Despite the frustrations and challenges, for Matt, this is the fulfillment of a dream." "It's taken some real doing to get this far." "After failing at University," "I was really forced to really go for something and do my best." "He landed a few menial jobs in film, including work for a British company that made wildlife films." "I made teas for people, worked long hours," "I made sure I was noticed." "And gradually, one thing led to another." "It led to an invitation to come work for a wildlife filmmaker in the Serengeti." "Driving out to the Serengeti was, yeah, one of the best days of my life." "I believe I cried when I saw the Serengeti, because I'd arrived and it really was the culmination of a good deal of difficult driving, boring work, and finally I'm here, doing what I want to do." "You ready, Peter?" "Matt spent five years working for someone else before attempting a film of his own." "This is his big chance." "He won't get many more if he doesn't deliver." "He's chosen a difficult subject." "Jackals are unsympathetic heroes." "People watching the film might be disgusted by the fact that these jackals are preying on little bambis." "But that gives me a good challenge." "I don't have a problem with the fact that people might hate the jackals one minute if I can make them like the jackals the next minute." "Make them feel something." "If they feel something, that's good." "Jackals can be doting parents." "And Matt wants to show that by capturing a key scene the moment when the pups emerge from the den to greet their mother." "Stop." "No, useless." "Matt's too late." "Half a scene won't do" "Well, I missed the beginning." "I should have been earlier, because I knew exactly where she was going." "Every day bring's a frustration, but you just have to continue on and eventually it will work out." "Isn't that right, Pete?" "Maybe tomorrow, or day after, you might get it again." "Absolutely, absolutely." "A couple of hours away, veteran Dutch cameraman Anton Van Munster is shooting a National Geographic film about a family of cheetah." "It looks like something's about to happen." "Less than 15 seconds from beginning to end, and the cheetah never went out of frame" "Okay, stop here." "Go quick." "Now, Anton moves in for the close-up." "It puts him right on top of the kill." "Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, stop like this." "Of course, I've seen it more than once by now." "But I still can hardly bear to watch." "It's terrible." "But sentimentality in nature doesn't exist." "Things couldn't be going better for the seasoned veteran." "As for Matt..." "Oh, we missed it." "Go one... to the left, yeah." "Right, right, right, right, go around these..." "Keep on this side..." "Go right, Pete, go right, go right." "And now to the left." "Go, go, quick." "Yes, of course." "Okay, stop like this." "Stop like this." "There we are." "Missed it again." "Fantastic." "We missed what happened here just by a couple of minutes." "Matt would be happy just to get close to his animals." "It's clearly no problem for Anton." "I'm happy that there's glass." "And while the cheetah are climbing all over Anton's car," "Matt's is breaking down." "The link just snapped blow a gasket here relentless problems" "But good wildlife filmmakers are persistent." "Once again, Matt waits at the den, hoping to catch the pups emerging to greet their mother." "Finally, the right place at the right time." "A crucial scene for Matt a testimony to the gentle side of the jackal." "Capturing key moments is a challenge for all wildlife filmmakers." "How do you get great scenes like these?" "What does it take to be a good wildlife filmmaker?" "The first thing you need is patience that verges upon stupidity, because you're down there, and typically you're cold and uncomfortable, and you have to be sort of mentally marginal to stay there for hours on end." "To me, the challenge is the most important thing." "If somebody says to me, you know," ""Here's a species that's never been filmed before, and you probably can't do it."" "That would like feed the fire within me to actually accomplish it." "Good wildlife filmmakers are primarily naturalists." "And their interest in wildlife filmmaking stems from their interest in animals." "If you understand the animal behavior, you have a better chance of being able to film it, as opposed to understanding the camera technique and trying to film some animals?" "Never going to work." "Derek and Beverly Joubert have spent a lifetime in close contact with the animals they film." "And they've learned every trick of the trade." "We almost try and become part of them so that we know exactly what they're doing and what they wouldn't want us to do." "For the Jouberts, wildlife filmmaking isn't a job;" "it's a way of life." "Over here we've got a handy item." "It's an elephant's pelvis and it's great for having our wash basin." "And then, of course, our famous toilet" "You don't sit there for long because the teeth are still in the elephant's jawbone." "Life in the bush is basic." "But the Jouberts' reward is an unusual intimacy with wildlife." "When we're sitting somewhere and an elephant comes to us, we will just sit and soak up the atmosphere and almost communicate with him." "That is something that you would not get in many places." "Such moments are unforgettable like Howard Hall's extraordinary encounter with a Patagonian right whale." "It was a remarkable experience, because after we'd been with the animals a few days, one of them actually became curious and wanted to play with us." "And it was amazing." "We found that the whale would come right down to me, come right down, and sit on the bottom next to me and lean over toward me so that I would scratch his eyebrow." "And he loved for us to scratch him." "And we're talking a huge animal, we're talking this gigantic behemoth of an animal, coming down, settling only a few feet away with his eyeball only 18 inches from you, and then you just reach out and scratch his eye," "and you watch him looking at you while you do that." "Now you may think, you know, you look into the eye of a whale, you're not going to see any characterization or emotion there." "But you can." "There are filmmakers who are drawn to a particular animal." "We've found bats to be particularly fascinating subjects." "For me, birds of prey." "Water hogs, they're amazing things and as I've said, such humorous little guys." "In some cases, you'd have to call it an obsession." "Okay, hold it, just hold it a second there, yeah." "That's my favorite bear there" "Polar bears are Tom Mangelsen's passion" "Beautiful bear, that guy." "You can't help but get attached to them, you know, you just watch them, and you know certain individuals, that I let myself kind of get involved in that." "I'm always happy to see, you know, a bear that I recognize." "Tom Mangelsen is an award winning photographer and filmmaker." "He's come here to Cape Churchill in northern Canada every year for the past ten years." "With his assistant, Cara, and an old friend, Spence," "Tom traverses the frozen landscape in his tundra buggy, searching for yet another great shot of the bears." "I think they're just beautiful to begin with, you know, they're designed for this landscape." "They're powerful, they're strong, they're able to live solitary, predatory existences." "Extraordinary beings, you know, nice to watch." "But getting so attached to your subjects can take its toll." "Tom followed a female he called "Pretty Bear" for six or seven years." "He was thrilled to discover two cubs trailing behind her last year" "So it was difficult for him to watch when one of the cubs sickened and later died." "It's hard not to be emotional when you see something that's just, that is kind of horrific as a cub dying in a snowstorm, and a mother trying to protect it from all comers, staying there with it, even though the thing's," "poor thing's been dead for two days." "Tom's emotional connection to the bears leads us to see them in a different light." "The pictures I probably enjoy most are the ones that are hopefully more esthetic and soft and more painterly, maybe." "That's probably most people's favorite overall, the one called the "Bad Boys of the Arctic."" "It looks very human, you know, the guy's kicked back looking like he's you know, ready to turn on the TV or watching the football game or having a beer." "I named that image "Polar Dance"" "because it looked like they were dancing." "It looked like a classical dance that people would do." "Actually, it's two large adult male polar bears play fighting." "You guys, this could be so cool." "Alright." "That's nice to see." "In the distance, a mother and two cubs saunter into view." "You've got to be impressed by an animal that can raise two eight-month-olds in this landscape." "I mean, look at that, that's harsh out there." "Those little guys have been probably walking for 20 miles, maybe." "She keeps looking back, checking on that one that's kind of lagging behind a little bit." "Tom decides to take a chance to get closer to the action." "Be a lot nicer to see her low." "It's risky going down on the ground." "But the mother bear seems a safe distance away." "She's not gonna leave the cubs to get us." "But Tom doesn't see the huge male walking up from behind the buggy." "He and Cara race up the steps," "leaving the camera behind." "That's a little excitement for a change, huh?" "That was too close!" "Good thing Spencer saw him, huh?" "You see how they can just come out of nowhere?" "Too bad your camera's down there, 'cause it's a great scene." "Oh, it's a wonderful scene." "That's one of the shots I've been trying to get for the last five or six years." "I don't know if I'll get another chance at it or not." "That was our first mother and cubs." "Ahh!" "Jeez!" "I can't believe it!" "In this business, things don't always go right." "But there's something you gotta get, you gotta get that bit of behavior that is absolutely vital for the film and you just go through hell sometimes to get it." "It's a very bitter cold, wind chills of minus 100 Fahrenheit." "You can freeze your flesh in five or six seconds." "It's so incredibly hot." "It's 115 Fahrenheit and it's just muggy." "And, of course, days without having proper showers and baths and things like that." "You're often out on small boats." "Conditions are rough." "You occasionally get to reveal what you had for breakfast, which is pretty unpleasant." "Millions and billions of mosquitoes, and black flies, and and every little kind of bug you can imagine would get in your eyes and your nose and your ears and your throat." "You're up to here in muck, going through just a disgusting stench of water." "Neil would turn back and look at me and I said," ""Isn't this a glamorous business?"" "We've had film assistants that have come out to us and that have paid us to let them go." "Problems just go on and on and on." "And it's amazing how many good films get turned out every year." "When you really want to do something bad, it's amazing what you can put up with." "Not many people would want to get this close to a deadly black widow spider." "One bite could kill you." "Yeah, she's getting a little close." "But it's all in a day's work for George and Kathy Dodge." "You gettin' her?" "Where'd she go?" "We come in close contact with venomous animals of all kinds." "That doesn't necessarily concern us." "I mean, the point is getting the shot." "For the National Geographic film, "Bite of the Black Widow,"" "George and Kathy decided to get more personally involved than usual." "All that they really asked us to do was film a black widow underneath a blanket." "We thought, Well, let's put the person under there and add a little movement." "I better cut soon." "I don't want to risk her getting too close." "Good one!" "Yeah, yeah." "Yeah, now, get her out of here." "It was a nice idea as long as the black widow didn't move too far too fast." "Get her!" "Okay, I'm trying." "If we timed things just right, we'd get the black widow out from under the cover before it actually reached his flesh." "While many filmmakers head out into the bush in search of nature's largest animals, the Dodges specialize... in filming the smallest and many would say the creepiest." "You can only see elephants and lions and zebras and wolves and bears for so long, I mean, there are only certain, limited species of each one of these animals." "But insects-beetles, wasps, bees, flies," "I mean, they're countless, they're countless." "We could never run out of subjects." "But if you think it's hard figuring out what an elephant or lion is about to do try insects." "Like a black widow spider is going to lay eggs, well she isn't going to tell us." "We don't speak Black Widow." "So she isn't going to tell us," ""Oh, I'm going to be laying these eggs at exactly one o'clock tonight."" "We had 12 black widow females and they were all ready to lay eggs, all in separate cages, all ready to be put on the set." "One of us will go to bed and the other one will stay up and watch the black widow for three hours and then we shift back and forth like that." "Oh, she's really doing it, huh?" "The least bit of interference would cause her to abandon the whole process just a light going on, or any sudden shock to the container would throw off the whole scene." "Even when the black widows performed on cue, other problems invariably cropped up." "Okay, roll camera, she's starting." "Even though we had two cameras, this animal's got eight legs." "Several times we'd get egg laying, but not a good shot, because one or two of her darn eggs would get in the way." "And then the mating of the male and the female now you're dealing with 16 legs in the way." "How do you get a clear decent shot of the male mating with the female where you can see what's happening?" "It wasn't easy." "It wasn't easy at all." "George and Kathy even managed to get the black widow to bite on cue." "How did they do it?" "That is one of our little professional trade secrets, I'm afraid" "We don't even tell our family." "Our family will ask us... you know" ""Well, how did you do that shot?" "How did you do this shot?"" "We don't tell anybody." "Sometimes, the animals don't do what the Dodges want them to." "For the National Geographic film, "Ants from Hell,"" "George and Kathy wanted to shoot a timelapse sequence of fire ants devouring a frog." "The frog needed to be taken down, all the way down to a skeleton, so there was literally nothing left." "It took a lot of studying to see exactly how long does it take a colony of ants to take down that size of frog." "But apparently, the fire ants hadn't read the script." "The very first colony didn't eat the frog, they buried it." "So we dig up the frog, put him back, start on another colony, and they eat the frog half way and abandon it." "It took quite a few attempts, but we finally got it and it came out very nicely." "George and I are challenged, challenge ourselves to go after those images which haven't been captured before." "I mean, to whatever degree that takes us, extreme macro or telephoto, it's getting that image in a way that it's never been captured before." "My particular favorite shot that we've ever done is a close up of the harvestman eating the aphids." "No one had ever seen a harvestman eat an aphid before." "We not only saw it, we filmed it." "We're bringing this to the public so the public can appreciate this animal and its uniqueness." "This is what makes our job worthwhile." "This is what makes doing wildlife photography so exciting." "I found the jumping spider to be a very interesting subject, because it has sort of a soft cuddly look to it, which is appealing." "Soft and cuddly." "Did you hear that?" "Soft and cuddly." "This is what I love about this woman." "She loves all animals... she calls a jumping spider cute and cuddly." "It doesn't matter what we shoot or what we photograph, she empathizes with the animal, gets to really like it." "I couldn't find another woman like this on the face of the earth, you know, if I spent the rest of my life trying, and especially one that looks as good as this." "I'm one lucky man, I'll tell ya." "While there are wildlife filmmakers who work alone, it's striking how many of them team up with their spouses or partners." "I'll tell you when you hit 24 frames." "Because in this business, a good year you might be gone 250 days out of the year." "And what kind of relationship can you have with somebody that's waiting at home?" "So the ideal situation is if your partner can be part of the team." "Most couples, you know, they see each other at the beginning or end of the day." "And there's a big chunk in the middle where they're interacting with other people." "And we have ourselves." "And very often, we're off in wilderness areas and we just have to get on and thank goodness we do." "Look how easy that was." "That's right, that's right." "We live with the job." "I mean," "I could wake up at two o'clock in the morning and, you know, "Kathy, Kathy, I just got the greatest idea."" "There sure are difficulties." "I mean, working at nighttime is an incredible difficulty... because she wants to sleep a little bit longer than me." "We have the domestic crossing over into the professional world, back and forth." "There would be squabbles taking place over who was gonna be responsible for vacuuming up the back guano, let's say, that's dragged into the carpet." "We have these goals and things that we wanted to do in life and we've dedicated to that." "If Beverly didn't share the dedication that I had or vice versa, it wouldn't work." "And we would not be a filmmaking married couple out in the bush." "So, what do we do?" "Are we gonna get end takes?" "First let me do this and then we'll do a front take and then we'll add some questions." "One such couple is Richard and Carol Foster." "The husband and wife are among the world's leading wildlife filmmakers" "They make a perfect team." "Richard's the cameraman, while Carol does sound, still photography and research." "Back there." "Oh, they're so cute." "We're both naturalists." "And we both think in the same way..." "Get ready, get ready, Carol." "even though we do separate things, then we come together when it is a film" "Carol and I compliment each other very well." "We're actually both very different kinds of people." "I'm much more laid back." "Carol rev's much higher than I do." "I tend to get a bit mentally lazy sometimes, and she gives me a quick kick, you know, when that happens." "And I try to calm her down when she gets too hyper, you know, so we have a pretty good effect on each other." "It works well." "We couldn't make these films as individuals." "We really couldn't." "It's too wide a breadth of stuff to get done." "And we both have respect for each other in what we do." "Recently, this filmmaking team had to confront a grave challenge." "They were in Venezuela, filming one of the world's biggest snakes he anaconda for National Geographic." "At first, it seemed like the danger would be in getting the shot." "They were following a researcher whose favorite method of finding the snakes was to feel for them underwater with his bare feet." "To get his respect, which was, actually," "I was quite happy to do, was to take off my shoes as well." "We've got stingrays, which if you tread on one and it stings you, it's three months out of your life." "They're very, very bad, very poisonous" "You've got electric eels, which put out 500 volts and they'll knock you straight out of the water if you get shocked by them" "The snakes actually are not aggressive when they're in the swamp, because they're used to being trodden on by other animals." "It's only when you start grabbing them and hauling them out, that's when they start turning around and biting you." "But as it turned out, the Fosters faced a much more serious threat than the anacondas during their time in Venezuela." "And all of a sudden I had these sharp pains in my spine." "And when I got up, my right leg wouldn't work at all." "And I was dragging it." "And then my left leg went." "And then we decided we better medevac me out of there." "The mysterious illness puzzled doctors" "Only one thing was certain:" "Carol wasn't letting it stop her." "I didn't want to go back to the States or anything." "I wanted to go back to the film, because I had spent so much time getting it to that spot, so I says, "I'm going back to the field."" "And I was either in a wheelchair or somebody was always carrying me." "It's a good thing you're light." "I know." "They carried me." "And I says, "I'm going to every scene."" "Over time, Carol regained the use of her legs." "Okay, Frank, you've got her." "Okay, you've got her." "Now, less than nine months after her stint in a wheelchair, she's joining Richard on an arduous shoot." "For a National Geographic film about bats, the Fosters and their team are descending into a huge bat cave, a few hours from their home in Belize." "Grand Central Station of a cave, this, isn't it?" "It's a monster." "The steep descent is treacherous." "But it's a shoot Carol wouldn't want to miss." "The Fosters have brought along a unique thermal camera." "that registers heat rather than light." "It's just the thing for filming in pitch black caves." "Hidden in the darkness are all kinds of creepy crawlies" "not to mention, thousands of bats." "Going into a bat roost, it's a pretty unhealthy place." "These bats are all sitting around the roof, and they crap down on you, and there's piles of guano on the floor, and the temperature is higher than it is outside." "It's sort of a Turkish bath feeling about the whole place." "There's airborne diseases that the bats propagate in the guano." "The main feeling is you want to get the job done and get the hell out, quite frankly." "But it's worth going in there just to get the images." "Okay, we're gonna need that, so we're gonna need to take that in." "Soon, the team is setting up for a shot they never could have attempted before." "The cave is too big to light." "But with the thermal camera, it's heat, not light that counts." "It's like a starry night." "Look at that" "Yeah, exactly like a starry night." "You want more detail on the stalactites, or you just want 'em darker?" "Um, detail, I think, if you can." "That's really nice." "Keep it there." "You wanna record that?" "The images are everything Richard and Carol had hoped for." "They're showing the bats in a new way, using technology early filmmakers could never have imagined." "But for this husband and wife team, being able to capture this scene together is a personal triumph as well" "For recently, Carol's mysterious illness was finally diagnosed as multiple sclerosis." "Now, I hope I'm going into remission, and then," "I'm still able to go into some caves and work on the bat film." "And I really tried hard because I, you know," "I have to always be there, because I like it so much, you know." "We're going to fight this thing all the way through and, you know, with modern drugs, who knows?" "There may be a cure next year." "So you just keep that, keep your body in shape as much as possible and carry on making films." "For dedicated professionals like these wildlife filmmaking is in the blood." "They'll keep at it as long as they're able." "They do it because they love it." "And because they know it's important." "Someday, their films may be the only record we have of wildlife that is fast disappearing." "The fact of the matter is the cameramen and the film crews need to be out there, because tomorrow, it's not going to be there." "To see, you know, 25 hammerhead sharks go by, you're bound to be impressed." "But 15 years ago, it would have been 500 hammerhead sharks." "As a cameraman, I have an opportunity to make a difference." "People see these wonderful animals, and they don't want them to disappear." "From the first hardy pioneers who dazzled new audiences" "to the conservation minded professionals of today, wildlife filmmakers are adventurers" "driven to bring back images that hold us spellbound." "I can't imagine a job which has so much reward, certainly for me." "We have fun every single day of our lives." "I think that there's nothing else that I'd rather be doing right now on this earth." "Thousands of feet beneath the seven seas lies the history of the world buried in the wreckage of lost ships." "It is a realm of precious artifacts and priceless treasures." "A world of ancient mysteries long beyond our grasp." "Until today." "Now the sunken marvels of the ocean deep are up for grabs, from ancient Roman ships to Spanish galleons to luxury liners like the Titanic." "I dream about gold and emeralds every night." "And you gotta believe it's there and you gotta want it bad." "Some people are out to plunder the past." "While others archeologists and scientists like the man who first found the Titanic, are out to preserve it." "They are all armed with million-dollar high-tech tools, and the will to spend years on the arduous search." "Just running out on a boat with a metal detector and hoping to jump over the side and pull up a beached basket of gold coins that's stuff of fantasy and Hollywood." "that really doesn't happen very often." "It is a world where controversy reigns where there are confusing laws and no rules." "Does anyone have a right to excavate shipwrecks?" "Should the past be protected?" "Or should it be picked clean for profit?" "So it's a very big difference between doing something to fill in a missing chapter in human history and doing it for personal greed." "Explorers and archeologists." "Entrepreneurs and salvagers." "Some will risk everything reputation, fortune, even their lives to possess the treasures of the deep." "The Mediterranean Sea." "On its shores grew the great civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome." "And from its banks, ancient peoples sailed beyond the safety of land in small wooden ships." "For hundreds of years, Roman ships controlled these waters, creating a vast empire." "But the moods of the sea are harsh and unpredictable, and a Roman vessel 100 feet long had no defenses against storm and wave and wind." "Over the centuries, countless ships were lost and countless sailors killed." "Now the man who discovered the Titanic" "Dr. Robert Ballard, is again hunting for shipwrecks, ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean." "For hundreds of years, scientists have looked in the ocean for our history." "And for most of that time they've only been able to look a very short distance of one or 200 feet, which represents an insignificant amount of the ocean." "And what we're trying to accomplish is something that's never been done before and this is to try to excavate a ship of antiquity that is thousands of feet beneath the sea." "To bring up ancient vessels buried a half-mile down." "It's never been done before and Ballard only has five short weeks to do it." "You know, it's ironic that we have sent robots to Mars and we've mapped the far side of Venus in fact, that we know more about the moon's surface than the ocean." "To make the impossible happen" "Ballard will need a floating laboratory as mission central." "The Carolyn Chouest, a U.S. Navy vessel, will journey 80 miles west of Sicily into international waters, where no one has a claim on lost vessels." "Ballard believes the Mediterranean is strewn with ancient wrecks and he has long dreamed of finding one" "We're sitting right now in ruins that are on the island of Sicily." "To get to Rome you have to cross the Tyrrhenian Sea;" "to get to Carthage you have to cross the Straits of Sicily." "To travel from civilization to civilization here in the Mediterranean you must cross the Mediterranean, and many of those ships didn't make it" "Many of those ships went to the bottom and many of them went into the deep sea." "Between ancient Carthage and Rome, it's 12,000 feet deep." "And no one has ever gone to the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea to look for those ships that sank most surely sank there until now." "It was a decade ago when Ballard and a team of archeologists first surveyed an unexplored Mediterranean region called Skerki Bank." "In 1988, he made a startling discovery nearly 3,000 feet down, the remains of an ancient Roman ship lying untouched for almost 20 centuries" "The find confirmed, for the first time ever, that an ancient trade route had flourished across the open sea, from Carthage in North Africa to Rome." "Now Ballard has returned to Skerki Bank, where he'll attempt to excavate the ancient Roman ship." "Working in close collaboration with archeologists," "Ballard hopes to uncover something nobody has ever seen before." "My greatest dream is that these ships are buried and well preserved, and that their cargo in preserved and, and who knows, maybe there's people that are preserved." "I'm not sure I want to find people, but it would be fascinating." "We won't know until we dig them." "Could there really be the remains of ancient seafarers at the bottom of the Mediterranean?" "It is an extraordinary idea, and to find out Ballard will use an extraordinary machine." "The NR-1." "The big gun of deep-diving submarines." "It is capable of going all the way down to 3,000 feet and staying there for a month." "Built during the clashes of the Cold war, the NR-1 was a crucial weapon in the U.S. Navy's arsenal for 30 years, designed to search the ocean depths for downed planes and lost missiles." "It's the best in the world, outfitted with lights, sensors, cameras, and a mechanical arm for digging, all of it powered by a nuclear reactor which won't need to be refueled for 20 years." "Even now, its sonar equipment is still classified, so sophisticated NR-1 can find a soda can sitting on the seafloor a mile away" "The NR-1 is a marvel, but it's a cramped one." "The 11-man crew shares one bolted-down kitchen table just big enough for two people at a time." "For this mission," "Ballard has added something brand new to the sub's digging arm a powerful suction pump that will dredge the ocean bottom." "Ballard believes the seafloor is sandy and soft, ready to reveal whatever secrets lie hidden underneath." "What is actually down there?" "Will Ballard find the timbers of an ancient Roman trading ship, and the bones of the men who sailed it 2,000 years ago?" "Sunken treasure." "It has drawn people into the seas since the first cargo ship apart on the first shallow reefs." "Relics, gold, gems, pieces of eight it is the stuff that countless dreams and schemes are made of." "Obsessed with the promise of riches, undersea treasure hunters today scour the world's oceans, crowding serious archeologists." "The king of the undersea dreamers and schemers is a stubborn rebel name Mel Fisher." "In his quest for treasure, Fisher let nothing stand in his way, and came to be known as a swashbuckler a very successful swashbuckler." "In 1997, family and friends joined with fisher to mark the spot where he struck gold nearly 25 years earlier" "The reason we picked today was rather appropriate." "It's Mel Fisher's 75th birthday." "Here, here." "Long live the king." "Long live the king" "But the plaque and let me unveil it here take it off." "You notice we have a picture of the Atocha, and it reads:" "In sincere appreciation to Mel and Deo Fisher in their extraordinary efforts in accomplishing mankind's most elusive goal." "They've followed their dream." "In the 1960s, Mel fisher is a man with a mad dream." "Often short of money and deep in dept, he hunts the shallow waters off coast for treasure." "He is determined to find the shipwreck called the Atocha, a Spanish galleon that had sunk in 1622 in a hurricane, reportedly carrying king's ransom in sliver and gold." "Year after year, with the help of his wife and children," "Fisher combs the Florida sea." "Until 1975, when his son, Dirk, finds the first real evidence of the ship nine bronze cannons." "Just a week later, while returning to the site of his triumph," "Dirk Fisher's boat capsizes in the dark of night." "Dirk, his wife, and another diver die tragically." "Fisher is devastated." "But he vows to continue and to honor his son's memory." "The Atocha seems so close." "But she continues to elude Fisher, to tease him for over a decade." "Then in 1985, in 60 feet of water, he finds her, the Atocha, the mother lode of all treasure ships." "It's worth 400 million dollars so far." "And today," "Mel Fisher is counting the riches still out there on the ocean floor." "So right over here about a quarter of a mile is all the kings taxes for five years, all the church collection money from all the Catholic churches in this hemisphere for five years, all the wealthy merchants, there was 28 of them on board" "all their lifesavings for 10 or 15 years in business over here." "They were gonna go home and retire." "They didn't make it." "So there's probably another four and a half billion right over there." "Today, aging and ailing," "Mel Fisher is still bringing up treasure." "These days, it is emeralds." "His passion for treasure has been passed on to his youngest son, Kane Fisher." "Is there more come from their cursor and they want our men for this" "When we found that... ah... we found that court martial referee in our linds send the leve" "I got one..." "Here me go. that ahold a half carat that about 3000.a carat 6000" "You got to be real persistent and not give up, no matter what." "And you got to believe it's there." "And you got to want it bad." "If you want it bad enough, you'll get it." "You just got to keep looking and don't stop no matter what." "I dream about gold and emeralds every night." "And you'll never know what's five feet away from where you left off." "That's what keeps it exciting." "The Atocha puzzle still isn't solved." "I don't know when we're gonna figure it out." "And you just keep going and going." "It seems like you never get done working a shipwreck." "We've been working those wrecks for 34 years now and still finding stuff." "It's exciting." "That's what keeps you going." "Today, Mel Fisher is big business, and almost respectable." "But a swashbuckler makes enemies, big enemies." "Charging that Fisher has seriously damaged the seafloor with his salvaging techniques, the federal government has dragged him through the courts." "And Fisher's had to pay hundreds of thousands in fines." "But Fisher knows how to change with the times." "Conservator Sid Jones, who worked extensively with Fisher on the Atocha, acknowledges the need to protect history." "In the past treasure hunting, back in the '60s or the '50s when it was really getting started, there wasn't much thought given to recording data or preserving the artifacts." "Of course, there was a large emphasis on finding something of value, but we've learned in time that every artifact that comes from these ships has value." "Once you understand the complete picture, the items not only have a monetary value, but they have a historical value as well, which didn't always exist in the early phases of treasure hunting." "After finding and carefully cataloging his treasures," "Fisher sells most of it off piece by piece." "Fisher believes that two billion more is just waiting to be recovered." "Deep in the Mediterranean, the NR-1 is still hunting for archeological marvels with no luck." "After three weeks of trying, the sub and its robot arm have been unable to make a dent in the ocean floor, which unexpectedly turns out to be sticky and thick like clay." "Ballard's master plan is just not working." "Do the wooden hulls of the Roman vessels still exist just beyond reach?" "Or has time stolen them away." "Ballard wonders if he'll ever find them." "The deep sea is always surprising me." "I every time I think I understand it, it throws me another curve ball." "But that's okay." "That's part of it." "I think it wouldn't be fun if it if I knew it that well, and it wasn't full of surprises." "Ballard decides to change the way they use the NR-1." "He sends the sub out to do what it does best, to act as a high-tech bloodhound, to roam over Skerki Bank and to explore as much as possible with its exceptional sonar senses." "Sir, request permission to rig ship for deep submerges." "Rig ship for deep submerges." "Rig ship for deep submerges, aye sir." "Rig ship for deep submerges." "Will the NR-1 discover the unknown, the unexpected?" "Ballard will just have to wait and see" "By working to develop new underwater technology," "Ballard has revolutionized deep sea archeology." "At the same time, he has inadvertently helped to blow the world of treasure hunters wide open" "Now anyone with $150,000 to spare can buy an ROV, a remotely operated search vehicle, right off the shelf and set off for gold." "Still there are only a handful of successful deep-sea salvagers." "Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology, out of Tampa, Florida, is one of them." "Seahawk hit the jackpot in 1989 discovering a 17th century Spanish galleon, heavy with gold and jewels, off the Florida coast in 1,500 feet of water." "Seahawk is looking for treasure again, this time in the seas off the coast of Georgia." "Michael Reardon, Seahawk's current expedition leader, sees himself as a treasure hunter with a difference." "That's one of our goals, is to choose shipwrecks that are archeologically important as well as having a commercial cargo." "So we're playing a fine line between the archeological community and the out-and-out smash-and-grab treasure hunters, which we're not." "Reardon is after a 19th-century paddle wheel steamer, which they've code named The Golden Eagle, to keep her identity hidden from other salvagers." "Now they've narrowed the search to a mere 200 square miles." "It's very difficult locating shipwrecks." "Un, with all the sophisticated equipment we have today, it's still quite a chore." "Keep in mind right now we're 433 feet above the seafloor, trying to put a small vehicle on a shipwreck." "There is no road sign over there." "It has taken Rearden and his colleagues years of hard work to reach this point." "Now, using some of the same high tech tools to Ballard." "They are hoping to claim their fortune 500 feet down." "Yeah." "The vehicle is on the bottom." "Roger that, I copy." "The vehicle is on the bottom." "According to Seahawk, the Golden Eagle, in 1865, found herself caught in a hurricane with nowhere to hide." "They fought the storm for two days all hands and passengers bailing and bucketing water out." "And finally, the seas and the weather calmed down, and it went under." "She went to the bottom, carrying a bellyful of gold coins $400,000 at the time, now valued at 20 million." "Six years of work coming down to a dive with a remote vehicle and, hopefully, when we get in on the site, it'll be the right wreck." "We have a very good sonar images of the wreck, and dimensions are almost exact the same with target vessel a code name Gold Eagle." "...get the target at the right." "As the ROV descends into the glittery murk of the deep sea, project manager Brett Hobson discerns the ghostly outlines of the past." "That's the beautiful part of these old wrecks." "They're little time capsules and nobody's seen it." "And we're just sleuthing through trying looking for clues." "And it you definitely feel like a detective." "So far, everything we have seen is a, telling us it could be the one." "Looking straight down, now, right?" "Yes." "We've got the way over there near the site, OK?" "It's very quiet here and the scenes is very dark." "The light, the first one illuminated when we went down." "It's a very weird feeling." "As the ROV makes a closer pass, they see things that don't match." "Round." "Really round." "Well, we've got some very flat-sided bulwarks here." "See the big cutout going down to the keel, and the on the right?" "I don't know what else it could be." "It looks just like what I had hoped we would not find." "No paddle wheels I know of has a propeller like that." "I think we're in trouble." "It's very disappointing at this moment to be sitting here with a target that we have pinned high hopes on and now have proved that it, it's not the right vessel." "But can't think of the right words to describe how I'm feeling right now." "It's not good." "It takes time and luck to find a pot of gold in a vast, deep ocean." "And Reardon has run out of both." "Reardon abandons the ship to the sea." "There's no profit to be made from the wreck and unlike Ballard, treasure, not history, is what drives him." "In the Mediterranean, the search for history does not let up" "With only a few weeks left," "Ballard and the NR-1 continue to hunt Skerki for new wrecks." "Ballard also deploys Jason, a remotely-operated search vehicle, designed and built by engineers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute." "Archeologists have already spent many hours carefully surveying and mapping artifacts on the seafloor." "Now it's time for Jason to retrieve them." "Guided by the team, the robot vehicle plunges 3,000 feet to locate fragile relics." "Most are roman amphoras." "They're 2,000-year-old terra-cotta containers, the cargo holders of the ancient world, filled with olive oil, dried fish, or wine." "Safely cradling its fragile haul, an elevator of metal and mesh slowly traverses the half mile separating the centuries." "For the first time in 2,000 years, human hands will hold the ancient artifacts." "Next stop for these delicate pieces of the past is the ship's laboratory, where they'll be examined by archeologist John Oleson, expedition archeological director Anna Marguerite McCann, and conservator Dennis Piechota." "Oleson is delighted to find the simple clay pots." "Well, to find several cooking pots together, adjacent to one another, just as they would have been left on a kitchen bench, is extraordinary at this depth 2,600 feet." "Treasure hunters would find little of value here." "Yet to archeologist Jon Adams, a shipwreck is a slice of time unexpectedly preserved." "So when a ship sinks it is, it's a cross section of society structure, contents, personal possessions, contextual relationships, etcetera lost at a single moment in time." "Nobody decides what to take away, what to leave behind when a ship sinks" "It all ends up on the seabed at the same time." "And ships have been described, rightly so in a way, as time capsules." "As they continue to explore," "Ballard and the archeologists are excited to see things they've never seen before." "Skerki is turning into more than they ever expected." "Could you zoom in on that?" "Keep zooming." "Isn't that beautiful." "They've identified the remains of a ship, but it's definitely not Roman origin." "Nobody knows, at first, where it's from" "It's particularly interesting, because it seems to be a relatively small ship, and we don't see cargo, just ballast stones, which help steady a ship when it's not carrying cargo, or if it's a pleasure craft, such as a small personal yacht," "or possibly a type of warship." "Look at the reflection on those glasses." "Keep driving straight." "Don't stop." "It's glasses." "I'm just amazed that there's glasses." "Glass." "Lamps that brightened the darkness centuries before." "And despite thousands of pounds of sea pressure, they have survived unbroken." "Obviously one of our big concerns is that these artifacts are very, very fragile." "Jason weighs 3,000 pounds in air and he's got a tremendous amount of momentum." "And we want to pick them up without breaking any of them." "We've never picked up glass before." "Once the objects reach the surface, they help reveal the nature of the mysterious vessel." "It comes from the 16th century or 17th century, 1,500 years later than the Roman ships when Arab traders sailed these waters." "Look at this." "Could someone hold that open?" "Look at that." "Isn't that amazing?" "They are not gold or studded with emeralds." "Yet for Ballard, a delicate glass object is the real treasure." "They are evidence that Skerki Bank may have been a crossroads for many countries and civilizations." "What has surprised me the most is that we thought this was one event, that this was a fleet of ships, a group of ships that sank together, and it's not at all." "We have ships spanning over one thousand five hundred years of history, if not more." "I am just amazed." "I thought that there would be a ship here and then, way far away, another ship." "And yet, in this particular area, 20 square miles four miles by five miles we have found, now, six ships." "This area is it's sort of like a graveyard." "Ballard is no stranger to undersea graveyards." "He is the man who discovered one of the most famous burial grounds in history." "The Titanic." "The largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built." "Called a "Floating Palace," the Titanic sails April 10, 1912 on her maiden voyage." "She is believed to be unsinkable until her tragic rendezvous in the North Atlantic." "Sideswiping an iceberg, the great ship sinks in less than three hours:" "1,523 people, two-thirds of all those aboard, die in the icy waters." "For decades explorers are obsessed with finding the final resting place of the great liner." "But no one is more intent on the hunt than Robert Ballard, who spends 13 years looking." "Finally, in 1985," "Ballard and French explorer Jean-Louis Michel discover the remains of the ruined giant over 12,000 feet down" "Ballard always treated the grand wreck as a site to be explored." "But he did it with respect." "To him it was a shrine for the dead to remain untouched, intact." "Ballard and the crew even held a memorial service for those who died in the tragedy." "When I found the Titanic, certainly I became emotionally attached to it." "And Jean-Louis Michel, who was co-discover of the Titanic with me, was equally moved." "And I can remember both of us saying, well, we'll never let this ship be spoiled or desecrated." "Ballard discovered the Titanic, but he never claimed the laws of the sea." "Inadvertently, he was opening a Pandora's box." "Once the location of the Titanic became public knowledge, it was a target for salvagers." "1994." "Ballard's worst fears come true." "A new expedition, led by Connecticut businessman George Tulloch, probes the rotting remains of the Titanic." "Tulloch spends tens of millions of dollars to send down robot vehicles and bring up jewelry, eyeglasses, furnishings anything within reach from the devastated liner." "Once Tulloch retrieved the objects, he legally claimed the Titanic for his own." "Ballard never thought this day would come." "I don't think in my wildest imagination did I think they would go out and salvage it." "I mean, I was convinced they wouldn't." "And it just caught me by surprise." "I was really shocked." "And there was nothing I could do about it, because, since I didn't claim it," "I mean, it didn't even cross my mind to claim it!" "Eighty-five years ago this month, the luxury ship, the Titanic, sank on its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic." "Tomorrow, mid-Southerners and people from across the world will be able to see the treasures that that disaster left behind." "Like Ballard, George Tulloch expresses deep reverence for the Titanic's dead." "But he argues that people will better understand the tragedy if they can see the artifacts firsthand." "I think Titanic is by itself capable of saying it is, it is incomparable in terms of tragic suffering for that moment in time." "And I think the objects from that moment deserve to stay with us." "Tulloch says his company will never sell the artifacts, never sell off the possessions of the dead." "But his company will profit handsomely from the traveling exhibition." "I think the blessing we have is that the court says that it's ours the company that I'm the president of." "And we don't feel that it's ours." "We feel that we're the guardian of it." "Tulloch's historian, Charles Haas, does not want to deny ordinary people an opportunity to experience the past." "One only has to look at the museums of the world to see that part of the archeology process is recovering artifacts from the ocean floor." "There are ample demonstrations of Mediterranean vessels of all kinds of shapes having their contents brought up and placed in museums for people to enjoy." "I think it's certainly preferable to have the Titanic's artifacts guaranteed to be placed before the public and teach them, than to allow them to sit on the ocean floor where they'll be ravaged by time and the elements down there," "and accessible, really, by only a very few people." "But to archeologist Jon Adams, there is no scientific reason for Tulloch's excavation of the Titanic." "We know a lot about the Titanic." "We know the names of the people on board." "We know its itinerary." "So the question the potential archeological researcher would ask is, if you actually go and investigate that wreck archeologically, in other words, pull up pieces of the material remains, what is he going to tell you that you don't know already?" "Now, this is further muddied by the fact that there are still people alive whose relatives died on the ship." "Is there any difference between exhibiting a teacup from the Titanic and bringing up an ancient drinking glass from the Mediterranean floor?" "Tulloch doesn't think so." "One of the people that would criticize is in the Mediterranean is sucking up the clay containers from Roman and Greek shipping vessels." "There's something about Titanic that makes people a bit crazy, if they feel that it's theirs." "For Ballard, there is an enormous difference between an archeological expedition and salvage for profit." "Every object that's recovered is recovered because an archeologist, an expert, says, I want that." "Sometimes they would say see that broken jar?" "Pick it up." "Well, how about the unbroken one?" "No, actually the broken jar has more scientific value." "Bring it up." "So we'd bring it up." "And so it's a very big difference between doing something to fill in a missing chapter in human history and doing it for personal greed." "Nearly a decade after discovering the Titanic," "Ballard dove on another grand wreck, the British luxury liner Lusitania." "High-tech treasure hunters had stripped as much of the broken vessel possible looking to sell off the remains." "The salvagers even brought up three of the boat's propellers." "One propeller made it to a maritime museum." "The second was believed to be melted down and recast as a very expensive set of golf clubs." "And the last one met an even gloomier fate." "I can remember going out and trying to find the propeller of the Lusitania and finding it in this junkyard," "just sitting there amongst all this other junk." "And I can remember when we were diving on the Lusitania to have that empty shaft something was missing its propeller was missing." "And if the propeller was in a museum, if it was serving some purpose," "I could understand that, but to find it in a junkyard, waiting to be sold for scrap, you have to wonder, why did you do this?" "What was going through your brain?" "And it had to have been just a lark." "And that's really sad." "Ballard's Mediterranean expedition is down to a precious handful of days." "And now the NR-1 finally pays off." "The sub uncovers two new sites, including the oldest they've found, containing a Roman wreck from the first century B.C." "The evidence is now inescapable." "Skerki Bank has been a major intersection throughout Mediterranean history." "Ballard is anxious to find more." "But the seas suddenly turn dark and angry." "Well, we just found the best ancient ship we've ever discovered and we can't get to it." "We got to get in the water." "We can't get in the water." "They're telling us that we've got a storm that's coming that's going to be sea state five." "This is our second major storm on this trip." "We lost 32 hours to the last storm." "How many hours are we going to lose to this one?" "You know, I want to get down." "I can't get to it." "But there is one way to get beneath the waves." "Ballard decides to send down the NR-1 during the storm." "Once under the surface, the sub will be free of the weather, free to continue exploring." "On board is archeologist Jon Adams, eater to see the new find close-up." "Unlike most deep-diving subs, the NR-1 actually has three windows on its underside." "For Adams, they are portals to the tragedies of the past." "When you're diving, you can't get half-a-mile down, like we are now." "And it's easy to lose sight of the people." "I suppose their the last moments for them on board this vessel, before it sank, must have been the climax of a crisis that might have actually been going on for several hours, as the well organized machine that the ship is gradually breaks down" "and down it goes." "So it's quite an awe-inspiring sight." "In this graveyard of lost vessels, the NR-1 explores the very last site." "The new ship is another Roman trading vessel dating from the first century A.D." "And a cargo rarely seen by scientists." "An orderly pile of large cut stones and two pillars, carefully wrought pieces, like giant toy blocs, still waiting after 2,000 years, for hands to assemble them." "Perhaps they were the pre-fabricated pieces of an ancient building, carved out of an Egyptian quarry, destined for Roman shores." "It will take months, even years, before the archeologists know the answers, if they ever do." "As always," "Ballard is concerned about protecting the sites for posterity." "When we discovered the Titanic, we did not file a claim of ownership." "And I was later told that had we done that, had we recovered one little object, we could have claimed it, and in so doing, helped protect it." "By bringing up the Skerki artifacts," "Ballard establishes his right to claim the sites in court, if ever it becomes necessary." "Oh, this is very heavy very heavy." "For now, Ballaard will place the artifacts recovered at Skerki Bank in the Sea Research Foundation, where they will be preserved according to the highest archeological standards." "Last one." "Together Ballard and the scientists have proven that the new world of deep sea archeology can work wonders." "I feel very good." "I feel that this, you know, really is an historic expedition." "This is the first major deep sea archeological expedition, an incredible team of people from incredibly diverse backgrounds, working together for the first time to try to do something that had never been done before." "I think we have shown that the deep sea is a repository of human history on a scale we've just never comprehended before." "But are the archeological glories of the deep sea at risk from salvagers and treasure hunters?" "Yes, Ballard believes, until they learn to respect the past." "I have no fundamental problem with treasure hunters, if they don't destroy history in the process." "I don't think it's our right to destroy history." "It's our right to find it and document it, but not our right to destroy it." "As long as there are marvels in the seas, people will pursue them." "Some will be treasure hunters, dreaming of gold and gems." "And some will be scientists, dreaming of the astonishing discovery that next awaits them." ""THE NEW CHIMPANZEES"" "Chimpanzees." "So like us, we are both captivated and repelled." "As we move through the looking glass into their world we are transformed." "Chimpanzees, our forest-dwelling counterparts, unite us with the rest of nature." "Eerily, they recall our prehistoric ancestors." "Their social life reflects ours, too." "With paramilitary patrols" "political struggles for power and gain even outright wars." "The tender affection they show for one another their gestures and expressions all seem strangely familiar." "Their invention of tools forced us to redefine what sets humanity apart from the beast." "And now we discover that chimps developed not only tools, but entire cultures which they pass on to their young." "Even medicine seems within their grasp" "And when stalked by death, they seem to feel a sorrow we can share." "With a shiver of recognition, we glimpse the mind of the chimp and realize we are not alone." "Come with us on a voyage of discovery, a journey into our collective past." "We retrace our steps back into the forest of Africa, the ancient homeland our species abandoned some six million years ago." "We left behind, then, our closest relation the one being on this planet most like us." "For there is a mind in the forest, a mind very much like our own," "And it lights the eyes of the chimp." "Chimpanzees share more than 97% of our genes." "And it shows." "The invention and use of tools was supposed to set us apart from the other animals." "But this chimpanzee is "fishing" for safari ants with a wand specially selected and pruned for the task." "Chimps make and use many tools skills passed on from mother to child part of their cultural heritage." ""Ant-fishing" requires real expertise." "Safari ants are a rich food source, but they pack a vicious bite." "With one fell swoop, they're down." "At eight years of age, her daughter still has much to learn." "But someday she will master this technique, not just by trial and error" "but by watching her mother at work." "For the past 35 years, scientists have been watching and learning from her mother, as well." "She was an infant herself when she met her first human being, who named her Fifi." "That human was Jane Goodall." "Jane came to know Fifi, her mother Flo and her entire family quite intimately" "Goodall was the first human to be accepted by wild chimpanzees." "What she discovered revolutionized our concept of chimps and of ourselves." "All across Africa, others have followed Goodall's lead." "A second species of chimpanzee is studied by Takayoshi Kano." "Called bonobos, they're famous for their human like appearance, and the way they substitute sex for violence unlike the more aggressive chimp studied by Goodall and Christophe Boesch." "Boesch has unveiled hunting strategies and elaborate tool use among rainforest" "Chimps leading him to suggest these things might have evolved before our forbears left the forest." "And Richard Wrangham believes he may even have discovered Chimps practicing a primitive kind of medicine." "The new research takes us ever further into the chimp's world, giving us a new perspective on our shared legacy." "Chimpanzees and humans sprang from the same primate stock." "Our paths diverged only some six million years ago, with our human forbears moving onto the plains leaving the forest to the chimpanzees." "But shared characteristics are written deep in both our primate souls." "Chimps, too, are capable of creating distinct cultures." "Various "nations" of chimps cling to life across the African landscape." "Chimpanzees once thrived throughout the forests of equatorial Africa, while bonobos were restricted to the Congo basin." "Today, both species survive in isolated fragments, and are studied at a handful of sites." "Gombe, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, was where Jane Goodall began her study 35 years ago." "Fifi is the only chimp still alive from that time with six surviving offspring." "Freud, her eldest, is now the dominant male in her group, while her younger son, Frodo, is the largest chimp at Gombe and working his way up the male hierarchy." "Freud now leads the tightly bonded party of males that form the core of the group." "Male chimps stay in the group of their birth, and cooperate when there is common cause." "Every week or so, the males form a paramilitary patrol to defend and test the borders of their territory." "In single file and total silence, they follow their leader in search of trespassing neighbors." "Hair standing on end, they listen for the voices of their foes." "Each community of male chimps jealously guard their territory and the females in residence." "A stranger turns and flees." "Though groups of males rarely engage in battle, an individual caught by a border patrol is at serious risk." "In the 1970's, Jane Goodall described a harrowing chain of events." "Her study group split in two, and over the course of four years, the males of one group systematically hunted down and brutally killed every adult in the other group" "chilling evidence that warfare is a painful legacy from our primate forbears." "Gombe's steep slopes the stage for all this high drama tumble from open grassland to riverene forest, from the top of the Great Rift to the blue basin of Tanganyika." "Today, a new generation climbs the path blazed by Jane Goodall." "Charlotte Uhlenbroek is studying pant hoots, the long range calls of chimps." "She follows one male all day, recording the precise time and circumstances of any pant hoot he makes" "Her Tanzanian associate, Issa Salala, follows another male and does the same" "At the end of the day, they will compare their notes, to see whether they've witnessed two sides of a conversation, and to try and decipher its meaning." "The pant hoots are certainly conveying some meaning." "Um, what, what I'm trying to find out is exactly how specific are the meanings of these different calls." "I mean, um, does a particular pant-hoot convey something about a food source?" "Does it say, Come here boys?" "Does it say I'll meet you up in the next valley?" "Or are they directed at family members at allies, at friends?" "Or are they just, generally, Anyone that can hear me, this is my message?" "We haven't got our ears tuned in." "I mean, it's like different cultures very often, it's difficult to hear a slightly different, uh, pronunciation." "So, certainly, we're not hearing all the difference out of these." "Sometimes, there's still just a cacophony of screams out there and you very hard push to pull them apart;" "but, I'm sure the chimps can," "I'm sure they, they know exactly what's going on." "Sometimes words won't suffice." "Males perform displays dramatic performances designed to establish their dominance and intimidate rivals." "Fearless, Frodo sometimes uses the human researchers to enhance his displays." "Even Charlotte has fallen prey." "He'll give me a whack." "He'll just, just kind of add a little flourish, by incorporating me, but it's not directed at me." "He, if he wants to hurt somebody, he could have done it." "Females and their young are dominated by this threat of force." "But when the fruit crop is ample, everyone feasts." "A mother's care is the primary influence on a young chimp's life." "Orphans find life hard." "Mel was orphaned at the tender age of three." "Only the generosity of others has allowed him to survive for six more years." "Still, he seems to miss the affection he would have known within his mother's arms something this little baby seems to understand." "A temporary respite from a life of loneliness." "Beyond the bond between mother and child, political relationships are the life's blood of chimp society." "Even while relaxing, chimps are jockeying for status." "Grooming is, quite literally, currying favor." "Alliances become apparent by observing who grooms whom." "Dominant animals and their allies get the best pickings." "Food is a precious commodity." "They often compress fruit into a pulpy "wodge,"" "something like a tobacco chaw, to extract every last drop of juice." "But the calls of colobus monkeys whet another appetite not so easily satisfied." "When a monkey troop is spotted nearby, the most avid hunter recruits other males to join forces in a hunting party" "Red colobus monkeys nervously watch the gathering of bodies below." "Craig Stanford studies the relationship between colobus and chimps." "He hopes to shed light on the origins of human hunting." "We know that, at some point early in human evolution, meat became an important part of the diet." "We don't understand exactly how that happened was it scavenging meat or hunting meat" "Well, we know that the earliest stage of human evolution happened in a habitat just like this." "East African woodland that's got open areas onto which our ancestors eventually moved and adapted to." "So, to be able to study hunting here is the best way to give us some kind of window onto the earliest origins of meat eating in our ancestors, four or more million years ago." "Frodo is the best of the Gombe hunters" "He's 17 years old and yet he's killed 10% of the colobus population in the last three years." "It's really quite an incredible animal and a great hunter." "That was Frodo." "All the hunters, including Frodo, will try to catch a monkey for himself" "By joining forces, the chimps hope to strand some monkeys in an isolated treetop, with no route of escape except into the clutches of a chimp." "Although we see elements of cooperation at Gombe, what we thing we're seeing mainly is individual, selfish behavior by male hunters, done within a communal setting." "It's a little bit like a baseball game in that baseball is a communal game in which individual players are doing their piece and in the end, the end result is going to be success or a failure." "The more hunters there are, the greater the odds of success and, yet, each individual hunter is performing selfishly." "As the chimps climb up, the colobus retreat to the highest branches too slender to bear a chimp's weight." "The male colobus stand their ground against chimps up to four times their size." "They will even take the offensive momentarily driving the chimps back." "Holding his tail out of the chimp's reach, this male buys precious time for the escape of the females and young." "Excited by the cries of hunter and prey, females appear below." "Eighty feet above the ground," "Frodo displays his daring technique." "But this time, he misses." "With chimps climbing everywhere, one monkey leaps into the arms of death." "Even a rear attack by the defending colobus cannot save him." "The young hunter displays with his kill, but his triumph is short liver." "Freud simply confiscates the carcass." "Freud settles down to share with his allies." "Meat is a valuable currency , a payment for favors." "Females come begging for a taste." "The orphan, Mel, searches for scraps but he's soon sent packing." "Frodo, frustrated and hungry, tries to muscle his way to a place at the table." "But Freud will have none of it leaving Frodo to rage." "His friends rush in to placate him to little effect." "With up to 11 males hunting together, multiple kills are common at Gombe." "As many as seven monkeys have been taken on a single hunt." "Chimps like a little salad with their entree." "They often eat leaves when they eat meat, sometimes eating kinds they never touch otherwise." "On average, the Gombe chimps consume 20% of the Colobus monkeys in their range each year." "A taste for meat begins early." "The free for all approach to hunting works well in Gombe's low and relatively open woodland." "Catching monkeys high in the treetops requires a different strategy elsewhere" "Christophe Boesch studies chimps in the Tai forest of the Cote d'Ivoire prime African rainforest." "Most chimps live in green and shadowy depths like these." "The forest canopy an interwoven web floats over a hundred feet above its reflection in tea colored pools below." "Following his chimps, he's discovered that they're capable of an extraordinary level of cooperation." "I mean, the chimps of the Tai forest or the tropical rainforest." "The canopy layer is continuous, the biggest mammal they hunt, the red colobus, they are about a third the weight of the chimps, what means that when colobus sit on a thin branch, the chimps can't go there," "if he go there, he fall down on the ground." "So, there is a big problem, they have to use, solve it and the only way to solve it here is by hunting in group." "So that a chimp will drive the prey away in a given direction, so that the colobus are constantly moving in this direction, and the driver is really just pushing them in a direction, he's not trying to capture them, that is, he's not running," "you see that he's just walking in a constant direction." "This gives them the constant direction of flight, where the chimps on the ground can then organize them and, if they see that the group splits too much in different directions, you would have blockers, individuals that come up in specific trees where colobus might escape," "sort of keep them in constant direction." "And so that, gives them the possibility for them to make the kind of a trap." "So that, by having a driver behind, some blockers on the side, they just need somebody actually to come in front of them, ahead of the movement, and to then close the trap, if you want." "Only the most experienced hunters play this role." "They have to race ahead then climb almost a hundred feet above the canopy into the crowns of the tallest trees to ambush their prey." "And when they are successful it's incredible because you can have suddenly all the forest is screaming." "All the chimps know there have been a capture." "The chimps have made a capture call, everybody knows 'meat' that meat is so rare, it's so difficult to acquire and it's only because, uh, adult males have worked together that there is meat," "so it's something very special for all group members and there is a huge excitement with that." "It's really a, a team work and it works only if the team wants to work and the team doesn't see each other, it's too dense in this forest." "So, they are always anticipating that the other one will come and often they don't see if they really did their job and it works only if everybody does their job." "This kind of work, on the long run, only if meat is shared according to the work these hunters have been doing" "You see, alpha male is not the best hunter or is not hunting and he doesn't get meat." "You have now an alpha male who's fresh in this position, that is young and he's not always hunting and he can really be there displaying for minutes and not get a tiny piece nothing at all." "This division of the spoils based on right rather than might reveals a different division of power." "Females, who are allies of the hunters also gain access to the carcass" "bringing their infants closer to the meat than the blustering alpha male." "If this complex division of labor and food seems almost human, so does the chimp's love of play." "An infant chimp may seem secure within the bosom of his group, but this is not always true." "A male has stolen a baby chimp from its frantic mother, who follows in desperate pursuit." "In the Mahale Mountains, south of Gombe, researchers have recorded this terrible event not once but seven times and are at a loss to explain it." "The alpha male is now in possession of the screaming infant." "He actually beats back the mother with her own baby." "Both mother and baby are members of this male's group, and the infant was presumably sired by one of the group's members." "Males have been known to kill babies sired by outsiders, but this kidnapper could very well be the baby's father." "The infant is killed by a savage bite to the face." "Group members share in the macabre feast just as if it were a monkey." "Infanticide and cannibalism dark reflections of our common legacy." "But the mirror of our primal past reflects light amidst the dark." "Aggressive impulses may be rooted in our distant ancestry, but so is our capacity for peaceful coexistence." "It is in Africa's dark heart the Congo basin that we find a gentler tributary of our primate legacy." "Takayoshi Kano has led the research here in Wamba," "Zaire, for the past 22 years." "He comes here in search of the second, little known species of chimpanzee." "Sugarcane is a sweet lure used to call down the elusive bonobo." "Dr. Kano, and his associate Chie Hashimoto, have discovered that bonobos are quite distinct from the chimps studied by Goodall and Boesch." "At first glance they are different." "Although they've been called pygmy chimps, they're not smaller, just more slightly built." "Hunted elsewhere in Zaire, they're safe here but wary still." "The sugarcane buffet proves irresistible." "At ease on two legs, as well as on four, they simply rise up and walk so their hands are free to carry the cane." "Eerily, their long, shapely limbs and upright gait recall our own prehistoric forbears." "And their natural two-legged gait is only the first surprise they have in store for us." "An impressively stern female enters and snaps a young sapling." "Once she picks herself up, she does something entirely surprising for a female chimp." "She displays!" "And the males give her sway." "For this is the confident stride of the group's leader, its alpha female, whom Kano has named Haru." "Females play a very different role in bonobo society than they do among chimps." "The reins of power are shared equally between male and female held by a strongly bonded group of high ranking mothers and their adult sons." "The son of a dominant female can take great liberties." "High-ranking females cooperate to dominate adult males and support their sons in social conflicts." "Though tough with other adults, bonobo mothers almost never discipline their babies even when they steal the food right our of their mouths." "Haku, an 11 year old adolescent male, has lost the loving attention of his mother." "As an orphan, he has been forced out, to the very fringes of his own community." "He's old enough now to begin to make his mark but, without a mother's help, his chance of success is nil." "Males stay with their mothers for their entire lives, and rely upon their backing." "With no mother to back him up," "Haku must be wary of Ten, the alpha male." "Ten was just about Haku's age when he first rose to power." "Lately, Haku has begun trying to assert himself." "But Ten had an advantage." "His mother was the alpha female before Haru, and he rose to power on her apron strings." "He will not tolerate any display from this "motherless child."" "Haku has spirit but to no avail." "Ten's annoyance with this upstart is soothed by one of the other high ranking males in a surprising way." "Instead of fighting, bonobos use sex to defuse aggression in this genuine "make love, not war" society." "Bonobos have largely divorced sex from its reproductive role." "Sex is used by all bonobos, regardless of gender or age, to form bonds and mitigate tension." "So Haku is not likely to suffer physical harm." "But without family backing, his bid for status is probably doomed." "Adolescent females must face a still greater challenge." "They leave the group of their birth, and visit neighboring groups in search of a new home for the rest of their lives." "This female, called Shin, has chosen Dr. Kano's group, but she must first pass muster with the formidable Haru." "Female bonobos also use sex to forge strategic alliances with each other." "The males, including Ten, readily mate with Shin." "But Shin must still win the approval of Haru and the other females." "Finally, Shin is embraced by a high-ranking female, who will act as her sponsor to the group." "Shin settles down to enjoy the sugarcane within the circle of her new community." "With equality between the sexes and the substitution of sex for violence, the social lives of bonobos are very different from that of their sibling species the chimp." "While chimps may wage war." "The gentle lives of bonobos show that violence, although part of our primate inheritance, is not inevitable." "Their social lives are fascinating yet it is the mystery and potential of the chimpanzees' inner minds that intrigues us most." "How deep is the mind of the chimp?" "Christophe and Hedwige Boesch have been mapping the chimpanzee mind through an extraordinary kind of tool use." "There was this great day, it was beginning of December in seventy-nine." "I was following chimps through unknown lands," "I didn't know where I was anymore, they were drumming, screaming, I followed with my compass, behind." "And, suddenly, there was great excitement and I was hiding under some vegetation and there was a clearing in front of me with a big tree, big branch sticking out and I heard some banging so I approached without making a slightest noise" "and I hear the chimps coming, they passed me," "I could fee their warmth, I could smell them, they all started climbing up these trees with big tools in their hands and banging on something which I finally realized they were cracking nuts." "The sight is unforgettable something of prehistoric times, the image of these great animals using these big tools." "To crack nuts, the chimps seem to have grasped the concepts of hammer and anvil." "The anvil is a tree root; the hammer, a wooden club, or sometimes even a stone." "Although it may seem effortless, it takes a decade of practice before the chimps develop real expertise." "When you look at these images of chimps cracking nuts, it looks terribly easy and people don't realize how difficult it is." "I made an experiment:" "I asked a primatologist who came to visit me here," "I gave him some nuts and a nice place in the forest and I told him," "yeah, crack some nuts now." "You will see how easy it really is." "It took him 25 minutes to open the first nut." "He took him 40 minutes to eat three nuts." "And you can imagine, if you really have to fight 40 minutes for three nuts it's not worth it." "I remember the very first time I saw a female mother who was looking at her five year old trying to crack a nut and she was fighting with a very, very strange formed club and she was changing her position all the time" "and changing the grip of the hammer and didn't succeed." "And she was starting to whimper, not knowing what to do." "And then the mother came, the infant immediately stepped a bit backward and the mother took the hammer and in a very slow motion move, she turned the hammer and just the move, this turning the hammer, took her a whole minute," "so it was even slower than I did, and as to emphasize, that's the way you should hold the hammer and she cracked for some nuts for her and then left and the infant tried again with exactly the same grip as the mother." "She still had some trouble to crack the nuts so she changed position, changed the place of the hammer, but kept all the time exactly the same grip as the mother showed her." "So, that's really correcting an error in an infant which is really the highest form we would consider of active teaching and that just was kind of a surprise for the first observation in animal, for the animal doing that." "A young chimp's tutor is its mother, who teaches it most of the skills it needs to survive." "The Boesch's research has shown that female chimps are the most expert and dedicated tool users, which may shed some light onto the origins of tool use among our own ancestors." "Already here we have a slight sexual difference in favor of females in that they crack more then males." "Another technique to crack nuts up in the trees is much more often done by females and they have to anticipate bring the hammer up on a branch in the tree and then they have to handle it up there," "hold the nuts in a fruit in the hand, hold the hammer, hold the baby and still crack somehow and eat these nuts." "And then we have a nut species Panda nuts, very hard, you need stone tools to open it." "Stones are a rarity in the forest, again, this technique is more often done by females." "It could make you think that maybe tool use in our ancestors was also a female activity and the first tool users and tool invertors may well have been females." "Females also transport learned skills between chimp communities when they move from group to group at adolescence." "But, sadly, as chimp populations become increasingly isolated this kind of cultural exchange will come to an end." "Only recently have researchers all across Africa realized that some of the differences between their study groups were cultural due to the invention and passing along of learned traditions." "In the Kibale Forest of Uganda," "Richard Wrangham has found that it is culture which enables some chimps to eat foods others must forgo." "So, here we got a safari ant nest and in five years we have clear evidence that the chimps here do not every eat these, but in Tai and in Gombe this is what they do." "A wand onto the nest and then sweep the ants up, biting, no neat test, you've got to be pretty quick and you've got to know what you're doing." "Now, having just tasted them," "I can understand why chimps like to eat them, but, on the whole, I'd prefer not to, myself." "Every chimp group has its own unique tool kit." "Only at some locations have they learned to use wands to capture ants or termites." "At Tai, they use bone picks to dig out the marrow, just as our earliest ancestors did." "They will also use a wodge of fruit as a sponge, to help squeeze out every trace of sweetness from the pulp." "While at Gombe, as well as at Tai, chewed leaves make a sponge to quench the thirst at shallow puddles." "We have only begun to realize the depth of the traditional knowledge generated by the various "nations" of chimps." "One puzzling cultural practice is the eating of hairy and unpalatable leaves" "They ball them up in their mouths, forcing them down whole." "Well, here I've got one of the leaves that is swallowed hole by chimpanzees." "This particular one is the one that the chimpanzees tend to swallow, at dawn, why they do it at dawn is not certain." "Well, one possibility is they're helping to remove worms." "This is so new that we don't even know the name of this." "We think it's part of a tape worm and it looks as though, when the chimpanzees have this tapeworm, they swallow the leaves in order to expel the tapeworm." "Scientists are now searching for drugs among the plants they believe chimps take as medicine." "We have long tested human drugs on chimps someday we may test drugs discovered by chimps on ourselves." "Chimpanzee cultures also mold their methods of communication." "Besides their calls, they use a symbolic language of gesture." "Some gestures we hold in common a kiss soothes a little domestic discord." "Others we seem to recognize two males clasp hands and raise their arms in a salute as they begin to groom one another." "Other gestures, such a leaf grooming, we are only beginning to decipher." "When a chimp wants to be groomed, they pick a leaf and just, uh, run the thumbs over it, sometimes bring a mouth to it and then drop it." "What does this mean?" "Well, in functional terms, it means nothing, but it's a symbol." "It's a symbol for the chimps." "What it means to them is I would like to be groomed or sometimes it means I'm interested in you." "If these gestures are truly cultural, we should be able to see them evolve as fashions change." "Christopher Boesch believes he has." "Leaf-clipping is a behavior where they take a leaf, makes a specific sound and in Tai they do it before displaying." "The interesting thing is that, two years ago, chimps in Tai started for the very first time to leaf clip when they were making a resting period They were asleep, they would change position, would do some leaf clipping, and sleep again." "A new context of use." "And, interestingly the individuals have started to use the leaf clipping in this new context were younger or were females." "There is much we could learn from the chimps, but we are running our of time." "Poaching for meat and the logging of forests are driving them towards extinction." "Today, Jane Goodall is fighting to save them and their heritage." "We're finding that across Africa where different researchers are studying different chimpanzee groups, there are different traditions, different cultures and the tragedy here is that the chimpanzees are disappearing so fast, not only, eh, is it sad that the individuals are going," "but their whole cultures are going, too and that's the area where we have most yet to learn." "The group studied by Christophe Boesch is disappearing fast." "The cause is a mystery." "Only rarely does he find any evidence of their passing." "It's only in one of the oldest female we had." "And she was found by the group actually dead on the floor with her last baby dead and the oldest juvenile sitting nearby watching." "The losses are tragic for the species, and for all involved." "I have lost, in the last six years, about half of the chimps." "There were 80, there are now only 40 left." "So, it's a dramatic reduction and, but for us it's depressing, yeah, sure" "Predation and disease have always taken their toll, but death at the hand of man may prove too much to bear." "We have some clear proof that poachers are killing chimps here in our group." "And I have the feeling that the toll they pay to poachers is just too much and it's this part which is the causes of the decline of the population and, if that is true, it's very worrying not only for the study group" "but for all the chimps in this park." "Each death is felt dearly." "Yet it is when chimps are forced to confront death, that we seem to catch a glimmer of the chimpanzee soul." "What is striking is that they feel compassion." "I mean, they really feel the individual has something not normal and that they need help." "In one case, I observed a fresh juvenile being killed by a leopard." "So, you have an individual that looks actually very similar to a wounded one but he's dead and it was very surprising to notice that the chimps reacted totally differently, as if they knew this individual is not just injured," "this individual is dead." "And all the adult males stayed around the body for all this time, groomed it a lot what they would never do with a live juvenile and, in a kind of a way, asked for the other group members to show respect for the dead." "And the only young that was authorized to come to the body was the younger brother of the dead." "So, yeah, it makes you think what they feel and how they understand." "We can only guess what this female, called Castor, understands about her own tragedy." "Her infant is mortally ill." "Since her baby is too feeble to cling to her, she resorts to carrying it with her foot as she climbs in search of the food she needs to survive." "Still the baby clings to life." "How do we really realize that somebody's dead?" "How would we realize if we didn't have all the science and all these things." "So, I think, in a way, they certainly know that something, special is happening" "that they would like to fight against it, but that they can't and they realize it after a while." "Finally, the emaciated form of her infant lies deathly still." "Then with a gesture so human it's painful to watch, she seems to bid her baby farewell with a kiss." "If chimps share with us the emotions that bring us to tears, perhaps they share others, as well." "Jane Goodall wonders." "Do chimpanzees feel perhaps a sense of awe, similar to that which must have lead to the first religions of our ancestors worship of fire, of sun, of rain, worship of rushing water that is always coming," "always going, yet always here?" "Face to face with our nearest relations." "Our mutual family history is glorious and tender, brutal and shocking." "As humans, though, we are distinct, and must choose how our own nature is expressed." "But it's clear that, for good or ill, we are part of nature just another of its promising but flawed creations." "Through the study of the chimps, science, which once strove to set us apart from the rest of nature, has now brought us back within its fold discovering this mind in the forest." "What grabs you is when you feel that there's an animal out there that has a human like mind that can solve problems, that has extraordinary social relations and has got this beginnings of the diversity of culture." "It's when we see into the mind of the chimps that we get that strange tingle" "What it means in a deep way is that as long as these chimpanzees are surviving," "humans are in touch with their ancestry and we know we're not completely alone" ""Asteroid:" "Deadly Impact"" "When he first came to the high desert," "Gene Shoemaker wondered if he was too late." "Was the West all explored, the battles fought, mysteries solved?" "But geologists are taught that truth lies in the rocks and dirt underfoot." "Step by step he pressed the Earth for its secrets." "What Gene Shoemaker found has made the ground itself less firm" "Planet Earth not nearly as safe as we always assumed." "It's like being in a hail of bullets going by all the time." "They are bullets." "They're bullets out there in space." "These things have hit the Earth in the past;" "they will hit the Earth in the future." "It will produce a catastrophe that exceeds all other known natural disasters by a large measure." "Before Gene Shoemaker, few people gave it much thought" "One of the most powerful forces in the making of our planet, and perhaps the deadliest hazard we face" "This is the story of impact!" "March 23, 1993:" "Great telescopes around the world aimed their sights deep into the night" "They were peering far into space searching for traces of the Big Bang at the outermost reaches of the universe." "But at one tiny telescope on a lonesome peak in California, three old friends were rummaging in a part of space much closer to home." "Five, four, three, two, one, I'm on..." "Gene Shoemaker, geologist, was looking for rocks not on the ground but in the sky." "That night he and his team found something astounding a portent of another kind of Big Bang." "Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 first appeared as a faint smudge in space." "It grew into a blazing streak of light" "By the time it smashed into Jupiter every major telescope in the world was watching." "The impact unleashed fiery plumes large enough to incinerate the Earth." "And it raised a terrifying question could it happen here?" "And what if it did?" "When we get to something in the ballpark of a mile in diameter hitting the Earth, it'll produce a catastrophe that exceeds all other known natural disasters, by a large measure." "In fact, the energy delivered would be like taking all of the world's nuclear weapons, putting them all in one pile and setting them all off at once actually, it'd be a little bit more energy than that." "Once, scientists had said it could never happen." "Now many were shocked;" "some talked about the end of the world." "If something sneaks up on us then there's very little we can do." "In fact, today, the most likely situation is zero warning." "The next impact of a mile-sized object will probably happen without any prior discovery of it at all." "The first thing you will know is when you feel the ground shake and see the plume of fire coming up over the horizon." "He'd been taught cosmic collisions are inconceivable." "But Gene Shoemaker likes to make up his mind for himself." "It was a path that I personally traveled in small steps." "I had to teach myself that the, the fact, if, if one really pursues the observations, the world is telling us that big things do fall out of the sky." "What the world told Gene it said most eloquently at Meteor Crater." "The gaping hole in the Arizona desert, nearly a mile wide, spoke of sudden disaster catastrophe falling from the sky with deadly impact." "There were similar craters in other places." "But most geologists said they were the remnants of ancient volcanoes, formed over eons of time by constant, predictable forces." "Nothing this big happened quickly or suddenly." "Fiery rocks falling from the sky have long been believed to predict disaster not cause it." "Meteorites have been feared as omens and cherished as relics around the world." "For thousands of years they were our only way of touching the sky mysterious messengers from space." "The intrigue they held for ancient oracles still captivates modern scientists." "It was inside a meteorite - a Martian rock that landed in Antarctica that researchers discovered the most compelling intimation ever of life beyond the Earth." "Meteorites are chunks broken off larger celestial bodies." "When they crash through Earth's atmosphere, most lose speed and power." "So even big ones, measuring up to 10 feet across, usually don't cause damage on a large scale." "Still, if you or your house happen to stand in the path of a stone from space repairs will be necessary." "Tons of meteorites rain on the Earth every day most smaller than a pea but that's enough to light up the night." "This fireball was seen by thousands of people along the eastern seaboard in 1992." "Many were attending high school football games, and some had brought their video cameras." "A piece of the meteorite touched down in Peekskill, New York and cratered Michelle Knapp's 1980 Chevy Malibu." "I was sitting in my house watching TV and the next thing you know," "I heard this loud noise, sounded like a car accident." "It was a chunk of stone speckled with iron, about the size of a football." "They told me the rock was estimated at 4 billion years old which is about as old as the Earth itself and that's exciting." "The Peekskill meteorite did make the local news, but like most meteorites, its impact was minimal." "In 1972, a rock the size of a bus blazed so brightly it was seen in daylight and was filmed by a tourist near the Grand Tetons." "There was no impact, confirming what most scientists thought that Earth's atmosphere would incinerate even giant boulders, or break them into relatively harmless pieces." "What was it, then, that violently shook the Earth on June 30th, 1908?" "A blinding fireball exploded over a remote part of Siberia." "As far away as England an eerie glow lit up the sky." "Two decades passed before scientists could mount an expedition to find the site where the blast occurred." "It was an arduous trip to an uncertain destination;" "but the scientists knew they had arrived when they saw the staggering devastation on the banks of the Tunguska River." "Over hundreds of square miles the forest lay flattened in vast concentric circles." "The scientists suspected the destruction had been caused by a huge meteorite, an asteroid." "They set out to unearth it." "Long months spent draining the swamps and digging into the wasted land yielded nothing." "For years to come," "Tunguska would remain one of the great mysteries of the Earth." "At about the same time, on the other side of the globe, a similar mystery haunted this giant bowl in the Arizona desert." "In the early 1900s Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer, found little chunks of meteorite around the crater." "He drilled the crater floor in search of an asteroid but came up empty handed and deeply disappointed." "Geologists weren't surprised, but years later, a young Gene Shoemaker was intrigued:" "what had happened here?" "It did seem like a giant wound in the Earth." "It appeared as though the ground had been dealt a devastating blow." "Massive beds of rock that once lay flat were broken and thrust violently into the air." "The rim was strewn with giant limestone boulders that could only have come from deep beneath the surface, flying hundreds of feet in the air." "But like all geologists, Gene had been taught that even the most dramatic landscapes took shape at a creeping pace" "Meteor Crater could not in fact be a meteor crater." "People say, Ah, yes, meteorites fall out of the sky." "We accept that." "A chunk that big" " I accept that that falls out of the sky." "But it was a, it was a, an intellectual leap to go from a fist-sized stone to a mountain, and, and have a mountain come down out of the sky." "As an undergraduate student, I didn't learn anything about impact." "It wasn't part of geology at that time" "Geologists are the kind of folk that like to say," "I'd like to see what the process is." "I'd like to see it happen then I'd believe that it's happened in the past." "Gene Shoemaker was one geologist who saw something happen that would lead him to question the fundamental principles of his profession." "He was in his twenties when he took on a job at the top secret Nevada test site." "Here he witnessed a new mechanism by which craters could be made..." "It all takes place in utter silence, until finally, the shockwave..." "BAM... and then it's followed with, with roiling thunder." "It's throbbing, I mean, you can feel the sound in your whole body, uh, and, and it's, that's a very dramatic thing to watch, too." "Never before had so much energy been harnessed or released." "Could nature do the same?" "This crater had not taken shape over thousands of years." "It was created in an instant." "And it reminded Gene of another place he'd seen." "It was the largest crater, at the time formed by a shallow, underground explosion and so, I could go directly from this to Mother Nature's crater." "My hunch was that I would go have a look at Meteor Crater and see what the structure was because it had never been thoroughly mapped and described." "And so I didn't know what the structure was until I went." "By having mapped this first, I went to Meteor Crater and, voila." "I was astounded that all of those parts of the crater that I could see in the little nuclear crater were reproduced here on a giant scale, including, right down to the pieces of melted material." "Around the crater Gene found tiny beads of glass rock that had been melted and sprayed out;" "he'd seen these too in Nevada." "Some rocks would reveal a newly discovered mineral... coesite" "An intensely squeezed form of quartz that no volcano is powerful enough to produce." "In this microscopic sample was encoded a story of violent devastation wrought by a 100-foot asteroid, hurtling so fast the atmosphere could not slow it down." "Gene Shoemaker had found the fingerprint of impact." "It was the first conclusive proof of an impact crater on Earth;" "an affront to centuries of scientific conviction, and a challenge even to the professor's devoted students." "Dr. Susan Kieffer once studied with Gene in graduate school." "One day, Gene said I'm going to show you what an impact is." "So, he grabbed a, a fairly large rifle and we..." "This is my favorite rifle This is it?" "I don't want to see this rifle again, after what happened that day." "Do you recognize this, Sue?" "And then Gene told me to shoot the, the rock... which I did." "What happened is it just kicked..." "The rifle came back and hit me in the nose, and broke my glasses and he looked at me and said," "Haven't you ever fired a gun before?" "And I said, No!" "It's all right." "Here's Annie Oakley... with her nemesis" "The ideas that Gene was proposing not only made individual people uncomfortable, but, at a gut level, whole schools of academic thinking." "That was the battle that had to be fought against." "And he, I feel, really did it almost single-handedly." "That's a nice lookin' crater." "Sue's lesson was simple but revolutionary a relatively small object traveling at great speed will blast a huge hole upon impact, and, at the same time, almost completely disintegrate." "The mysteries of Tunguska and Meteor Crater were solved." "It came from over there, from that direction." "You look up in the sky and we see a brilliant fireball, that's being made by the asteroid or meteorite as it's coming in, and it gets brighter and brighter and brighter." "Gene's explanation of Meteor Crater was controversial;" "but the reason he studied craters in the first place seemed down right crazy." "When he was 20 years old, more than a decade before the space program" "Gene had a hunch America would soon go to the moon." "And why would you go to the Moon?" "To study the Moon." "And who do you send to study the Moon?" "You send a geologist." "Right?" "I was going to do whatever I could do to stand at the head of the line when the time came to be the geologist chosen to go to the Moon." "Can you imagine any greater adventure?" "I couldn't." "I thought, well, I better learn something about craters." "Oh, Gene, look, that's good." "Uh, I, uh, oh, look at that, I'm ready." "That looks so nice and slimming..." "Gene dared confide his dream only to one person" "This was, uh, 1951." "When we first met, I just thought that she was the neatest gal I had ever met." "That's it." "His wife Caroline would become his lifelong accomplice in dreaming and scheming." "What attracted me to you..." "What's that?" "I think it's your enthusiasm about things." "He gets this big smile and, and you know he's just full of joy and enthusiasm for what he's talking about." "Gene has a way of getting what he wants." "We choose to go to the Moon." "We choose to go to the Moon..." "In the early sixties, it seemed Gene might actually get what he wanted most." "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy," "America was going to the moon, and he was already an expert on craters." "There were many thousands of them on the near side of the moon alone." "Gene believed they could yield tremendous knowledge about the role of impact in shaping not only the moon but the Earth, as well." "The Moon is this slate that nobody's been erasing." "The record that we're seeing of bombardment, all of those craters that we see on the Moon, are a record of the, of the flux, uh, of the hail of bullets coming by that's hitting" "both the Earth and the Moon." "If we want to see what a very fresh, big impact crater looks like when it's first formed, you look at the Moon." "That guy up there." "The people who ran the space program didn't look at the moon that way." "They were pitted in a furious race;" "what mattered to them was getting there, not what could be learned once we arrived." "There's no question that NASA managers, NASA engineers and, indeed the astronauts themselves, were not particularly interested in doing science in space." "Uh, that was not their mission, they had signed up to, to, uh, beat the Russians to the Moon and the farthest thing from anybody's mind was actually doing some science and collecting some samples." "But, nevertheless, eh, even though he was considered, uh, probably a weirdo by, by some in the engineering community," "Gene did not give up in trying to, uh, push this idea, uh, that doing geology on the Moon was important." "But geology on the moon was a hard sell." "Few scientists thought Gene was right about the effect of impact on the Earth, much less the moon." "Many believed lunar craters too were old volcanoes." "Before Gene got to ride a rocket, he took a fateful trip in a more modest vehicle." "The Shoemakers were on vacation in Southern Germany." "Gene was eager to come here to visit the Ries Basin a 15-mile wide depression that was universally believed to be an ancient volcano." "Gene and Carolyn went strolling through the medieval town of Nordlingen in the heart of the crater." "And there Gene came upon the largest geologic sample he'd ever found:" "St. George's Church, 500 years old, was built of local stone." "Just looking at the rock made me stop and say," "Whoa!" "Wait a minute." "What's this?" "I think I know what this is because" "I've seen something like that before." "The walls were riddled with glass formed from shocked and melted rock." "Gene didn't need a microscope to know they contained coesite." "He was, was thrilled beyond words and, and I was for him." "Just to go along and just admire all, all of this evidence for impact and, and the formation of a giant crater and here it is in, incorporated into the cathedral and it was just, just a very strange and interesting feeling and," "and saying, Ah, yes, you know, we know what this is now!" "The Ries is nearly 20 times as big as Meteor Crater." "It was the first big impact crater on the Earth which we could prove was an impact crater and that just changed the whole ball game." "This was impact on an entirely different scale brought on by a mile-wide boulder that drastically changed the landscape 15 million years ago." "Suddenly, giant circular scars of impact were recognized all over the globe" "some were 200 miles wide." "Now we really understood there were big craters made on the Earth and, of course, that meant those big craters we saw on the Moon which I was also pretty sure were of impact origin now we had a way of saying, yes, it's happened on the Earth," "the proof is here, but they're also on the Moon." "Gene had finally earned the credibility to convince NASA and the United States Geological Survey to establish a program aimed at doing geology on the moon." "Gene was appointed to run it." "Dr. Shoemaker, as the man in charge of the Astrogeology Program, what are you telling the astronauts to look for when they start exploring the Moon?" "Small features of the Moon that will be close by around the landing site." "And, of course, we also want them to bring back a large number of samples." "Gene brought the Apollo astronauts to his favorite hole in the ground to teach them geology." "This seemed to me like a natural place to train astronauts who were gonna go to the Moon and look at craters." "In fact, the best place in the world for it." "You really get a feel of what a crater's like, and everyone of them wanted to get on the Moon, so they wanted to have a good idea of what they were gonna get into." "For added realism, Gene's team blasted a replica of a lunar crater field not far from his home." "There, he participated in the design and testing of many of the vehicles and tools used on the moon." "Gene's youthful dream was becoming a reality." "His vindication as a scientist and his greatest adventure would soon be won." "17 seconds and counting..." "guidance internal 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9..." "Engines on, 5, 4, 3, 2, all engines running." "Launch commit." "Lift off, we have lift off 49 minutes past the hour." "17, Houston, you are go for orbit, go for orbit." "Uh, no, I've, I, I'm not going to make it to the Moon." "Just at the critical time when I could have been standing at the head of the line to go to the Moon, my adrenal cortex quit, my adrenal glands stopped functioning and I knew that that would, uh, uh," "that would just knock me out of the running - medically." "When you had that idea in your head for 15 years, it doesn't go away right away." "Gene remained with the lunar program as one of its chief scientists." "His dream of doing geology on the moon came true vicariously;" "his friend and protégé," "Dr. Jack Schmitt, flew aboard Apollo 17." "As Gene watched, his theories about the effects of impact on the moon were confirmed live on TV." "...job to get down and back up." "They just hit rocks, so they'll come out easy..." "Every rock you looked at." "You pick up a, a rock or look at a, at a large boulder and there's a little pit, uh, there that's caused by a micrometeor impact." "It became clear that the dominant geological process on the Moon was, if I go down there, that thing's about 15 feet deep..." "I was immensely pleased and proud of Jack, but of course, I was wistful, too." "I couldn't help feeling that there, but for that failed adrenal gland, go I." "I'm getting in your back here." "Got it?" "I used to have dreams that I, that I got there." "You know, I got to the Moon." "I was there doing geology." "Even after, you know, for a long time." "I had to go do other things." "His feet would never leave the ground, but Gene was intent on making his own way into space." "He'd found the scars of impacts that happened in the distant past." "Now, he'd be one of the very first to find out if there were bullets out there that might strike the Earth in the future." "It was an obscure, lonesome effort and involved frequent nightlong drives to an observatory far from home." "But, in time Gene found a new collaborator and companion for the road" "a housewife who decided she, too, would become an astronomer." "For Gene, it was a journey from deep disappointment to new dreams and adventures." "I had some real misgivings because I thought this means that I'm going to go to Palomar and I'll have to stay awake all night long and observe." "Because I'd never stayed awake all night in my life." "It was kind of a surprise to me to discover that I really loved the observing." "I could, if I was very busy, stay awake all night." "In the early morning hours the Shoemakers would wend their way up Palomar Mountain, home to what was then the most powerful telescope in the world." "The 200 inch Hale was the temple of deep space astronomy it was called the Big Eye, and was not designed for observing asteroids." "In fact, before Gene came along, no one here or anywhere else had ever systematically searched for asteroids that could hit the Earth." "Down the slope from the Big Eye was a tiny telescope that was virtually unused." "The Little Eye was just what Gene needed." "This is kind of suited to our, our style, a level that we, we call it our Mom and Pop operation and that's basically the way we've done it." "It turned out to be a perfect instrument for our purposes." "Compared with the giant up the slope, the Little Eye did not look far but it looked very wide." "It was ideal for patrolling the inner solar system for stray bullets." "Most astronomers saw the solar system as a harmonious arrangement of planets orbiting the sun." "They paid little attention to the hundreds of thousands of asteroids chunks of iron and rock left over from the formation of the major planets." "Most of them orbit harmlessly between Mars and Jupiter the Asteroid Belt." "But if an asteroid veered out of its normal orbit into one that cuts across the path of the Earth, it would be anything but harmless." "Most scientists believed that asteroids almost never became Earth-crossers." "Were the Shoemakers searching for something that wasn't even there?" "The answer would not come easily." "Asteroids look so small on film that Carolyn had to look for them with a microscope." "Even then, they would be almost invisible amid the stars." "But slowly, they emerged from the dark tiny dim blurs." "Since they're so much closer to Earth than the stars, they seemed to streak through the sky." "In 1989, other astronomers captured the first ever close-up of an asteroid using a giant radar dish." "This huge rock was more than a mile across." "Later radar images showed even more ominous asteroids mountains tumbling through space." "Toutatis... a giant boulder doing 70,000 miles an hour regularly cuts across the path of the Earth." "951 Gaspara first of only two asteroids ever to be actually photographed is as large as the island of Manhattan." "243 ID A is more than twice as large." "Like Gaspara, it isn't an Earth-crosser." "But if it were, it could blast a hole as wide as the state of Texas." "Gene didn't make it to the moon, but together with Carolyn he's discovered scores of new celestial bodies." "Between them they've found hundreds of asteroids and dozens of comets, and helped transform the map of the sky." "The solar system would never again seem stable or predictable." "The harmony of the planets turned into a threatening cacophony." "What we've been able to show, using this good old telescope right here, and by seh, concentrating on, uh, surveying a near region around the Earth, we've been able to show that the Earth revolves around the sun" "in its own swarm of asteroids." "These things will hit the Earth in the future, they have hit the Earth in the past." "These are the Earth-crossing asteroids." "In the 1980s, new evidence emerged of the terrible threat impact poses to life on Earth." "Deep beneath Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula is a 190-mile-wide crater, made by a 100 million megaton impact." "It dates to the time, 65 million years ago, when two thirds of all living species, including the dinosaurs, disappeared from the face of the planet." "On March 22nd, 1989, an asteroid came within six hours of striking the Earth, but was not detected until much later." "Other asteroids have come even closer." "One would have hit the Earth if it had come just four hours sooner." "I don't think that people took the notion of a, a, of the hazard of, of impact seriously, uh, in the early days of our, of our work here." "Uh, first of all, it took a while for the news to get out." "The news that would change everything began to break on the night of March 23rd, 1993." "The Shoemakers and their collaborator," "David Levy, decided to take some pictures of the sky despite persistent clouds." "This was not a good night for observing, much less for making historic discoveries." "Five, four, three, two, one, open." "Open." "I'm on." "Okay, you're on it." "I could hardly see the star I was supposed to be following, because Jupiter was so close that the glare of the big planet was, was swamping the eye piece." "45... plus 37, 59..." "Okay." "plus 37, 59..." "Okay." "I started to examine the film, looking at all the things that I knew would be there, the ghost image of Jupiter, and the spikes from, that we see on the films when we've got a very bright star or a bright planet." "And then I started to go by something and I thought," "That's a galaxy?" "No, that's not a galaxy." "And here was this most unusual looking object." "And I thought, It looks like a comet." "It looked like a comet all right, except it was a comet that was stretched out." "Our films don't have enough resolution to really see what the details are because we're covering a big area of the sky and so the comet's actually quite tiny." "The team called their friend, astronomer Jim Scotti, who was manning a more powerful telescope, and asked him to check their finding." "He promised to call back as soon as his telescope could be repositioned." "Well, by now, it's about two hours that has gone by and then" "I decided the time had come," "Jim had had enough time to take a look and I called Jim Scotti and he answered the phone in a voice that I had never heard before and I said, Jim, are you okay?" "and he says," "Uhhh, yes." "David, the sound you heard is me trying to pick my jaw off the floor." "And I said, Do we have a comet?" "And he said," "Boy, do you have a comet." "And he started describing what he saw and I was repeating everything to the two of you and every sentence:" "It had these five tails, at least five discrete nuclei, but, he said, I think there's more." "And, meantime, that music, we had, we had just had Beethoven's First Symphony, it was playing in in our room, just happened to be on, and the Fourth Movement started and it starts with this very" "slow little introduction." "As, just as, as Jim said, Boy, do you have a comet, then the symphony went into its full motion," "And then, right at that point, Jim says, Boy do you have a comet." "The comet essentially an asteroid with a long tail of dust and gas had been torn into several pieces by Jupiter's gravity." "Of course the big kicker, the, the big news that it was going to hit Jupiter, didn't arrive until about six weeks later." "Here is this man looking at a computer screen and it's saying," "Your comet, with your name on it, is going to collide with Jupiter in 14 months, and Gene was sitting there and he was looking at it, and his, he was shaking his head and he said, I don't believe it," "I'm going to see an impact in my lifetime," "I just don't believe this." "Now the question is what would, what was going to happen, were we going to have a big show or was it going to be something that no one could see?" "Even as Shoemaker Levy 9 approached Jupiter, some eminent scientists remained skeptical it would make much of an impact." "Many astronomers believed the giant planet would swallow the comet into its vaporous depths." "On July 16th, 1994, when the comet's leading fragment was due to cross Jupiter's path, scientists and reporters gathered at the headquarters of the Hubble Space Telescope." "Gene found an empty office to call for news from distant ground-based telescopes." "We have heard that there have been some observations from Spain..." "Dan?" "Gene Shoemaker here... fine." "in which a..." "I want to hear this... uh, what we're, the question is, uh, how soon will Brian be..." "There would be no reliable data until the Hubble Team downloaded the day's first images of Jupiter." "See, there's nothing in the sky..." "And they did, in fact, detect the plume..." "In the auditorium," "Gene had little more information than the gathered reporters." "we should all take these reports very carefully and cautiously at this time, they need to be confirmed." "Look!" "Oh, my God!" "Look at that!" "The tiny spot on Jupiter was in fact a fiery plume about half the size of the Earth." "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Look!" "I'd like to introduce Dr. Heidi Hammel" "We just downloaded the first two orbits which I have a raw laser printer output, this is as raw as it gets." "Um, we can actually see the impact site itself." "And I'll remind you, this is for "A" the first one, not the brightest one, so we're gonna to have a really exciting week." "I think we're very, very privileged tonight to see an event that's, that's not once in a lifetime, it's, it's once in a millennium." "Gene's vindication was a long time coming now it arrived with a million megaton bang." "Few scientists have seen their ideas demonstrated on this magnificent scale." "That was one great moment in our lives." "And it vindicated what Gene had been trying to tell everybody all these years and, that it, eh, the, eh, the SL 9 impacts spelled it out in black and white that:" "Gene, ya got it right." "Over the next week, some 20 separate pieces of the comet rained spectacular devastation on Jupiter." "If anyone had any lingering doubts that collisions take place and that they can have frightening consequences, watching those events on Jupiter convinced us." "To actually finally see an impact on a planet was a, was crossing a threshold." "That event finally convinced most of my geological colleagues that, yes, there really are large impacts, not just on Jupiter, but on, on the Earth, as well." "Could you imagine what SL 9 would have looked like, in its 21 pieces, if they had been near the Earth?" "Had any one of the fragments of SL 9 hit the Earth, uh, one of the bigger fragments, we, we probably would have had a dark cloud covering the whole Earth in the time of an order of an hour and a half." "And we saw that the clouds on Jupiter lasted for months, as fairly dark clouds." "What about even before the cloud, what about the rising temperatures with the in-falling material?" "What about before that?" "If people knew that a fragment was going to hit the Earth," "I wonder about the mass hysteria that could have resulted." "Where would you go?" "People would say, Where can we hide?" "What can we do?" "You would feel as though you were in an oven turned on to broil." "An enormous hole has been gouged in the Earth, then finally the sky will just turn black, absolutely, completely black, everywhere, all over the world." "Impacts today are a risk, they're a hazard, they're something we need to protect ourselves against." "If we don't learn how to protect ourselves against impacts then on the long term, we are likely to be wiped out by impacts." "If it happened to the dinosaurs, it could happen to us." "In SL 9's wake, scientists and weapons experts from Russia and the United States" "met at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory." "You've got fires." "You've got massive tidal waves." "So, we have a very complicated..." "The topic was the end of the world." "Multiple mechanisms to produce extinction." "You're gonna have everything burned down around you..." "Asteroids big enough to kill a quarter of the world's human population collide with the Earth about twice in a million years." "Smaller bodies, capable of wiping out a major city, could hit once every two to three centuries." "it's going to glow for about a half an hour and set everything on fire around you." "Then it's going to be pitch black." "One thing that makes the comet and asteroid impact hazard so important, relative to other hazards, is that it is the one hazard that is capable of killing billions of people, of putting at risk our entire civilization." "We could have any number of storms or earthquakes or volcanoes and they can do terrible damage locally, but they do not put the entire planet at risk the way an impact does." "Incredibly, impact is the one great natural disaster which we may be able to prevent." "Many of those gathered at Lawrence Livermore were veterans of the Cold War, and already knew something about confronting assault from the sky." "These bombs obviously, of course, characteristically of about a hundred times their mass in a, in chemical high explosive." "In this case, a nuclear explosion, you blow off some material, you get a reaction..." "If an approaching asteroid or comet is detected in the near future, the scenario might involve the most powerful long range rocket in the world the Russian Energia." "Tipped with an accurate American warhead, the rocket would be detonated off the surface of the asteroid, nudging it out of its Earth-approaching orbit." "But before you launch a missile, you need to know where to aim." "Only a fraction of large Earth-crossing asteroids have been located." "This may prove to be the greatest oversight in human history." "I can tell you with confidence that for the 10% of the big ones that have been discovered, there is no danger, but I can tell you nothing about the 90% that we have not yet discovered." "So, yes, we understand the general nature of the risk, but we have not yet taken any real concrete efforts to protect ourselves or even to look and see if there's anything headed our way." "More telescopes have joined the search" "Even the U.S. Air Force has contributed technology and expertise." "Big science has taken up the hunt for asteroids." "Still, the most experienced team in the business is leading the charge from a tiny new telescope in their backyard." "Both Carolyn and I, we're eyeball scientists." "We like to look at the sky." "It's kind of an old fashioned brand of science - eyeball science uh, eyeball observations but there's still, there's still a window there for the eyeball scientist who's got the right idea, uh, to go and make wonderful discoveries." "Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker should know it's the story of their lives." "Now, they await with all of us the next messenger from the stars." "The question is not if, but when..." "The rainforest canopy floating a hundred feet above us has been an unknown world - until now" ""Yes!"" "A new breed of explorer is now venturing onto the green roof of the world" "going where no one has gone before." "We join the adventures of these Heroes of the High Frontier" "In the darkest depths of the darkest forest, the crew assembles." "The pioneering spirit harnesses modern technology as a courageous band sets off on a voyage of discovery." "A flame ignites a quest to a place of our world, but, until now, always just above our reach... the rainforest canopy." "Almost a century ago explorer William Bebe wrote:" "Yet another continent of life remains to be discovered, not upon the earth, but one or two hundred feet above it." "There awaits a rich harvest for the naturalist who overcomes the obstacles and mounts to the summits of the jungle trees." "The rainforest canopy is home to more living creatures than anywhere else on the face of the earth." "Many are born here and will die here, too, rarely, if ever, touching the earth." "Their lives, their whole world has been a mystery." "The canopy is the last biological frontier on earth." "Biologist Terry Erwin began exploring this world just 16 years ago." "Since he had no way to reach the canopy, he brought it down to earth." "Clouds of insecticide welled up - and a rain of entirely new and unknown creatures came down." "So many creatures of so many kinds, it seemed there were 20 times as many species on this planet as we had thought." "The canopy was a hot-bed of evolution." "Just what was going on up there?" "There was only one way to find out." "A combination sling-shot, fishing pole is Nalini Nadkarni's own invention for shooting a line a hundred feet up." ""Yes!" "Oh, my God."" "Accuracy is essential." "To get that all important first line up over a limb, a climbing rope is hauled up to which she attaches her Jumar ascenders." "Ever since her first climb, for 19 years," ""I realized, at that moment, that first rope climb," "I knew where I was going for the rest of my life," "I was going up in the canopy."" "It takes hard work and courage to conquer this new world" " but when they climb, Nalini and the other canopy researchers are also returning to a very old world." "Our ancestors lived in trees." "Perhaps, we are returning to a place buried deep in our primal memory." "A place of primal fears." "Braving these dizzying heights the first canopy researchers discovered a complex web of life." ""We really felt like pioneers, we felt like we were frontiersmen, going to where no human had ever gone before and, and everything we picked up was something new and something different" " new species, new interactions."" "Nalini learned that giant forest trees actually sprouted roots from their uppermost branches." "Jay Malcolm found that animals believed to be extremely rare, were actually common creatures if you knew where to look for them." "Meg Lowman investigated the chemical warfare between animals and plants," "a source of the canopy's bewildering diversity." "And Neil Rettig spent months up a tree, unveiling the life of one of the world's most magnificent eagles." "Working in the canopy has taught them that this is where the rainforest lives where light is turned into life." "The canopy is a powerhouse of the forest." "It's where sunlight changes into stored energy." "It's where trees reproduce, where the flowers and the fruits are, where pollination takes place, where fruit dispersal takes place so I think it's really where everything's happening in the forest." "This is where the birds feed." "You can see where, where all the, the bark and the, um, eh, the epiphytes have been sort of knocked off because this is where the birds themselves and the monkeys come and feed on these big fruits." "I can't believe I'm in top of this tree..." ""Today I got up much higher than I ever had before," "I was able to shift the ropes around and I was actually able to get to the very top of this tree." ""God!" "Wow!"" ""I can see forever!"" "Just 25 years ago, up the rivers of Surinam and Guyana, came an expedition in search of one of the canopies greatest predators." "It was the personal quest of a 23-year-old Neil Rettig." "He and two friends sought to witness and film the life of the Harpy eagle." "The Harpy's life in the wild was practically unknown until Neil strapped on spikes like telephone repairmen use and jury-rigged a reinforced cable big enough to wrap around the huge girth of a rainforest giant." "Somehow, they scaled one hundred and fifty feet to reach the nest." ""When I think of the crazy things that all three of us did (Wolfgang, myself, and Allen), it's unbelievable." "I mean, we're lucky we're still here."" "They built a blind from which they could watch the nest." "They used a ladder to climb from the crown of one tree up into the nest tree itself." "While exposed outside the blind, they were under constant scrutiny and frequent attack by the most powerful eagle in the world." "When the blind was complete, Neil looked through his lens to meet the fierce gaze of the Harpy for the first time." ""The harpy eagle will, will always be my favorite bird of prey." "I feel like I'm part of it or it's part of me."" "After a month of observation, a tiny ball of fluff appeared between the mother's powerful talons." "Neil was the first to ever glimpse, not to mention film, a newly hatched Harpy chick in the wild." "But his exhilaration almost proved fatal." ""I had just finished spending three days in the blind watching the chick hatch and I was completely overwhelmed with, with excitement;" "and I started climbing down, using the belts and the climbing spikes, and I was just thinking about other things," "I was daydreaming," "I was so excited that the chick had actually hatched and I filmed, in the early morning when the chick was a tiny little baby, and I just, I remember leaning backward" "and just falling into space - and it was like slow motion." "I remember falling down and trying to grab a hold of the, a palm tree, crashing through the vegetation and landing on my back and then, then I couldn't breathe." "And I looked up and, uh, Wolfgang, my, uh, associate was coming out of the blind and the eagle came and ripped off a piece of his pants and flew away with it" " he shot back up in the blind and he said he'd come down in the dark." "Well, finally, they, they, he climbed down and they carried me out in the stretcher and, one week later, I was, I was climbing again, that's how crazy I was."" "Protected by luck and a motorcycle helmet," "Neil suffered only a few broken ribs from his 55 foot fall." "He continued to film, capturing the parents hunting like sharks among the green billows of the canopy." "Sloths are a favorite prey of the Harpy." "Usually, they eat part of the carcass before bringing it to the nest" " but, this time, dinner is delivered alive." "Neil, who had survived a fall from five stories, was felled by a tiny insect bite." "Infected by a parasite, he was forced to leave." "I knew someday I had to go back and complete the entire study and actually document what happens when that young Harpy makes its first flight." "Neil was one of the first to venture up into this high flung new frontier but he and other pioneers will soon climb into canopy's all over the world." "The rainforest canopy is like an eighth continent, an archipelago of floating islands that encircles the globe in a belt above the equator." "Originally, it covered 12% of the planet's land area, but more than half of it has been destroyed by logging and agriculture." "Yet, it remains home to more than half of all the animals and plants living on earth." "Canopy explorers are discovering that each island of rainforest has a nature all its own." "Malaysia's canopy is one of the highest and most unattainable in the world." "Like giant lollipops, trees rise a hundred feet before spreading their crowns into the clouds." "From miles around, animals are gathering here for a great event, unique to Southeast Asia's rainforests." "They are coming for a feast." "In the course of a just a few weeks, most of the trees here will bear fruit, laying out a banquet in the sky." "The seeds of the tallest trees helicopter down a hundred feet into the canopy below." "From there, it's another hundred feet down into the dark." "Orangutans make an endless pilgrimage through these tree tops in search of food." "They travel alone except for females and their young." "They maintain detailed mental maps of huge tracks of forest, memorizing the location of each favorite fruit tree and the shortest routes between them." "While still a baby at mother's breast, an orang begins a lifetime of learning just where and when to find ripe fruit." "When a wave of mass fruiting hits a valley, it gives the orangs something even more precious than food" " a chance to socialize with their own kind." "Infants get a rare chance to play with other youngsters their own age." "Long thought to be loners by nature, we now know that orangs enjoy each other's company" " when there's enough food to go around." "Even the big males are welcome to join the party." "Gibbons, too, relish the sweet, abundant fruit." "Orangs would usually threaten a gibbon who dared to eat in the same fruiting tree, but with plenty of food of around, the little ape can eat his fill in peace." "Then he swings away with effortless grace, hundreds of feet above the ground." "Orangs are too heavy for such acrobatics." "Instead, they descend to the under story, where they put their weight to good use." "Still 50 feet above the forest floor, they sway back and forth on the pliable saplings, working their way between the taller fruiting trees." "Moving among the trees presents special challenges for all canopy creatures especially those without limbs." "A snake requires exquisite balance." "This one is quite comfortable with life out on a limb." "The flying snake glides from tree to tree." "It flattens its body into a ribbon- shape, swimming through the air." "It's not easy to escape such a talented predator." "Ribs raise wings, as a warning at first." "Flying dragons soar through the open colonnades of a Malaysian forest, just one leap ahead of their predators." "These are the gothic cathedrals of the canopy, but there are places that resemble the tangled webs of jungle lore" " the lush forests of Costa Rica." "Here, epiphytes, the plants growing on the trees, may weigh more than the foliage of the trees themselves." "Woody vines called lianas knit the canopy together providing by-ways for all sorts of creatures and making a prehensile tail a useful and common adaptation." "The booming calls of howler monkeys attract the attention of a passing jaguar." "For canopy animals, it is the forest floor that is a dangerous place." "A jaguar would love to snatch a howler, if only it could reach their treetop refuge." "The close-knit canopy is a green roof shading the forest floor." "A dark netherworld populated by the undead." "Most seedlings that sprout here slowly starve in the endless gloom." "But vines make their own luck, they flail about following every sunbeam to its source." "Some climb using tendrils that coil tightly, pulling the plant skyward." "Others take a more direct approach, wrapping their stems around any support that leads up to the light." "When they finally break out into the tropical sunshine, they turn the power of the sun into the stuff of life." "No sooner is light turned into substance than it is consumed - transforming the sun's energy yet again." "Orchids don't have to fight for their place in the sun, they start life up here already." "They are epiphytes, so-called air plants, which thrive without any connection to the earth below." "But one infamous plant makes the most of both worlds." "The tiny seedling sends down roots." "Just thin strands at first, heading a hundred feet to the forest floor below." "Once it connects with the earth, it gains new power." "Its leaves compete for light with the host tree, while its roots multiply and merge into misshapen limbs." "They wrap around the trunk of the host in a deadly embrace, constricted and starved of life, the host usually dies and rots away," "while the roots solidify into the trunk of a forest giant with an empty heart." "The strangler fig may be a killer, but it also provides food for countless animals and support the thousands of epiphytes in lush hanging gardens." "Epiphytes are the particular passion of Nalini Nadkarni." "She practically lives up here when she's working." "She studied the cloud forest and each day is reminded of how it got its name." ""I think one of the most amazing feelings of working in the canopy is when the mist and fog and cloud roll up the mountainside and it hits the forest, it hits the tree in front of you," "and you suddenly realize you are being enveloped in a cloud."" "This daily misting provides just what epiphytes need." "Mosses catch droplets drifting past." "With each drop, they gather a bit of dust, some from as far away as the Sahara Desert." "Soil builds up and the hanging gardens grow in size and diversity, building more soil." "A kiss from a desert wind, blown wet and warm feeds the forest." ""I suddenly feel like this is what an epiphyte feels like, this is the nourishing mist and fog that's coming through." "So I feel it on my face, feel it on my hands and I understand better what an epiphyte is."" "Nalini has discovered that the moss mats, that blanket the oldest branches, play a vital role." ""These mats are just full of roots, they sort of knit the soil together..." "I'll just finish clipping these last roots, and then the moment of peeling them away." "Watch this." "And what you see is this soil and it's just riddled with roots." "It smells great, it's like this very earthy smell, which is kind of funny when you think of where, where we are, but you can see that the branch is actually not all that thick." "Um, the branches always look a lot more thick when they have their moss mats on them." "So there are lots of invertebrates, insects, earthworms that live in this material high, high above the forest floor, you have to get up here, you have to look in these plants, you have to look in this soil to figure out, really, what's happening," "what's going on up here."" "Nalini's perseverance and her daring led her to a remarkable discovery." ""A really amazing thing about these moss mats are that they can actually nourish the tree itself, they can feed the tree." "Some species of trees can put out roots from their own branches and trunks that go into this soil and take in food and water." "And, so, the epiphytes are getting support, they're getting their place in the sun, but the tree is getting nutrients and water from the mats that the epiphytes make." "So, it's kind of like the epiphytes are paying rent to a landlord and it's just a really amazing situation."" "Suspended in three dimensional space, these hanging gardens are like coral reefs in the sky" " creating opportunities for a whole community of life." "They provide good pickings for a Kuati." "Flowers are nectar, even ants for protein, even ants for a protein snack - with a bite." "But ants are just the appetizer." "Fruit is the main course." "Following its nose, the Kuati is led to the very summit of a great tree." "Monkeys with prehensile tails are better equipped to feed up here." "Though the Kuati is no canopy specialist, he is not to be denied." "He searches for the ripest fruit." "His cast offs feed a band of Kuati females and their young on the forest floor." "The seeds would never survive beneath their parent tree anyway, where specialized fungi and insects wait to prey upon them." "Animals connect the sun lit canopy with the earth below in many ways." "Flowers are designed to attract animals, but leaf-cutter ants are not invited guests." "They strip palatable blooms en masse." "Millions of ants working together collecting the bounty of the canopy and sucking it down into the earth below." "Whether it's carried or just float down, it is rapidly recycled back into living matter." "Fingers of slime mold spread over the leaf litter, breaking it down into plant food." "The gossamer threads of fungi help the roots of trees absorb 95% of the nutrients - building forest giants that rise up into the light." "The leaf litter hides many miracles." "A strawberry frog guards its eggs which develop in a puddle of rainwater." "As soon as the tadpole hatches, she moves it to a more secure nursery, encouraging it to wriggle up onto her back." "No bigger than a thumbnail, she undertakes a phenomenal commute, heading straight up." "She climbs in search of a bromeliad - an epiphyte with a rosette of leaves that channel rain and mist into a central reservoir." "This tiny ocean in the sky comes complete with miniature sea monsters" " mosquito larvae, feeding on rotting debris." "This debris also acts as fertilizer for the plant." "She drops her tadpole off in the first empty reservoir she finds." "But her work is not yet done." "She has other tadpoles stashed in other bromeliads, and every two days she makes the rounds." "Her offspring's telltale vibrations signal her to lay another egg - but this egg isn't fertile, it's dinner - it's her tadpole's only food - a brilliant strategy for survival until a thirsty coati happens by." "It takes researchers years to discover such elaborate strategies and just seconds for a coati to send them astray." "The sky-high world of epiphytes is made up of millions of such little life and death dramas." ""I love epiphytes." "I don't know why I do." "I think it's something about they live in the treetop, and ever since I was a little kid, I like climbing trees... it was a world I could escape to, no grown-ups, no grown-ups climb trees so it was just my little world" "where I could go up and read and..." "It's been 17 years and every time I put on my Jumars and go up a rope, it's that same feeling of exhilaration, of what will I find today, what will I learn today..." "The rain forest canopy yields its secrets to only the most determined explorers." "It took Neil Rettig fourteen years to return to Guyana and his work with the Harpy eagle." ""I think what's at the center of the connection with the canopy is, for me, a link back to my youth, when I was a 23-year-old wild adventurer." "Just the odors of the flowers and bird calls open up all these memory banks that had been shut down for all those years - it was unbelievable." "It was just like I had never left."" "A Harpy's calls help lead Neil to its nest just a few miles from his old study site." "Neil was now one of the world's best wildlife cinematographers but he was as thrilled as ever to set his eyes on a Harpy chick." ""It was like having a reunion with an old friend."" ""Possibly, one of the new adults was the baby from 1975."" "For six months, Neil kept his vigil." "As he watched the chick grow, he wondered if he would finally capture the maiden flight of a harpy on film." "Every day brought Neil and the chick closer to their goal." "While Neil watched the chick prepared, exercising and testing its wings." "Then one day, Neil turned the camera on just in time." "A long awaited milestone for the chick, its mother, and perhaps most of all - for Neil." "Such long term dedication has coaxed a few of its secrets from the canopy, but as the light of a day fades, a cloak of mystery descends." "The next frontier in canopy exploration beckons out of the gathering dark." "Few have dared to climb into this high flung wilderness at night, when it comes alive with a whole different community of animals." "They come out to reap the bounty the canopy built by day." "Bats are the unsung heroes of the rainforest." "They hover over the branches, sniffing out the ripest fruit." "Only just able to carry its prize, it flies to a roost where it can feed in safety." "Bats play vital roles in pollination, insect control and the reproduction of trees." "The bat eats the sweet flesh of the fruit but discards the seeds." "They fall far from their parent tree's shadow, where they have a better chance of surviving." "Animals help many canopy plants reproduce." "Epiphytes face unique challenges spreading their seeds around the hanging gardens." "One solution, a sticky coating that keeps the seeds from falling to the forest floor and attracts a particular species of ant." "These ants are strong enough to win the tug of war with the plant." "They carry them to their nest but they eat the nutritious coating leaving the seeds to sprout." "The seedlings grow turning the nest into a garden overflowing with the ants favorite food plants, some of which are never found anywhere else." "A canopy mouse quenches its thirst in a mouse size bromeliad." "Mice eat epiphyte seeds and are, in turn, eaten themselves... by Boas." "It's flicking tongue tastes the victim's presence as it follows it out onto the thinnest vine." "Sometimes, there's no where to go, but down." "It spreads its limbs like a parachute." "The mouse crashes through foliage hurtling six stories down." "It weighs so little - air resistance slowed its fall enough so that it landed safely, one of the benefits of being a small creature in the canopy." "Small animals thrive in rainforest canopies the world over." "In the Great Amazon Basin, they could travel from treetop to treetop for thousands of miles." "The woolly opossum was thought to be one of the rarest of the Amazon's creatures." "Its prehensile tail is naked at the tip to give it a strong grip." "They are built like little wrestlers." "Babies cling tightly to their mothers, who grasp the thinnest of lianas with powerful feet." "Those without a family in tow have more freedom of movement." "They are all searching for sweets." "They drink nectar and eat fruit." "The mother must seek her dinner elsewhere." "Using aerial roots as a ladder she follows another sweet scent." "So sweet is this perfume it distracts the opossum from its meal." "The aroma of ripe banana proves irresistible." "Mother and offspring are lucky to have missed this treat." "The wooly opossum finds the morning light unnerving." "By now, it should be hidden in the darkness of its lair." "But it has no need to fear, the trap was set by biologist Jay Malcolm who is exploring the night-world of the canopy with some startling results." ""These wooly opossums are the single most abundant mammal in this forest, more abundant than any other kind of rodent, more abundant than any kind of monkey, or any other kind of mammal and that was a total surprise." "People knew that there were things up there, we just didn't know how many or where, so, when we started doing this, everything we found out was brand new." "Gaining access to the canopy and putting traps up in the canopy has really allowed us to enter a new world, a new realm of, of research." "And, we, uh, know almost nothing, there's new species of small mammals, so, there promises to be a lot more surprises."" ""Off you go."" "From museum rarity to common critter - they just had to look for it in the right place." "To service as many traps each day" "Jay learned an ancient technique of tree climbing." ""This is called the picoino or foot-belt, it's the same method that the Amerindians have always used to climb up palm trees." "The way it works is what you're really doing, you're sort of pushing out against your heels, so you're really sort of turning your feet into a pair of pliers."" "To climb seven stories in a manner of seconds, a feat that requires incredible strength and stamina." "Should he lose his grip, even for an instant, he would crash to the ground below." "Having attached a small pulley, he raises a simple and ingenius frame for his trap." "Once it is in place, he slides down like a fireman on a very long and rough pole." "Then he simply raises his trap into position where it will await an overnight guest." "Jay finds that he captures opossums only within the undisturbed canopy." "Canopy animals are stopped short where the fabric of the forest is slashed by a clear-cut." "Thirteen years after the chain saws stopped, this place is still a no-man's land, a desert." ""An area that's been cut over and used, and you know what it's like walking down there, it's hot, full of all sorts of burrs and messy stuff, from a life standpoint it has been, basically, trashed" " there's not much left there, it's just a, a tragedy."" "Despite efforts to save it, the rainforest is being consumed at an unprecedented rate, lending an air of urgency to canopy exploration." "But in the face of such a huge problem, you have to dream larger still." "A lighter than air arc ascends with the dawn." "Suspended beneath is the canopy luge, a sled bearing excited researchers on the trip of their lives." "Among them, is one of the founders of the field," "Meg Lowman, who has explored canopies the world over, but, today, she goes where no one has gone before." "Their mission - to trawl the green sea of the canopy and to get some inkling of the biological richness it contains." "right or left... exactament..." "The blimp maneuvers the luge carefully." "Sidling up to a tree crown a hundred and fifty feet in the air." "As soon as they are close enough to reach, nets are wielded frantically." "...encore" "They scoop up insects and collect whole branches in an all out effort to gather as many samples of canopy life as quickly as they can." "It would have taken weeks of difficult and dangerous climbing to get the samples they amass in just one morning on the luge." "The luge is part of Operation Canopy, which invites the best researchers, the world over, to join its venture." "They also use the canopy raft, a web-like platform dropped over the crowns of several trees." "Walking atop the swaying trees is like walking on the face of the sea." ""I guess I feel really special walking on the tops of trees and I really tiptoe all the time because I'm frightened of disturbing these poor little buds or snapping a branch, but, in actual fact, with the raft and its wonderful mesh floor," "our weight is dispersed really nicely"" "Meg's work in the treetops has shown that over millions of years plants evolved poisons to defend themselves from being eaten, while insects evolved ways to overcome these toxins." "Rain forest plants and insects are waging a bio chemical war." "The arsenal of poisons and antidotes created by canopy plants and animals are a pharmaceutical gold mine." "They are the stuff that medicines are made out of." "Who knows what cures to what dread diseases may be hidden among the samples collected by the crew of Operation Canopy?" "Each evening the best canopy scientists in the world share a meal along with their ideas by swapping techniques, samples and data they are beginning a new era in canopy research." "They have blazed a trail into the last biological frontier" " opening this eighth continent to exploration." "Upon their shoulders the next generation can scale new heights." "Today, canopy tours offer a thrilling new perspective on life." "But the greatest thrill is realizing we are part of this beautiful world floating above our own, for good or ill." "The same pioneering spirit that brought up into the canopy has given us the power to destroy it." "The first canopy explorers have given us a unique opportunity to save this amazing world." "We have a choice." "It is up to us which path we take." "Central Africa. 1915." "A small band of British soldiers marches through the jungle on a bizarre and secret mission." "In Europe, the first World War has become a murderous stalemate... but the clash of kings and empires reaches far beyond Flanders " "to a pivotal naval battle for control of the Great Lakes of Africa." "In command of the British expedition is Lt." " Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer" " Simson... an officer whom the fates of war will label a hero, a madman, and a god." "June 1915." "Under the guidance of South African John Lee, 400 African laborers are hacking a highway through the unbroken rain forest" " 150 miles of manual labor in the tropical heat." "Lee's bush road leads across jungles through swamps and over mountains to the Great Lakes of Africa" " Tanganyika, Victoria, Nyasa." "Two already are in British hands" " but Tanganyika is the jewel of the German empire" " a prize that London desperately needs to turn the tide of the African war." "420 miles in length," "It is a vital lifeline needed to arm and supply a jungle army." "Whoever controls the lake, controls the surrounding territories." "One man rules her waters." "Kapitan Gustav Zimmer of the Imperial German Navy commands a powerful marine unit of 150 men" " his fleet of three heavily-armed gunboats has obliterated the puny armada of the Belgian Congo" "...- to win the battle for Central Africa," "Zimmer's navy must be defeated." "Yet for the job of destroying him, the Royal Navy selects a former military surveyor who has never led a brigade into battle." "Lt." "Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson is an old Africa hand who has spent the first year of the war behind a desk in London." "Then chance, not choice, gives him an opportunity for greatness." ""Why did we go to Tanganyika?" "Because the Germans with four ships on the Lake" " were commanding the lake, and by means of these steamers were able to supply their troops on the frontiers with provisions and munitions." "It was important that this should be stopped."" "Spicer's orders are almost surreal" " London wants him to tote his own toy navy from England to Central Africa" "a pair of 40-foot motorboats" " to be dismantled and freighted to Cape Town" " then tugged overland by steam tractor to the Congo" " a trek of over nine thousand miles" " with Zimmer's gunships waiting at the other end." "Spicer assembles the team." "Former architect of the Rhodesian railway," "Paddy Wainwright is the chief engineer" " I'm tropical disease specialist," "Dr. Hother Hanschell, will be the Medical Officer." "As a casual friend of Spicer's," "Dr. Hanschell knows Spicer is not your average leader." ""Spicer-Simson was a vain man worthy of ridicule and on occasion, great admiration at the same time." "This paradox was only possible because of the very nature of Spicer-Simson's own behavior, which was quite often bizarre."" "28 men will make the journey - they are gunners, mechanics, and engineers" " not one has ever served under Spicer." "The plan to take Tanganyika from the Germans is a simple one." "Get to Tanganyika, and destroy the German fleet by stealth and surprise." "But their own warships are converted supply boats." ""The two boats taken to Africa by the expedition were... not at all suitable as they were, but they were the only ones obtainable at the time." "My orders were to get away at once."" "Spicer gives his mahogany warships names befitting pleasure boats" " HMS Mimi and Toutou are quick" " top speed, 20 miles per hour." "Spicer tests them on the Thames" "and has a 3 pound Hotchkiss gun mounted in the fore and a.303 Maxim in the rear." "June 15, 1915." "Stage One." "The Naval Africa Expedition leaves England on a 6,100 mile voyage for the Cape Colony." "While Spicer and his men enjoy a placid southbound cruise," "John Lee's army of African tribesmen hacks its way north." "By early July, at Cape Town in British South Africa, the caravan transfers from ship to train." "July 19, 1915." "Stage Two." "The entire expedition consisting of men, boats and hundreds of boxes of supplies are moved north by rail." "At Fungurume, in the Belgian Congo, they will meet up with Lee." "Two thousand, seven hundred miles of European-built railways pierce the heart of a colonized continent." "After two weeks," "Spicer and his men reach the village of Fungurume as expected." "Morale is high." "But then, just as his expedition is about to begin its overland odyssey," "Spicer fires the man who blazed the trail." "He dismisses John Lee, and offers no explanation to his men." "He alone will lead his men across the burning plains" " into a jungle few Europeans have crossed since the days of Stanley and Livingstone." "To prepare the boats for their waterless voyage, engineer Wainwright orders them stripped of all fittings" " propellers dismounted... the axles of the carrying wagons reinforced to carry the eight and a half-ton loads." "While final preparations are being made, a critical member of the team arrives by a rather odd means." "Ex-policeman, Arthur Dudley has pedaled 200 miles over jungle trails to reach the expedition." "His role, to organize and lead the African laborers transporting the supplies." ""Dudley was Royal Navy Reserve." "He'd served in the Boer War, now he was fooling about in Rhodesia doing transport work." "But he was capable, just the sort of fellow for that." "Just enough sea knowledge and just enough military training to manage well."" "Two months after leaving London," "Spicer's navy-on-wheels is joined by the steam engines that will pull the boats through the forest." "The tractors are built for level country furrows" " but ahead of them lie some of Africa's most forbidding peaks." "But this strange caravan is being shadowed by Zimmer's African spies " ""we knew that the English intended to challenge our supremacy of the lake." "We also knew that the Belgians were building a boat." "Where they were building, or wanted to build, was unknown."" "If Spicer and his men make it to Lake Tanganyika, Zimmer vows, they will not leave Africa alive." "August 18, 1915." "Stage Three." "150 miles of some of the least forgiving terrain on Earth await the British troopers" " a wild land of disease and sudden death." "At first light, Geoffrey Spicer leads his men out of camp." ""There were no roads such as we call roads in this country, and except for about 25 miles the whole route ran through the thick African forest."" "The dry season will last only a few more weeks" " then the autumn rains will come" " if mud swallows the tractors," "Spicer's mission... and his only shot at glory - will be over before it begins." "The steam tractors are in the lead," "each hauling one of Spicer's little ships, and ten tons of wood for the insatiable engines." "Four hundred Africans... men and women" " carry water, food, ammunition, medicine" " a procession that stretches for nearly two miles." "On the first day, at the first river crossing," "Mimi and her tractor nearly tumble into the current." "It is the first test of Spicer's leadership." "Undaunted, Spicer has chief engineer Wainwright come up with a plan." "Wainwright has more trees cut, reinforces the bridge, and the convoy plods forward." ""The work was completed at 2:30 p.m." "and the trailers were towed across and a start was made along the road at 3." "good progress was made along the road and at 6 p.m. a camp was formed for the night."" "Spicer knows there are more than 140 rivers and gorges still to cross." "The path they are following continues uphill for 60 miles, then they reach the Mitumba Mountains, a 6,400 foot range." "Day by day, mile by mile, the former desk officer grows more confident" " his boasts more outrageous..." "the men love him." ""...he appealed immensely to the ratings..." "They all appreciate a commanding officer who's a bit mad, eccentric." "And he was obviously mad." "Therefore he was marvelous." ""I'd say he could not refrain from telling absurd stories about his prowess at shooting the lions he'd shot," "although I'd never heard of any lions in Gambia."" "The caravan survives on the skill of its African hunters, living off wild buck and guinea fowl." "As for water," "Hanschell and a team of Africans find the nearest water source." "Much of the water is for the steam tractors." "The rest is filtered, boiled, then filtered twice more and used for tea, cooking and the next day's water rations." "The steam engines are insatiable consumers of water and firewood" " advance parties prepare storage caches of lumber." ""The journey through the Bush was divided up into three 50-mile stages, and at the end of each stage was built a depot to keep the sun off the provisions and ammunition."" "The Englishmen, many of them new to Africa, fear lions and crocodiles," "but Doctor Hanschell's duty is keeping the men healthy in a region plagued by unseen killers." ""One very valuable thing was the paymaster." "He began to get some boils on his shoulders, and out of the boils popped worms, big maggots rather." "The men all saw this, I showed it, and I said, "Now see, here you are going through a country where the danger's from insects, not from wild animals but insects." "You see what they can do."" "From the spies, crude telegraph lines convey fragments of news to Kapitan Zimmer" " he believes that Spicer has come to help the Belgians build new warships at Lake Tanganyika..." ""Around Lukuga and south of there by Kalemie there seemed to be only defensive building going on."" "But, about Mimi and Toutou , Zimmer knows nothing." "While the confident Germans wait, the English plod on... one agonizing mile at a time." ""Three and a quarter miles a day was the average for the boats." "Occasionally we did rather more, and on one occasion we covered 14 and 3/4 miles, but there were many days when we were lucky if we did a mile and a half." "One day, we did only three-quarters of a mile."" "By late August, Spicer knows he needs help if he is to outrun the rains." "At a village called Mwenda Makosi, the British commandeer 42 oxen to help drag the boats up the Mitumba Range." "When the rains begin, they will turn the plains into a quagmire too shallow for ships, too muddy for wheels." "Until then, heat is the deadliest enemy" " the thirst for water is unquenchable" " water for the engines... water for the oxen... a few cupfuls a day for the men." "Then, in early September... a sudden storm of fire." "Spicer has his men create a fire break." "He then orders that the precious mahogany boats must be protected from flying embers." "For Doctor Hanshell, it is a day of sheer terror." ""...we nearly lost the whole thing by fire..." "Here was this war train bearing down on us at a terrific rate." "We'd burnt off, we set fire to it, only just in time, just in time, we moved the guns, the wagons and everything onto the burnt place, and the thing stopped... it was so damn near it came."" "In the weeks that follow, the oxen prove their worth." ""The top of the plateau was reached on September 8, 1915, and this was a very triumphant moment for the expedition, for there were some who had said that it was impossible to get there." "Our difficulties were by no means at an end, for on the downward trek from this point to Sankisia there was some risky work to be done in lowering the boats down the sharp spurs of the mountain..."" "They are still weeks away from the combat zone." "Using 42 oxen, 2 road locomotives, and hundreds of men, the expedition struggles to get down the mountain." ""On more than one occasion the wheels of the boats dropped into ant-bear holes." "The only way to get out was to fill up the hole with logs, gradually jacking the boat up until it reached the level." "It was only by good luck that they received no damage."" ""There is a great deal of thunder and it appears the rains are not far away." "The journey now, has become a race to get to the railway before the rains brake and the roads become impassable."" "Finally, the land is level, but the dangers remain deadly." "This is the country of the tse tse fly" " carrier of the sleeping sickness that kills both men and beasts... villages are nearly deserted" " the ghost towns of central Africa." "No rain falls... this is a dreadful blessing - drought scorches the plains." ""At one point the traction engines came to a standstill for want of water, and the members of the expedition were getting only half a pint a day."" "Lt-Commander Spicer offers local women a bolt of colored cloth if they will trek eight miles to the nearest well" " hundreds accept the bargain, and the convoy moves on." "For the first time since he tested them on the Thames," "Geoffrey Spicer's two-boat flotilla reaches water deep enough to sail upon" " Mimi and Toutou are reassembled and lowered into the Lualaba River." "October 1, 1915." "Stage Four." "They will float, or drag their boats, 200 miles downstream" " strange apparitions to the resident wildlife." ""Progress on the river is very slow." "I think Mimi and Tou-Tou hold the record for grounding, as on October 7 they were aground 14 times in twelve miles."" "Even on water, Spicer's flotilla manages barely ten miles a day" " then, at the rail depot at Kabalo," "Mimi and Toutou must be" " packaged safely for another journey by rail." "October 22, 1915." "Stage Five." "The final phase of the long odyssey" " 173 miles across precarious trestles and crumbling bridges" " to the Belgian shores of Lake Tanganyika." "Spicer rivals are already preparing their reception" " Gustav Zimmer has followed every mile of Spicer's incredible trek, still unaware of the unlikely cargo." ""...the effort to find out more about the area around Lukuga and Kalemie was resumed in earnest." "...we took down a lot of telegraph wires, and blew up telegraph stations." "As soon as the British reach their final destination, he will send his gunboats to destroy Geoffrey Spicer and his half-mad dreams." "October 28, 1915." "After four months and over 9,000 miles of travel, the unlikely odyssey of Lt." "Commander Geoffrey Spicer reaches the blue heart of Africa..." "Lake Tanganyika." "Finally, he has reached his battleground." "At Kalemie on the western shoreline, a defensive network of guns, troop quarters, and shipbuilding facilities guards the back door of the Belgian Congo." "For their British allies, the Belgians have prepared simple dwellings" " Spicer claims the largest to be his headquarters... and hoists the banner of the Royal Navy" " an emblem of his growing lust for power." "Kalemie has guns, but no harbor." "To protect his boats from the Germans," "Spicer insists the Belgians construct a harbor." ""The decision to build the port was come to owing to the facts that it is impossible to operate without a defended port," "and the existing defenses at Kalemie will amply protect the port selected." "Hundreds of tons of rock are blasted and positioned into the crocodile-infested waters" "to create an arced jetty." "Atop the rocks, traintracks and a launching slip are lain which will allow Spicer to slide his miniature Navy into the lake in minutes." "While the jetty is taking shape, the Belgians give Spicer the details of the 3 German ships he must destroy." "The smallest German vessel is the Kingani." "At 55 feet long and 12 feet wide, she is far larger and better armed than Mimi or Toutou." "Her compatriot, the Hedwig von Wissmann, is even larger, but slower." "Carrying two powerful guns and a crew of 22 sailors, she has room for 200 extra troops." "The Graf von Gotzen dwarfs them all." "An 800 ton monster, she is over 20 times the size of the British speedboats." "Her massive guns can blast Spicer's boats to oblivion with one shell." "The little British boats are seriously outmanned, outgunned and outsized." "To tilt the balance of power," "Spicer plots a surprise attack to capture the Kingani" " it is an audacious plan... for a desk officer who has never led a combat mission." "Across the lake," "Gustav Zimmer plans his own strategy of strength." ""...we learned from intercepted Belgian telegram communications that they were looking for a building location..." "As soon as it was practical, the reconnaissance work began."" "December 1, 1915." "German Lieutenants Walter Rosenthal and Job Odebrecht embark on a stealthy mission of reconnaissance." "In four successive evenings, the two ships slip in under darkness, snapping off night exposures of the harbor." "The next evening," "Lt. Rosenthal risks his life in a daring solo mission." ""He wanted to swim ashore, to find out more about the drydock and the building of the new ship, despite the danger of crashing waves and crocodiles... he reached the drydock, took notice of two boats," "then swam back to the designated meeting place."" "But a panicky German officer orders the Kingani to leave without him." "Rosenthal is forced to hide out on the Allied side of the lake." "At daybreak, abandoned in enemy waters," "Rosenthal is taken prisoner" " Zimmer is still ignorant of Spicer's Jungle Navy." "Mid-December, the rains come" " work is impossible " "all they can do is wait." ""We are having heavy rains almost daily, and one or two members of the expedition on an average, are always down with slight attacks of fever."" "On December 23, Spicer decides it is time to go to war." "Far from his desk in London, Africa has freed Spicer's spirit." "His battle dress reflects his liberation." ""...to the amazement of the crew and to the Belgians and the natives, he didn't wear shorts, he wore a little, tiny little khaki skirt with. pleats in it."" "Spicer and Britain need allies" " the men of the Ba Holo Holo nation see the eccentric white man as a natural chief." "Christmas Eve." "The mahogany gunboats undergo their first trial runs on African waters." ""On Christmas Day we took a rest, and it being the first time the whole expedition had been together, we had a big celebration." "December 26, 1915." "The Germans come to fight." "Spicer is reading prayers when an enemy ship is sighted." "Spicer ignores the enemy's approach" " he alone will decide when his private war will commence." ""I finished prayers and then sent off the hands to get ready."" "Doctor Hanshell and other non-combatants head to the cliffs to watch the battle as if it was a cricket match." ""..." "The paymaster and I and the petty officer Murphy and so on, we had a grandstand view of it." "It all happened right under our eyes."" "At 11:25 a.m.," "Spicer and his fleet set off in pursuit of the enemy." "Spicer is in the Mimi and Lieutenant Dudley" " without his bicycle... is at the helm of the Toutou." "Spicer's plan is to sneak in behind the Kingani, and attack her from both sides." "The Kingani can only fire on them with her bow guns." "Kapitan Zimmer has sent the Kingani to blow up the Belgian harbor installation." "But instead, is confronted by Spicer's entire navy." ""She was well inside the bay before she was aware of the existence of the British boats on the Lake" "...and the Mimi and Toutou rapidly overhauled her and opened fire."" ""An early shot from one of our guns carried away her mast, and she got several hits below the water line."" "In the ensuing half hour, eleven enemy sailors are rounded up." "Lt. Dudley takes control of the captured Kingani, and brings her and the captured survivors back to base." "At Kalemie, Spicer is showered with sand... a traditional gesture that confirms his mastery of the earth he stands on." "Three German sailors are buried with military dignity." "The British have suffered no casualties" " but the battle for the blue heart of Africa has barely begun." "In London, he was ignored, but at Lake Tanganyika, Geoffrey Spicer is hailed as a hero for his brilliant ambush of the Kingani." "He must now repair his damaged prize." "British and Belgian engineers patch up the Kingani's 11 holes, and refit her with a larger 12-pounder gun." "When they are finished, Spicer re-christens the German gunboat as if she were a French poodle, naming her HMS Fifi." "With a bolstered sense of confidence," "Spicer's behavior becomes more outrageous, more bizarre." "Twice a week, he performs a ceremonial public bath, complete with cigarettes and vermouth" " his body is decorated with symbolic tattoos..." "Spicer's men suspect he has gone mad... but the Ba holo holo warriors understand the white man's message" " they call him "bwana chifungatumbo"" " Lord of the Loincloth..." "February 8, 1916." "". we got information from native spies that the Kingani had been sunk by a new coastal artillery battery." "I decided to check into this myself and sent along the Gotzen, the Hedwig von Wissmann, and a smaller boat."" "The Germans still do not know the Royal Navy has invaded the Lake." ""..." "The Hedwig von Wissmann was to get to the Belgian coast in the early morning and enquire about the position from friendly spies, then head back to Cape Kungwe where she would meet with the Gotzen at around noon on February 9th."" "Then together, Zimmer and Odebrecht will attack the harbor." "At dawn on February 9, the dance begins, with control of Central Africa at stake." "It is a humid, hazy morning" " distant vessels shimmer like mirages in the heat." "Through the haze, Spicer spots the Germans." "Spicer leads the attack in his new flagship, the Fifi" " chief engineer Wainwright takes the speedier, more maneuverable Mimi." ""...the weather conditions made the estimation of distance very difficult... and until the enemy closed to within 5000 yards, he appeared to be a dark blob suspended above the horizon."" "For more than an hour," "Spicer's shells fall short of the fleeing German ship" " but the Mimi cuts off her escape... and forces the Germans to turn and fight." "As if protected from death by his magic tattoos, the Lord of the Loincloth refuses to take cover." "The battle of Lake Tanganyika lasts 90 furious minutes." "Hemmed in by Wainwright in the Mimi," "Spicer's cannon blasts a fatal wound in the Wissmann's engine room." ""In a few minutes the Hedwig von Wissmann burst into flames, and finally she up-ended and went down."" "From among the wreckage," "Spicer retrieves the German battle flag." "The first enemy banner captured in combat... anywhere - in the most deadly war in human history." "Twenty-one Germans survive the explosion" " seven others are killed..." "Again, there is not a single British casualty - now, only one target remains..." "the Gotzen - the mightiest of all warships on this deadly inland sea." "To the Ba holo holo people, the sinking of the Wissmann confirms Geofrey Spicer's status as an indestructible warrior... a man whose magic places him in the realm of the gods." "For miles up and down the Lake, elaborate clay fetishes are shaped in Spicer's image." ""And clay and wood images grew up all around the place." "The helmet and the beard and the jupe and the bare arms with scratches on to make the tattooing." "He was the great Bwana Ikuba."" "At the peak of his powers," "Spicer is told that his war against Zimmer is over" " the allies will import a new weapon... airplanes... to destroy the Gozten from the sky." "June, 1916." "Allied seaplanes launch a barrage of bombings on Kigoma." "Zimmer decides to scuttle his flagship." ""It was hard for us to blow up our last ships, but they could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands, for they would have construed it as a kind of victory." "We conceded to the stronger force, but our willingness to serve and our enthusiasm was not broken."" "Germany's dreams of an African empire are shattered" " thwarted by an unlikely hero and his jungle navy." "After almost another year of protecting the Lake," "Spicer and his men are ordered back to England." "His warships left behind." "The British Naval Africa Expedition is a total success." "Its military objective attained," "its men back home, unharmed." "He has led his men on a bizarre, nearly impossible mission, a small step on the long road to history." "He is awarded the Distinguished Service Order and 15 others including Henschell, Wainwright" "and Dudley are also honored." "After the awards and the ceremonies the Lord of the Loincloth returns to the same desk he left in 1915." "As a warrior his duty is done." ""...the expedition was the smallest ever sent out" " there being only twenty-eight men all told." "And it was the only expedition that had come back without a single casualty."" "For hundreds of years, they lay in darkness." "Their creators had been destroyed, but their spirit could not be killed." "Gods had built them, some said." "Others insisted..." "they had built themselves." "Yet most believed that powerful spirits protected the vast stone city deep in the Cambodian jungle." "And woe would come to whomever disturbed its slumber." "Centuries apart, two men would fall under Angkor's spell." "One was a naturalist, lured by tales of exotic creatures and a fabulous lost city." "The other was a diplomat, sent to demand tribute from a civilization far richer than he'd ever imagined." "Their epic tales would inflame the world's curiosity, and light a fire in the darkness of Cambodia's lost world." "The mystery of Angkor is what is not known." "We don't know much about the people." "Think about it with people, when it was filled with worshippers, the community were out in the fields growing rice." "What was it like when it was active and alive?" "It's absolutely extraordinary, the mystery is basically what is this thing?" "Why is it so big?" "Why is it glittering in the sun like this?" "What's it for?" "It's mysterious, you feel that something went on here that's not going on there today, but something went on there that's different from much of the rest of the world." "In Southeast Asia, an abandoned city sprawls magnificently across the heart of Cambodia." "Its hundreds of monuments contain more stone than the Egyptian Pyramids, and cover more ground than modern Paris." "This is Angkor, the capital of an empire that once controlled most of Southeast Asia." "They were called the Khmere." "And more than five hundred years ago, they vanished" "To the outside world, the city existed only in obscure travelers' tales." "Until a Frenchman in the 19th century brought Angkor to light." "He was a naturalist, searching for unknown species of plants and animals." "Almost by accident he uncovered one of man's greatest creations." "In the 1850's Frenchman Henri Mouhot might have been well on his way to becoming the world's first wildlife photographer." "A naturalist and a portrait painter," "Mouhot dabbled in the new, devilish art of photography." "Mouhot was a born roamer" " by age 30 he'd crisscrossed Europe and Russia." "But it was the tales of those who ventured further abroad that would lure him to the jungles of Cambodia." "A book had just been published in 1857 about the area of Southeast Asia." "In a sense it was the focus that drew him." "The first Europeans to explore Africa and Asia were usually marginal people in their own societies." "They didn't quite fit in." "And so they went to these other places and explored them." "But in the process of exploring them, they opened up new areas, wrote about them, and provided the raw information that the European countries needed to exploit these areas as colonies." "In 19th century Europe, models for undaunted courage were heroic explorers, like Henry Morton Stanley." "While searching for the source of e Nile," "Stanley watched most of his companions die of fever and warfare with hostile peoples." "Stanley lost 60 pounds and his hair turned white." ""We have wept so often we can weep no more," he wrote." "But there was one more blow ahead." "In his absence his fiancé had married another man." "For late 19th century explorers, it was all in a day's work." "What they lost at home they hoped to doubly gain abroad... as the front-line troops of a new surge of colonialism." "The revolution in manufacturing that would transform Europe was fueled - in part - by adventurism abroad." "Great Britain, France, and Germany had developed huge appetites for raw materials and markets for their products." "This set off a land grab for Asia and Africa, where minerals, farmland, even labor could be taken by force of arms." "They also wanted to bring European culture to the peoples of these regions." "It was a sort of cultural imperialism." "They wanted to, in a sense, bring what they considered the best culture in the world to people who they thought had inferior cultures." "These allegedly 'inferior' cultures weren't always happy to see the Europeans." "Along with hostile armies, explorers had to battle disease, madness, and starvation." "Some were military men who brought much-needed professionalism to the trade." "Others were doomed amateurs brimming with enthusiasm..." "Henri Mouhot would take his place among these." "Mouhot decided to devote his life to studying new species of flora and fauna." "It seemed likely he'd combine his passions, and become history's first photographer of wildlife." "But fate stepped in." "He met and married an Englishwoman, Anna Park." "She was a relative of one of the great explorers of West Africa," "Mungo Park." "Perhaps Anna pressed Henri to match Mungo's feats of daring" " or maybe Henri wasn't suited for domestic life." "For less than two years after they were wed," "Mouhot set out for Southeast Asia." "Mouhot intended to keep a diary of his adventure while documenting the natural world." "But on his quest for facts, he'd encounter a profound mystery... an abandoned city in the jungle... a rival among the greatest creations of man." "On the 27th April, 1858 I embarked at London, in a ship of very modest pretensions..." "Mouhot books passage on a small boat." "The very first part of this trip was bad." "The boat was small, the captain was drunk all the time and he writes of his perils on the ship and the passengers being sick." "Mouhot is really interesting to me because he went there without a clearly defined program." "He was also went there on his own funding." "In a sense he took a real chance but there was just this wanderlust." "This, this chance to open up a new area to the rest of the world and he in a sense seized the moment." "After pausing in Singapore and Paknam," "Mouhot recovered his land-legs in Bangkok, famous in Europe as 'the Venice of the East.'" "At Bangkok's Royal Palace, the Frenchman dined with Siam's monk-turned-monarch, King Mongkut." "The cultured king grilled Mouhot for news of Europe." "He'd become an expert in foreign affairs, in order to defend his nation." "While countries around Siam fell to European powers," "Mongkut would sign trade treaties with many of them, knowing that this would discourage any one from invading his kingdom." "To teach English to his children, he'd hire the tutor Anna Leonowens." "Her memoirs would inspire the musical The King and I." "Its clownish portrait of Mongkut would become the modern world's sole impression of a ruler who almost single-handedly saved Siam from colonization." "Mongkut's gifts were all but lost on Mouhot as well." "Barely acquainted with Asia, he was distracted by its 'peculiar' customs." "Every inferior crouches before a higher in rank." "He receives his orders with abject submission and respect." "The whole of society is in a state of prostration..." "Despite such attacks on his sensibilities," "Mouhot relished his journeys by boat and even elephant through uncharted regions of Siam, and in time, to the frontier of Cambodia." "He was warmly received by lesser kings, and met with enthusiastic curiosity by all those unaccustomed to having a farang, or white man, parade into their midst." "Mouhot wasted little time on making friends;" "his goal was Science." "My principal object... is to benefit those who in the quiet of their homes delight to follow the poor traveler who with the sole object of being useful to his fellow man... crosses the ocean and sacrifices family, comfort, health," "and all too often their life itself." "Nature has her lovers, and those alone who have tasted them know the joy she gives." "In the 19th century, the science of natural history was in its infancy;" "studying exotic species meant shooting them, or dunking them alive in jars of spirits." "Mouhot's zoological treasure included seven types of mammals, ten reptiles, eight freshwater fish, fifteen land shells, and a spider." "The spider still bears his name." "While Asia's animals enchanted Mouhot, its people bewildered him." "Their languages were gibberish to his ears" " their religion had many spirits, not one." "The people played music in alien keys, and filled their dances with nightmarish creatures." "Yet the cultural divide that separated Mouhot from his hosts was about to be crossed... by the most unlikely of people." "When Mouhot traveled throughout southeast Asia, he employed several helpers who went with him." "Mouhot became attached to one particular manservant called Phrai." "He even helped him with some of his collecting." "He was a guide, he was an interpreter, he said up the camp." "Phrai started out as a servant of Mouhot, but became his comrade and his constant companion." "In fact we owe to Phrai our knowledge of the expeditions of Mouhot." "On his expeditions" "Mouhot kept meticulous records of plants and animals, and made charts of rivers and mountains unheard of in Europe." "He cataloged the peoples he encountered, noting differences in their looks and customs." "He turned himself into a one-man research team." "And, in the tradition of great explorers before him, he suffered..." "Insects are in great numbers - several of my books and maps have been almost devoured in one night" "We suffered terribly from mosquitoes," "and had to keep up the incessant fanning to drive off these pestilent little vampires." "There is a small species of leech... you have to be constantly pulling them off you by the dozens... but you are sure to return home covered in blood." "Scorpions, centipedes, and above all, serpents, were the enemies we most dreaded..." "But remarkably, while Phrai and the native bearers were frequently ill," "Mouhot's health couldn't have been better." "I drank nothing but tea, hoping by abstinence from cold water from all wine and spirits, to escape fever." "In spite of the heat, the fatigue, and the privations inseparable from such a journey," "I arrived among the Cambodians in perfectly good health..." "The people flocked to see my collection, and could not imagine what I should do with so many animals and insects..." "I offered the children my cigar-ends to smoke, in return for which they would run after butterflies and bring them to me uninjured." "Once more in boats, the Frenchman and his companions journeyed north." "Their destination- the rumored lost city of Angkor, which interested Mouhot less than the rare birds he hoped to collect there." "On the way they paused at a lonely wilderness outpost" " a Catholic mission run by a French priest." "Years of isolation, and dysentery, had soured the priest's view of the tropics, and made him gloomy about Mouhot's final push to the lost city." "Do you know where you're going?" "The rains have begun and you are going to almost certain death, or will at least catch a fever, which will be followed by years of languor and suffering." "May God be with the poor traveler!" "Mohout said he'd abide by God's will but was going nonetheless." "After another leg of his river journey he reached a landmark he knew only from legend" " the Ton LeSap Lake, and marveled as the shorelines grew apart by some five miles." "By now it'd been more than a year since Mouhot had dined in Bangkok's Royal Palace." "Rough travel had left him ill-prepared for what he was about to see," "a vision few Europeans had shared." "The lost city of Angkor was not a rumor, but overwhelmingly real." "There are ruins of such grandeur, remains of structures which must have been raised at such an immense cost of labor, that at the first view, one is filled with profound admiration, and cannot but ask what has become of this powerful race," "so civilized, so enlightened, the authors of these gigantic works!" "He came looking for insects, came looking for flora, fauna, new species." "He didn't come looking for Angkor but he found it and I think if any of us who may have stumbled on Angkor as he did would have been excited." "But whether we could have recorded it in such detail with such precision as Henri Mouhot did is unlikely." "One of these temples... a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michelangelo - might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings." "It's grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome!" "The natives enlightened the stunned Mouhot- it's the work of angels, they said, or giants." "It was built by a magician-king." "It built itself." "Mouhot was not an archeologist, nor an art historian, nor could he read the Sanskrit engravings that adorned the monuments of Angkor." "Yet he was an illustrator." "With his customary zeal he set out to sketch the most magnificent of the lost city's some 1,000 temples, and describe them inch-by-inch." "The west side the gallery is supported by two rows of square columns," "on the east, blank windows have been let into the wall, with balconies of twisted columns fourteen centimeters in diameter..." "In the center of the causeway are two elegant pavilions, one on each side, having at each extremity a portico thirty-three meters sixty-six centimeters in length..." "Mouhot was a very keen observer." "He was a collector of information." "He had this natural history background to describe things in a very careful way." "So when he found the monuments at Angkor, he went ahead and approached them in the same way he would approach his zoological specimens, with careful description." "The vaulted ceilings of the galleries are raised six meters from the ground;" "those of the second roof are four meters thirty centimeters high..." "The bas-reliefs represent combat and procession..." "Fabulous animals are busy devouring some;" "others are in irons and have had their eyes put out." "He could tell that it was the results of an ancient civilization that had flourished in this area." "He could also tell by the inscriptions on many of the, many of the monuments - they were mostly in Sanskrit and old Khmere." "He could tell by these inscriptions, even though he couldn't read them, that these were a very learned people who had built all this and yet they were gone without a trace." "Sad frailty of human things!" "How many centuries and thousands of generations have passed away, of which history will never tell us anything." "What treasures of art will remain forever buried beneath these ruins." "How many distinguished artists, kings, and warriors are now forgotten." "Mouhot was deeply frustrated by the mystery of who had created the city of Angkor." "He noted the similarity between the faces in the carvings and the people living in the surrounding forests." "But he couldn't bring himself to believe that these Cambodians were descended from Angkor's peerless artists." "In fact, the artistry of Cambodia had never died." "Though it never again reached the heights of Angkor," "Khmere art flourished throughout Southeast Asia." "Demand for replicas if its most famous works grows with Angkor's fame." "Oblivious of Cambodia's past, Mouhot saw France in its future." "Only a full scale takeover, he concluded, could correct the nation's 'deplorable' condition." "The sooner the better." "European conquest wise and protecting laws, and experience would alone effect the regeneration of this state." "I wish France to possess this land, which would add a magnificent jewel to her crown!" "Though Mouhot wouldn't live to see it," "France did intervene soon after his expedition, making Cambodia a protectorate in 1864." "It would last nearly a century." "Mouhot's diary wasn't the cause." "But like explorer's tales before, it fueled interest and imitation." "King Mongkut's tutor," "Anna Leonowens, was so moved by Mouhot's description of Angkor she'd later copy it for her own book." "Angkor was never a lost city in Asians' eyes." "They knew about it and from the 16th century onwards," "Jesuit priests wrote it in their diaries." "It's just that their diaries were so confidential it didn't reach a wide public." "Mouhot was the first person to popularize Angkor." "And it was his sketches, his descriptions that really is why he was credited with the discovery of Angkor." "With a saber in one hand, Phrai pursues the fishes in the stream." "He and his shadow reflected on the rocks and water might easily be mistaken by the natives for demons." "It is pleasant to the man devoted to our good and beautiful mother Nature to think that his work, his fatigues, his troubles and dangers, are useful to others." "I doubt not others will follow in my steps, and gather an abundant harvest where I have but cleared the ground." "Mouhot had been traveling for the better part of three years." "The amateur enthusiast had become an expert naturalist, a skilled outdoorsman, a hardened explorer." "He treated Phrai and his other servants as his family, whom he alternately nursed and scolded, and with whom he shed tears at parting." "Yet even as his letters home turned wistful and sentimental, and his journey stretched from two years to three, he couldn't seem to turn back." "Only on the trail was he at peace." "Do not be anxious when you think of your poor friend the traveler, for you know that up to the present time everything has prospered with him." "And truly I experience a degree of contentment, strength of soul, and internal peace, which I have never known before." "But the French priest's dire warning finally came true." "The weather and mosquitoes were the worst yet." "First Phrai fell sick." "For five days we were compelled to remain in the forest;" "it rained a great part of the day, the torrents overflowed." "I never in my life passed such wretched nights." "My poor Phrai was seized with a dreadful fever, and I myself felt very ill." "October 29, 1861." "Overcome by fever the 35 year old Mouhot scratched out his last journal entry." "Have pity on me, oh my God!" "Phrai recovered and made sure his master received a proper burial." "Then he brought Mouhot's possessions out of the forest, and put them on boats for Europe." "Most of the zoological samples the naturalist had collected during his journeys had already been lost at sea." "But his journal made it safely back to England." "Henri's widow Anna persuaded the Royal Geographical Society to publish Mouhot's diary." "The first edition did not sell;" "there were no profits to share with Anna." "Yet, owing chiefly to its description of Angkor," "Mouhot's work remained in print for a full century." "Generations of travelers and explorers have encountered the treasures of Khmere culture with Mouhot's journal in hand." "And perhaps some took heart in one of Henri's last letters home, a fitting epitaph for Mouhot, and his generation of explorers:" "Courage, then, and hope!" "Our perseverance and efforts will be recompensed." "Adieu, adieu, Au revoir." "Do not forget me." "Shortly after Henri Mouhot alerted the world to the wonders of Angkor, the work of recovering its treasures began." "Mouhot's meticulous descriptions had inspired Europe to take a closer look." "But the questions had only just begun." "Who were Angkor's builders, the empire called the Khmere?" "What were their lives like?" "Archeologists had no written record to go on" " If the Khmere had chronicled their story, they probably did so on palm leaves and paper." "Time had turned the perishable history to dust." "With nothing known about their builders," "Angkor's monuments seemed destined to hold their tongues forever." "Then in 1902 a remarkable document came to light and a most unlikely voice reverberated across eight centuries." "The fantastic civilization of the Khmere, thought to be forever beyond reach, came to life in all its grandeur." "In about 10,000 words this report captured the heart of the lost kingdom of Angkor." "Its author was a diplomat sent to Cambodia by China's fearsome Mongol Dynasty." "The Mongols are famous for their deadly mounted warriors, and for tactics that routed European armies." "At the end of the 13th century, however, they took aim at Southeast Asia." "In 1286 the Mongols struck deep into what's now Vietnam." "A year later the capital of Burma fell to the hordes." "Yet the infamous horsemen didn't like fighting in the alien jungle terrain" " perhaps this alone saved Angkor from being next." "Instead, Mongol Emperor Timur Khan gave orders for diplomats to go to Angkor and collect tribute from the Cambodian king." "This would appease the Khan while allowing the envoys to size up Angkor for possible future attack." "One of these diplomats was Zhou Dagoun." "Zhou Dagoun in his writing, never said why he was there." "He was part of an embassy which obviously meant that it was some, trying to check out on trade, check out, get the intelligence on what this kingdom was like." "To show to Mongol Emperor what sorts of people lay at the far boundaries of his empire, what sorts of products they had, what they looked like." "The inhabitants are rude and ugly and very black." "The indigenous women are very lustful." "If a husband has to leave for a distant mission, that's alright for a couple of nights." "But after a dozen nights the woman will certainly complain," ""Who am I, a ghost that needs no one to sleep with?"" "He was a keen observer, telling us about the people, the daily lives." "Zhou Dagoun left us something very special." "He has left the only first hand record that we have of Angkor." "He was here when Angkor was a kingdom." "But we have to always keep in mind he was a foreigner, so he was perceiving the kingdom and what he knew in his background which was Chinese." "About Zhou Dagoun little is known." "He was probably about thirty years old, a diplomat, perhaps an aristocrat." "From the details he reported to the Khan emerge a character fascinated with earthy pleasures." "He came from an obsessive prudish kind of culture and he saw in this tropical climate and enjoyed seeing, women taking off their scanty costumes and getting into the river to bathe with nothing on at all, and he commented on this" "not only because it was so barbarian and rare and un Chinese but I think also because he enjoyed watching the spectacle." "Every three or four days the women go and bathe in a river outside the city." "Even the women from the noble families take part in these baths and aren't ashamed." "Everyone can see them from the to of their heads to the bottom of their feet." "The Chinese, on their day off, go and see it." "I've heard that there are those who enter the water to take advantage of the situation." "The water is always as hot as fire." "For Zhou Dagoun, his year in Angkor would be full of such surprises and contrasts." "He was Chinese, but from the frigid plains, a Mongol whose race worshipped war above all things." "By contrast, the Khmere had embraced Buddhism, and its creed of compassion and rebirth." "The city of one million enjoyed a calendar full of parades, festivals, and holy days." "The Chinese who arrive as sailors find it comfortable that in this country one doesn't have to wear clothes." "And since rice is easy to earn, and women easy to persuade, there are many who desert to stay." "As he cataloged Angkor's marvels," "Zhou Dagoun himself may have thought about deserting for a life in the jungle paradise." "As a spy of sorts, he no doubt soon discovered that all the Khmere's might and majesty largely depended on one thing - water." "Three rice-harvests a year fed the city of about one million, and paid for everything from temple building to defense." "To grow the rice, they had to tame the water." "They harnessed the water from the Ton Le Sap Lake by building a series of canals, dikes, and moats from the lake up to the city of Angkor." "During the rainy season, when the lake began to rise water was forced up these canals, up above the city, and collected in large reservoirs, called barays for year-round use." "And in fact the system that was employed at Angkor a thousand years ago is more advanced than any irrigation system used in Cambodia today." "The relationship between the king and water has a very long history." "The whole reason that Angkor is located on this plain is because of the access of water." "So the king could provide fish and rice and therefore his people would prosper and his genealogy would continue." "Not surprisingly the symbol of water - a snake - is key to Khmere faith." "In Angkor, Zhou Dagoun would have found the revered reptile depicted countless times, in scenes said to reveal the secret of immortality." "The churning of the ocean of milk is known in Hindu mythology" " its much loved in Cambodia in their art." "It's depicted with gods on one side and demons on the other and they're holding a large scaly body of a serpent." "They pull left and right and left and right in a way that we would call a tug of war." "They're churning to try to yield the elixir of immortality." "Immortality was a daily pursuit inside the Royal Palace, the abode of Khmere Kings." "Kings had more than a thousand concubines" " the most beautiful women of the empire." "Scores are depicted at the Royal Terrace... no two alike." "Concerning the concubines and the girls of the palace," "I've heard that the number is between three and five thousand." "When in a family there's a beautiful girl, she's immediately sent to the palace." "As a foreigner, and an oddity," "Zhou Dagoun wasn't permitted to enter the Royal Palace... but he heard a legend about the magic that took place inside." "In the Golden Tower inside the palace the sovereign goes to sleep in its highest part." "All the locals assert that inside the tower there's a genie" " master of the whole territory of the kingdom." "This genie appears every night in the form of a woman." "Its with her that the sovereign lies with and then has sex." "If one night the genie doesn't appear, this is because the time for the barbarian king's death has come." "If the king doesn't show up even for one night, something terrible will happen." "He would comment on some of their unusual customs but then he would always draw comparisons back to the way we do things in China." "So I think he saw commonalties between the Khmer and the Chinese." "In this country it's the women who know about commerce." "If a Chinese arrives here and immediately takes a woman, its because he wants to take advantage of the woman's trading skills, [which could easily exceed his own.]" "Zhou Dagoun disapproved of most Angkor customs but praised one - the status of women." "The envoy noted that women ran commerce throughout the city, and women intellectuals were among the king's most trusted counselors." "Women figure prominently in engravings on a temple at Angkor called the Bayon." "They depict dozens of types of business and the daily activities of Khmere life." "In fact everything the Mongols wanted to know about the Khmere was right here-agriculture, slaves, rare goods." "For Zhou Dagoun it would have been an intelligence goldmine." "Valuable products are the feathers of the kingfisher, elephant tusks, rhino's horn, and beeswax." "The white rhinoceros horn is veined and is the most precious;" "the black one is inferior." "In general, the people of this country are very simple." "When they see a Chinese, they are respectfully frightened and call him "Buddha"." "Seeing him, they throw themselves to the ground and bow low." "From Zhou Dagoun's reports we know about the fact that there were astronomers there." "We know about the fact that, that various groups of people within the court were scientists." "So this was an area of discovery." "This was the Renaissance area of southeast Asia." "More than five centuries before Europe's Renaissance," "Cambodian Michaelangelos sent their masterpieces soaring skyward." "Reliefs at the Bayon acknowledged the builders;" "but one monument at Angkor made them immortal." "The Chinese envoy Zhou Dagoun was probably barred from Angkor's greatest marvel, a funery temple built for a king." "He skipped over it in his report, mentioning only that a Chinese artisan had probably built it." "No doubt the envoy coveted the Khmere's timeless masterpiece" " Angkor Wat." "Over a century before Zhou Dagoun arrived, the last stone was fitted into place." "Archeologists have determined that it took almost thirty years to complete, and was finished in time to bury the king." "Some historians believe Angkor Wat is a funery temple." "The main basis for this is that the entrance is at the west." "In Hindu mythology this signifies death." "When you enter you feel you're moving from the world of man to the world of the deities." "Look to the left." "It's a battle." "It is a battle of war and massacre and slaughter and pillage and fire." "But at the east is the famous story of the churning of the ocean of milk, the beginning of life." "Never in his life would Zhou Dagoun have seen anything like it." "The austere Mongol religion had nothing to compare to sacred mountains of stone." "Angkor Wat was built to please a Hindu god, but came to draw the devout of many faiths." "Climbing the staircase reveals levels of increasing holiness." "Then you continue to the next level." "The walls are bare in total contrast to these reliefs, totally bare walls." "Why?" "Because you look at the top and what do you see but the pinnacle, the image of Vishnu that would have been housed inside this." "And so the bare walls provide a quiet background to carry your eye upward to the very most sacred point of the temple." "According to tradition, priests placed the king's ashes inside the temple he built for himself." "Yet the monarch didn't dwell in the next world alone." "Attending him are 1700 enchanted beings, called Apsaras." "The Apsaras are the celestial nymphs, the beautiful women that fly through the heavens and dance for the gods." "And they stand ready dressed in their jewelry and beautiful costumes to do whatever the gods would need to make them happy and for the kingdom to prosper." "These celestial nymphs were born simply to please the gods, can you imagine?" "Angkor Wat had hardly claimed its place on the horizon when disaster struck." "Drawn by its increasing splendor the Chams, from what's now Vietnam, attacked and burned the city." "Countless inhabitants were killed, or forced into exile." "By the time the capital was rebuilt, a sea change had taken place." "His people had suffered... so the king built a walled city, Angkor Tom, to protect them in time of war." "Like their king most of the Khmere people abandoned Hinduism, and followed in the Buddha's path." "Zhou Dagoun was familiar with Buddhism, a popular religion in China." "But he was awed by its Cambodian face." "Above each gate of the enclosure, there are five big Buddha heads carved in stone, their faces turned towards the four cardinal points;" "at the center is placed one of these heads, but this one is decorated in gold." "It's a kind face, it's a god of compassion and wisdom." "This art feature had never before been seen at Angkor, and in fact there's not a prototype known." "Some say that it represents the king looking in all directions, north-south-east-and west, and that makes him the Ruler of the Universe." "Everyday the king holds audiences for affairs of state." "The king, sword in hand, appears in the golden window." "All present join their hands and touch the earth with their foreheads." "It is plain to see that these people, though barbarians, know what is due to a prince." "Zhou Dagoun arrived in Angkor when its king had undisputed control over an empire of seemingly limitless potential." "Despite his glowing account, his master, Timur Khan never plundered the nation's treasures." "Perhaps Cambodia's climate was too similar to that of Vietnam, where the Mongols had tasted rare defeat." "Or perhaps the Khmere seemed too strong to tame." "Zhou Dagoun may have painted too fine a portrait for invasion." "Maybe Timur decided it wasn't really worth invading." "Or maybe there were plans but other things were happening in the middle kingdom that in a sense blocked any future expansion." "Yet the Khmere's story would soon come to an end whether the Mongol Khan invaded or not." "Archeologists and historians have pieced together the final chapter." "By Zhou Dagoun's time, 22 kings over 500 years had worked the land until it began to fail." "Rice harvests dropped, and stone monument-building... ceased." "Maintenance of the reservoirs and canals suffered." "The kings' sacred covenant with the water... was broken." "Early in the 15th century the kingdom of Siam made profitable raids into Khmere territory." "A climactic battle in 1431..." "brought about the end." "All but abandoned, the Khmere capital was lulled into a centuries-long sleep by the encroaching jungle." "Fortunately, Zhou Dagoun had long since carried his chronicle to safety." "Angkor had won the envoy's admiration, and he repaid it with the only surviving portrait of Cambodia's ancient treasures." "Coming to Angkor for most people is a bit of a pilgrimage to a sacred place." "Somehow it just touches your soul." "Every time you see it looming out of the forest it hits you very, very hard." "The mystery is it doesn't explain itself." "We don't know much except from reports of Zhou Dagoun of how they lived." "Yet, we can still see the monuments they left and we can speculate and we can dream about the greatness of this civilization." "It is a simple mansion, built of stone and irony, a symbol of freedom invested with the labor of slaves and great statesman alike." "It is like no other place on earth, a house alive with the past and present." "I deem this reply a full acceptance of the unconditional surrender of Japan." "...that a strong and a confident and a vigilant America stands ready tonight..." "It is an odd place, where the monumental and the mundane coexist." "to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere... therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow." "It is where the most critical decisions in our history are made." "And where any American can visit." "And all the things that American" "Independence means to you and to me and to ours." "My fellow Americans, our constitution works - here the people rule." "Now you will journey through time and a day meeting the people and hearing the stories that give this powerful place its soul." "For this is more than just an office or a monument or a home, it is an American idea known as the White House." "This isn't the biggest house." "Many and most, in even smaller countries are much bigger." "This isn't the finest house, but this is the best house." "It's the best house because it has something far more important than numbers of people who serve, far more important than numbers of rooms or how big it is, far more important than numbers of magnificent pieces of art." "This house has a great heart, and that heart comes from those who serve." "At the White House, there is no such thing as a typical day" "For those who serve inside, today will be one of the most intense." "These people, stagehands to history are preparing the house for the visit of Russian President Boris Yeltsin." "Hi, Brenda, this is Gary Walters at the White House." "How are you today." "Fine." "Is Jerry in?" "Each time a foreign leader visits the White House, the President has an opportunity to showcase the power and heritage of the nation in a setting that embodies them in every wall, floorboard, and stone." "This is the symbol not only of the Presidency, but in the eyes of the world, of the United States of America." "Nothing compares to the simplicity and the strength nothing, nothing in the world like it." "...black tie, the dinner is... will start off with the private reception..." "Very shortly the Yeltsins will arrive." "To insure a flawless visit, there are briefings on the 1000 details of protocol and timing." "Then in terms of the movements, the arrival back here by the car, going up to the stage..." "The high point of the visit will be the state dinner tonight." "Dramatic, entertaining, and essential, the state dinner is the ultimate expression of White House power." "Not a thing." "Not a thing." "Okay, we're gonna start the escorts out to the South Lawn now..." "More than 200 reporters will cover the visit of the Russian leader." "It will begin in a few moments with a carefully orchestrated event called the arrival ceremony." "Will you repeat the name again please." "Ladies and Gentlemen this is an audience check from the South Lawn of the White House." "Checking one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one." "I'm Mrs. Gore." "I'm Secretary Christopher." "Inside the White House, with only minutes to go, the President and the First Lady receive their final briefing." "The only thing I don't remember is what are the cues for down here - both coming and going?" "I hope I don't sneeze..." "Ladies and Gentlemen." "The President of the United States and the First Lady." "The White House is so universally recognized today that it's hard to imagine when it didn't exist." "But almost 13 years after the United States had declared independence, the city of Washington was still nothing but untamed woodlands." "In 1789, Congress agreed to build a new capital city." "Ridiculed in New York and Philadelphia, the city and the President's house would never have been built had it not been for one man." "Washington wanted the city built." "By law it had to be occupied by November 1, 1800 and many forces were acting against this new city in the wilderness." "Washington wanted it, he wanted it in the middle of the country, he wanted it on the Potomac River." "And he was determined in having those buildings, because in having the buildings, he would have his capital." "Its foundations were dug by slaves, the intricate stonework carved by Scottish masons." "More than half the workforce were foreign born." "The workers lived at the job site and each morning received a lb. of meat and all the cornbread they could eat." "After one especially randy night there, the commissioners overseeing the project closed down the only house of prostitution to have ever operated on the White House grounds." "When it was finished, it was immense;" "a bigger home would not be built in this country until after the Civil War." "Today, the power of the symbol is inescapable, something every visiting leader learns upon arriving." "At that moment I become the United States and he becomes Russia." "And we stand for all of our people." "And if this state visit goes well, then it's proof that the Cold War is really over." "And we're making a newer and better world." "And I don't want to mess it up." "I want to do it right, because it's the United States." "Conceived by President Kennedy in 1961, the modern ceremony not only impresses the visiting leader, it gives him the distinction of being welcomed here." "Together we have agreed to safeguard nuclear materials and to shut down plutonium production reactors." "Together we can and we will make a difference not only for our own people but also for men, women, and children all around the world." "The receiving line's going on right now inside." "The President and Mrs. Clinton are receiving the official party." "We have a full day, full slate in front of us." "We have some canopies to put up yet, flower material to put around, there's a lot of activities going on, yeah." "See ya later." "All right, Jim what else you got?" "In the White House basement, the first preparations for the state dinner are underway." "Here the butlers will find some of the 1,500 different pieces of china to set tonight's tables." "It's one of a hundred different tasks the White House staff will finish in their push to the dinner, now ten hours away." "Upstairs, in the entrance hall, a receiving line welcoming the Russian delegation is concluding." "Just a few steps away, the china is wheeled into the old family dining room." "The White House is barely large enough to hold a dinner like the one planned for tonight." "So this elegant room has been converted into a giant pantry so butlers like Buddy Carter can serve tonight's 150 guests." "There are so many people that are capable of doing this job, but I'm one of the few selected that get to do it." "So I take a lot of pride in what I do and I love it." "Can I speak to Jim please?" "Chief Usher Gary Walters is the house conductor." "He directs everyone from butlers to plumbers, all the people who serve the family and make the house work." "Although he built the house," "George Washington died before it was finished." "John Adams, intimidated by the expense of running such a home, said he'd prefer a row house instead." "But Washington's house held irresistible allure, and on the night of November 1, 1800," "Adams became the first President to sleep in the White House." "Well, he woke up the next morning and he wrote a letter to his wife." "It seemed to settle in on him." "And it's really, you might say, the first experience, you know of a President having in that house and see by now it is the President's house." "It seems almost an afterthought, it was very beautiful, when he says, you know, may heaven bestow the best of blessings on this house and may none but honest and wise men inhabit it hereafter." "When the Johnsons entered the White House, the nation was still in mourning for President John Kennedy." "One of the times that was a throat gasping time for me was the morning of a December the 22nd, when I came down to the first floor where all of the chandeliers had been draped in black net," "and to come back and see that gone and the Christmas tree brilliantly alight," "I think we had it in the Blue Room." "That was just a..." "you just gasp with sort of a relief, and now we are started, and life will go on." "For the first families, from the moment they move in, life goes on in the public eye." "For their own sanity, there must be a refuge and at the White House it is upstairs." "Only above this stair is privacy absolute." "Never, while the Presidential family is in residence, may cameras pass beyond this gate." "Cameras above the first floor are still rare, because this is where the families live." "The second and third floors are one of the few places on earth where the families are not accompanied by Secret Service." "At the heart of the second floor is the Yellow Oval Room which leads to the Truman Balcony." "These rooms provide a haven, a place safe from everything but history." "For me, I would get so caught up in what I was doing that you forget where you are..." "that this is home." "But then we'd sit down at dinner at night and here would be Abraham Lincoln's plate, and then it would all just kind of come back, here I am in this historic house, and it was overwhelming sometimes." "While overwhelming, this public housing does come with some useful amenities." "Living in the White House is quite a dream for any homemaker." "There's somebody to do everything, and it's not just the wonderful butlers and maids, but if you need a plumber, all you do is pick up the phone and the plumber is there right away." "Well, when President Johnson first came into office, the Chief Usher call me up and said the President wants to talk to you about the shower." "He says, "Come up," so I came up." "The President stepped off the elevator coming down going to the Oval Office that morning." "So, he told me he wanted more water, colder water, and he said," ""If I have to, I'll go over to the Elms and take my shower."" "So the first thing I did, I got a chauffeur and went to the Elms to see what he had over there." "And we came back to the White House and we thought we had it, you know, perfect for him, you know." "We had it much better than he had at the Elms." "But, he wasn't satisfied with that." "He wanted 50 degree cold water." "He wanted body sprays around him." "And then he told me that he wanted a showerhead about two feet off the floor." "He said, "I want a showerhead right there."" "I said, "Well, you hold your finger there Mr. President." "Let me mark that spot."" "In your home, probably you have about eight to ten pounds of running pressure on your showerhead when it's running." "His was 110 pounds of pressure while it was running." "It was like a mini-car wash." "The Chief Usher was Rex Scouten." "He said, "I have to try that shower out."" "And it just kind of pinned him right up against the wall." "The employees are like a family because everybody see, you know - it's like you've got different departments and everything like that." "But it's not operated that way." "If you see something that needs to be done, regardless of which department it is, you do it." "That's why we say it's like a family." "I remember one time teasing a member of the staff, one of the butlers, and they are really like family and treated our children like family, and I said, "If you don't behave," "I'm going to get you fired."" "And he burst out laughing and said," ""Presidents come and go, butlers stay."" "In 1945, a young electrician named John Muffler came to work here." "For the last 50 years, in addition to electrical jobs, he has handled the little annoyances of life for ten first families, like replacing watch batteries and fixing eye- glasses." "You want to do the Ground Floor, right?" "No one in the history of the House has served here longer." "Am I going too fast for you?" "The man with the longest tenure here, fittingly, also is in charge of time." "Every Friday, Mr. Muffler winds the clocks in every part of the White House." "How many clocks are there in the place?" "Several." "...Mr. President?" "Yes, it's a beautiful clock." "And it still keeps good time." "Do all these clocks run, Mr. President..." "Yes, they all run." "We have a special man who winds clocks every Friday." "I'd always managed to be there when he'd come in somehow, and one morning he said to me," ""Son, do you know why when I come into this office, these pictures are all crooked and all bent out of shape?"" "I said, "No, Sir, Mr. President, unless the cleaners, when they're dusting, they move the pictures around."" "He said, "No, no, no, that's not the reason."" "He said, "Would you like to know?"" "I said, "Yes Sir, Mr. President, I would."" "And he said, "The rotation of the earth causes that."" "And I said, "Yes Sir, Mr. President."" "But he went over every morning and straightened 'em..." "Oh, I love Mr. Muffler." "I can't do anything like program VCRs or set digital clocks and so I'm always needing his help to come to my rescue, but he's a perfect example of the kind of dedicated service that people have given to the White House" "and to Presidents and their families for over 200 plus years." "United Nations War Council." "President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at the White House..." "Because of what happens here, even in the wee hours of the night, someone is always on call." "Alonzo Fields, White House butler for 21 years, developed a unique relationship with Prime Minister Winston Churchill." "Around 1:30, I decided that the Prime Minister satisfied and I was thinking of going..." "really going to bed." "And the bell buzzed." "I went in, the Prime Minister is walking up and down with this scotch in his hand, talking, quoting, and saying different things and he says," ""We're trying to find out from the Russians what we can do for them." "But what can we do?" "It's like an iron shade."" "And then he stopped and stomped his foot," ""Oh, make that an iron curtain."" "And then he saw me and my eyes saw the bottle was empty." ""My poker face didn't fool you."" "He says, "Yes, my man, I need some more to drink."" "He says, "I have a war to fight." "And I need fortitude."" "So I proceeded and got a bottle of scotch and opened it and poured the Prime Minister a drink and then I said to him," ""Mr. Prime Minister, will that be all for the night?"" "And he says, "I don't know." "I can depend on you."" "And I said, "Well, Mr. Prime Minister, what is it?"" "And he says, "Well, if ever I'm accused of being a teetotaler," "I want you to come to my defense."" "I says, "Mr. Prime Minister, I'll defend you to the last drop."" "It's hard to imagine today, but back in the Madison Administration during the War of 1812, the British Army captured the city of Washington and burned the White House." "The Madisons were trying to keep a cheery face on it all and they had a dinner party." "And some of the most amusing in context letters of the Madison paper are regrets to that particular dinner party that night in August." "Lo and behold, you could hear the gunfire." "Mrs. Madison finally fled herself, left the house alone with Paul Jennings a slave." "Jennings was to bank the fire, ironically, to keep it from burning down." "But the British came in at eleven at night." "They saw the dinner." "The officers sat down and had the dinner." "The furniture was piled up in the rooms with lamp oil on it, the windows broken out." "And about 1 a.m., the British stood with flaming javelins in a circle around the house and Lieutenant Pratt fired his pistol." "The javelins were thrown in the house and it exploded." "Mrs. William Thornton a British citizen, was there and said," ""It glowed like a great plum cake."" "The White House is reduced to ashes except for the stone walls that General Washington had cherished so." "Upstairs on the Truman Balcony we have one block that's unpainted." "But whenever we have people up there, I take them outside and I look at it, and I say, "You remember this house burned in 1814."" "I look at it all the time, every time we have any kind of international incident." "When Captain O'Grady was rescued out of Bosnia," "I went out on the Truman Balcony and I looked at the burn marks." "But I'm very aware every day I go to work about how this house carries the whole story of America and how we're still creating that story and what our obligations are." "Throughout the day during a state visit meetings between the official delegations are held and the press moves from room to room for photo opportunities." "...care to respond to the health care situation..." "Those living here are surrounded by constant reminders that they are not living a private life." ""I feel as though I have just turned into a piece of public property,"" "Jacqueline Kennedy said after only two months in White House." "Grandpa lives in the big White House in Washington." "And Grandma lives there too." "And there she is with two of the grandchildren... as the entire family goes to the East Room to pose for the News of the Day camera." "The South Lawn has always been the quintessential American backyard something between a playground and a formal garden." "President Wilson kept a flock of sheep here and he also welcomed the first autogiro." "Each morning during the Hoover Administration the Cabinet played an exercise game with an eight-pound medicine ball." "When Ike installed the first putting green, the stage was set for confrontation with the local constituents." "Squirrels have created a nutty problem at the White House with President Eisenhower complaining that the four-legged vandals are tearing up his private putting green." "The President, a very earnest golfer, brought on a mighty political storm with his decision to banish the squirrels, even though nobody has found out whether the animals are Republicans or Democrats." "Well, the South Lawn is well inhabited by squirrels." "And up at Camp David," "I noticed that the oak trees shed acorns to a great extent." "And the squirrels didn't do much about them." "So when the day came to go back down to the White House," "I'd fill my pockets with acorns." "And there, up and down and in the Rose Garden, there would be these squirrels and I'd throw the acorns out to them and you'd see them, wham, they'd just go and grab for those acorns" "One occasion, at Camp David, I didn't get any acorns, and when I came back, well, I went into the Oval Office and we were having a meeting there." "I looked and in every one of those windows, the squirrels were standing on their hind legs and looking through their front legs inside." "And they're looking at me." "And they literally..." "I could see were saying," ""Where are the acorns?"" "At about 3 p.m., the pianist for tonight's entertainment practices in the East Room." "One floor below, in the White House kitchen, chef Walter Scheib is gearing up for dinner now only five hours away." "In addition to the normal pressure to please, turn-of-the-century chefs ...had to routinely serve seven-course family meals and twenty-course state dinners." "The pleasures of these meals were not lost on President Taft, who tipped the scales at more than 300 pounds." "Though a success in the kitchen, the chef's handy work was causing problems elsewhere." "White House bathtubs proved too narrow for Taft;" "to his consternation the President was frequently left stuck in the tub." "White House ushers were sent scurrying to find a proper vessel." "When it finally arrived, it was 41 inches wide, could hold nearly 65 gallons of water, and all the men who installed it." "Tonight's guests will be served one of the legendary White House desserts, the creation of pastry chef Roland Mesnier." "That goes back." "This is when I am even more nervous than normal." "You have to remember, you know, when you serve a state dinner, who are your guests?" "The dining room is filled with extremely important people, people who have been everywhere, that have tasted all sorts of food, and our job is to make sure that the guests will leave the White House feeling that the President and Mrs. Clinton did an excellent job" "receiving the guests, not the pastry chef, no, or anybody else, but that the President and the First Lady." "That has to be very well understood." "I think if you can do that, then I think you do your job very well." "Mesnier's almond baskets will be the dinner's grand finale." "It's the type of culinary touch that has always attracted the attention of gourmets, including Julia Child." "While history has recorded the names of almost every White House chef, the names and lives of the kitchen assistants and the servants who toiled on the staff have gone largely unrecorded." "In 1909, Mrs. Taft considered firing all of the white ushers because they couldn't be treated like servants in the same way as blacks." "She was persuaded not to." "Despite the discrimination, black Americans who worked here then created a vibrant world." "Their White House positions placed them in the upper strata of Washington's black society." "James Coats, Adolph Bird, and Arlen Dixon," "I remember the first three butlers I met during the Tafts Administration." "Lillian Rogers Parks, a White House seamstress for 30 years, was introduced to that society by her mother, Maggie Rogers, a maid to Mrs. Taft." "They had their homes and they entertained and then we had clubs." "That was very classy." "And that gave them the idea to get together and have a little a club at the White House called the Chandeliers." "Named for the cut glass fixtures in the East Room, the Chandelier Club, like many social clubs in the early 1900s, held a ball each year." "Though it was not staged there, the White House imprimatur made the Chandelier Ball exclusive." "The Marine Band played and White House dignitaries always attended." "But outside the ball, black workers were still treated as second-class citizens." "In 1902, President Teddy Roosevelt invited the noted educator," "Booker T. Washington, to the White House for dinner." "Press reaction in the South and the North was severe." "Roosevelt was chastened." "No black American received another social invitation to the White House for 28 years." "In the entrance hall, the honor guard practices for their ceremonial march later this evening." "They are performing a kind of ritual that helps define what has become a national shrine." "For the occupants of the late 1800s, the White House was too small and not nearly grand enough for the nation's aspirations." "There were frequent and elaborate plans to expand or even abandon it." "I don't think the White House would have survived the late 1860s, had it not been where Lincoln had lived." "You think of Lincoln in his nightshirt going down the hall at night with the wind blowing and his dreams that his secretary sold him out, and his wife's problems, the child's death." "And it all happened in the White House." "And it's from the White House he left in his carriage to go to Ford's Theater and it was to the White House he was brought back dead." "It's not too excessive to say that Lincoln sanctified the White House." "Now those..." "this is what we call pull sugar, which is simply water, glucose and lemon juice..." "With only hours to go before the evening begins, pastry chef Roland Mesnier is finishing tonight's culinary grand finale." "Until you feel that you are..." "that the ribbons is wide enough because as you pull it thin, it will get narrow on you." "That's... just like a baby, very, very careful, you have to kind of have to tickle it and massage it and be nice to it." "See, look at these." "Precision and timing is the key to beautiful ribbons." "It makes you very nervous because of the kind of material we're using." "Some as you can see shatters just like this." "And, you know, one touch, and that's it." "One wrong move, in the corner of the dough." "So I think every state dinner I age about two or three years." "Mesnier's creations represent the sophistication of the White House staff." "But it wasn't always this way." "At the end of the 19th century, the President's house reflected the manners of a frontier nation, not the style of an emerging imperial power." "It was a home comparable to many other residences from its beginnings, and then enormous demands came upon it and we've had a rather imperial community come to Washington." "General Grant, goodness, he went out and got an old orderly in the military that was a friend of his to come be the chef." "And they had a state dinner and here, apple pie came out and big slabs of roast beef with gravy dripping off of the plates and Mrs. Grant was mortified." "These ambassadors didn't know what to do with it - get on the floor and chew it or what." "By 1902, a brilliant young man named George Cortelyou had changed all of that." "At Roosevelt's request, he created an almost regal White House style that redefined the house for the new century." "As part of the new look, Teddy Roosevelt officially changed the name of the mansion:" "the new letterhead read simply:" ""White House, Washington."" "As part of Teddy Roosevelt's re-invention of the White House, he added a new wing." "It is in this Wing, not in the house itself, that the most famous room in America stands:" "The Oval Office." "Frankly... and definitely there is danger ahead." "Danger against which we must prepare." "We are now prepared to destroy, more rapidly and completely, every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any city." "We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communication." "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba... against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States." "Because of the history that has been made here, the White House is the most potent symbol of power in the world." "Inside the symbol with only an hour before the first guests arrive, the White House staff is in a whirl of final preparation." "No, no, no." "They greet these people here..." "Each of the head people:" "The tables have been set up very well." "I've personally checked them..." "I hope there's nobody here." "It's those mundane chores that have to be done." "That's part of what the evening's about ...is part of setting a mood as well as entertaining guests." "We're trying to set a mood which is a nice pleasant evening for everybody." "Since any of these plates could be the President's, each has to be perfect." "Though each guest eats the same meal, everyone doesn't get to dine with the President." "All of tonight's 151 guests will not fit in the State Dining Room so some of them will have to eat here in the Ground Floor Map Room." "To the Russians who have been relegated here, someone may have to explain the American concept of "the kids table"" "You gotta know what you're doin'." "Not just anyone can serve the President and his guests." "Besides careful training, each of these waiters has undergone an FBI background check." "The State Dining Room, like the rest of the house, is ready, but Gary Walters isn't taking any chances." "If the Chief Usher had made a similar inspection of the House 45 years ago, he would have found a few things out of place." "In 1948, the White House was completely gutted." "The floors that Jackson, Lincoln, and two Roosevelts had walked across were gone." "After five years of demolition and construction, the White House was res rebuilt." "The inside of the house was put back exactly as before." "Though it was now constructed of steel and concrete," "Jefferson and Lincoln would have easily recognized their old home." "And the idea is preserved." "That's really what it is." "The idea of the house and the symbol is bigger than any material part of it." "And that has remained intact and is really more powerful than ever today." "By the time the President and First Lady reach the first floor, everything is ready." "All the preparations have led to this moment;" "now all they need are guests." "At night, it's a very different thing than what happens at the beginning of the state visit." "We will have worked all day long." "And the visit will either have been a success or a moderate success or maybe not so successful, but what you want to do at night is to simply seal the best possible relationship you can between the leaders of the countries." "So at night you really just want them to enjoy themselves, you want them to have a good time at the dinner, to say what they want to say at the toast and just be glad that they can be there." "In the family's private quarters on the seldom seen Second Floor of the White House, one of the most critical moments of the visit unfolds." "Here, the President and First Lady have a chance to relax with their guest in the warm atmosphere of a home." "The press waits at the foot of the Grand Stair where in a moment one of the most formal ceremonies of the state visit will occur:" "the Presidential entrance march." "Ladies and Gentlemen, President of the United States and Mrs. Clinton, accompanied by the President of the Russian Federation and Mrs. Yeltsin." "The receiving line is charged with excitement because famous as the guests may be, they are about to meet the two most powerful men in the world." "The rising anticipation of the evening is peaking by the time the official toasts are made." "President Yeltsin's should be finishing any minute now." "He's going a couple a minutes over his five minutes." "He's up to about eight minutes now of speaking." "And finally, dinner begins." "While dinner continues upstairs, downstairs, the staff is battling back an avalanche of dishes." "Working hard." "Working hard." "Cocktails is serving." "After the cocktails that's when it starts flowing in." "Start coming down and after that, it's nonstop." "Do you kind of forget where you are?" "No, no." "You know you're in the kitchen washing and drying dishes." "At the top of the winding stair that connects the two worlds, days of work are about to payoff for pastry chef Roland Mesnier." "If you are hungry enough, you can eat the whole thing, yes." "On evenings like these, dinner is followed by a performance in the East Room." "During the civil rights movement, singer Sarah Vaughan performed here." "At the end of the evening, a staff member found her sobbing in her dressing room." "When asked what was wrong, she said, "Nothing is the matter." "It's just that 20 years ago when I came to Washington," "I couldn't even get a hotel room, and tonight I sang for the President of the United States in the White House- and then he asked me to dance with him." "It is more than I can stand!"" "Tonight, Diva Kathleen Battle lends her voice to the house." "I think one of the attractions of the White House, one of the things that makes it so precious in our country, is the fact that a family really is living there every day." "That it's a center not only of political power and prestige on a global basis, but has that human touch of individuals enjoying life within those..." "I guess you might say, hallowed halls." "Tomorrow it will start all over again and every day for as long as there is a republic." "Families will come and go, just as butlers and maids do, dignitaries and old gentlemen who wind clocks." "These are the people who furnish this house and give it life and as they do, an American idea endures." "Some call it the "White Death"" "and an ancient riddle asks, what flies without wings, strikes without hands and sees without eyes?" "Every year more than a million avalanches fall world wide." "Avalanches are simply part of our planet's natural order." "It is only when we get in their way that tragedy strikes." "Utilizing unique methods, we continue our quest to better understand the dynamic power of raging snow." "But the magic of the mountains lures us... more and more place themselves in harm's way." "My machine just moved over me and everything just started moving and I just yelled." "I just screamed "Help me God."" "My whole life's flashing in front of my eyes." "You go to inhale and you were just inhaling a mouthful of snow." "I was sure I was gonna die." "They're not to be trusted." "They're awesome terrible things." "They'll rip you to shreds." "They'll Maytag ya." "Something we need to learn something about." "Annapurna in Nepal, one of the most dangerous mountains in the world." "October 15, 1997." "Brothers Jose Antonio and Jesus Martinez Novas, veteran mountain climbers from Spain plan to ascend over 26,000 feet to the summit." "Cameraman Allejandro Rocha is to record their departure from Camp 2 and then await their return." "Recent storms have left deep snow on the mountain side." "It is slow going as the brothers set off to establish Camp Three some 3000 feet higher on the peak." "An hour after they begin to climb they are just two tiny dots on the face of the mountain... as Allejandro shoots video from the tent." "As he faces death." "Allejandro captures a final self portrait." "But just as it reaches the tent, the avalanche is spent." "Allejandro is astonished to find himself alive, but has little hope for his friends." "Are you alright?" "Like specters they emerge from the white eager to tell their tale." "The following day the weather got worse and they were driven off Annapurna." "Some 20 percent of the Earth's land mass is crowned by mountains." "In the Andes, the Caucasus, the Himalaya, the Alps and the Rockies avalanches exert their terrible power." "100,000 fall every year in the United States from Vermont to Alaska." "And here deep in the back country of Alaska..." "Three experts are seeking to photograph the perfect avalanche." "With cinematographer Steve Kroschel, world renowned avalanche experts Doug Fesler and Jill Fredston, are here both to trigger the snow slide and ensure the safety of Kroschel's film crew." "I realize the power of the avalanche and I try to capture that on film." "I mean it really rouses people." "It stirs in all of us something." "I don't know, primeval." "It's very interesting." "But to get those images," "I must go down into these dangerous zones where the avalanche is going to come down and if I make a mistake, if I'm wrong, it'll cost me my life." "So being with people like Doug and Jill who are experts and know snow safety to a T." "That's what their main objective is to make sure that I don't get killed." "I'm aware of the lighting conditions that he wants." "And I'm aware of the kind of avalanche he'd like to have." "But sometimes I feel like I have to do a little reality check." "Because there's exposure from crevasse fields that are in the run out zone, that people could fall down and have avalanche potential if they're on adjoining slopes." "And so those are the things that I'm looking at." "First and foremost I want to make it a safe spot." "Can we go along this ridge to this little peak where that cornice is just go right along so I can look out." "This is a good spot isn't it Doug?" "Well it's good so far up there." "This kind of concerns me all those seracs up above as far as landing down there." "We'll have to take a look at that." "This is the peak right here." "That should rip out Doug." "I believe it will rip out." "Doesn't that look good to you?" "I don't like it because of the crevasses." "And some of the exposure to some of these chunks of ice up here coming off." "I don't think it's safe." "It takes several hours to find the spot that satisfies everyone." "It looks like we could drop charges right down in that little pocket there where the cornice is." "Doesn't that look good to you?" "Yeah." "Lower 'em in there like it's my unborn son." "One camera is positioned inside a padded steel crash box which is placed directly in the path of the avalanche." "Timing is everything in this mission." "The camera must begin shooting when the avalanche is triggered or it will all be for nothing." "One." "Two." "Three." "Four." "Five." "Six." "Seven." "Eight." "Nine." "Ten." "Eleven." "Twelve." "Thirteen." "Fourteen." "Fifteen." "OK!" "On your mark get set and go!" "Steve positions himself behind a second camera at a safe distance." "Second one out." "Okay keep going... keep going." "Several sticks of high explosives will be used to trigger the avalanche" "Most avalanches are naturally triggered, when the weight of the snow exceeds its ability to hold together." "And most of these occur far from human eyes." "I think the usefulness of seeing avalanches in motion is that a lot of the people that we deal with in our avalanche workshops have never seen an avalanche in motion before." "But when they see this thing in motion and they see the power that's associated with an avalanche it's a wake up alarm" "Like the snowflakes they are composed of no two avalanches are alike." "Even very small avalanches can kill, and the big ones are true monsters." "They can attain speeds of over 200 miles per hour... traveling a mile or more on level ground." "No place in avalanche country is entirely safe." "In 1988 the Austrian town of St. Anton which had not experienced an avalanche in over 60 years, was struck just after dawn." "Houses which had stood for almost 400 years were destroyed in an instant." "Remote areas in less developed countries are the hardest hit." "The greatest known avalanche disaster took place in Peru where an ice slide decimated the town of Yungay, killing 18,000 people." "They're awesome terrible things." "They'll rip you to shreds." "They'll Maytag you." "But they're also beautiful to watch, they're delicate, they're graceful, they dance." "They're a double edged sword in that sense." "They're not to be trusted." "Something we need to learn something about." "In the western world most avalanche victims place themselves in the path of danger, and see the mountains as a playground beautiful and benign." "The interesting thing about avalanche accidents is that most of them happen on nice blue sky days." "It's also very interesting to me that roughly 95% of the people who are caught in avalanches are the ones who triggered the avalanche." "And really the question isn't really why is so and so getting caught, it's why did they let themselves get caught, because there's so much knowledge available today that nobody, nobody needs to get caught in an avalanche by accident." "The trap is set over a period of time." "One snow flake is light as a feather." "But the stealthy accumulation of trillions can form massive layers weighing millions of pounds." "What triggers slides can only be discovered by digging into the snow pack." "Doug Fesler introduces a group of students to the deadly archeology of a slab avalanche." "What kind of force is it gonna take to rip it out?" "That's all I really need to know." "First of all do I have a slab?" "I'll start feeling here and I feel resistance as I pull down." "It goes fairly hard to begin with now it's starting to go going a little easier." "A little more resistance again." "Right here a little bit easier." "Right through here is a crust layer." "Now it's very easy right in there." "Another shear plane possibly." "This is a nasty shear plane." "Look how this stuff just falls out of here." "Shear planes allow colossal avalanches to be set off by the slightest disturbance." "We're corroborating the opinion we have about the hardness and weakness of these various layers." "This stuff is so weak it..." "just falls out." "Intermediate faceted snow." "The sugar snow." "More people have probably died in the world as a result of this weak layer than any other weak layer there is." "These snow crystals can be more dangerous than dynamite." "Fluctuations in temperature cause some crystals to lose cohesion and become slippery." "These frozen ball bearings allow everything above to slide." "Notice I have my hand ready just in case." "Okay now we have a free standing column." "Want to make sure the ski is nice and vertical." "See how that came out just like it's spring loaded?" "By integrating all that information together there should be a picture flashing in front of your mind." "And the picture is one of the serious instability that exists from a human triggered point of view." "And so the message there is to stay away from steep leeward smooth slopes because those are the ones that are waiting to eat you." "What I want you to do is on the count of three." "I want you to go." "One." "Two." "Three." "Up in the air punch your heels in real hard." "Ready Banzai warriors?" "One two three." "Banzai!" "An avalanche on the move is a dynamic event, a slab will rip out new slabs, transforming, becoming ever larger, and triggering billowing clouds of powder." "Fortunately, nature can warn of avalanches with subtle sights and sounds." "But if you're hard blasting a 130 horsepower vehicle at 85 miles per hour, it's unlikely that you'll hear or see any of nature's warnings." "Snowmobiles can swiftly invade the heart of avalanche country." "Riders enjoy jetting up a steep incline as high as they can, unwittingly teasing a potential avalanche." "The game is called "high marking."" "Whoever gets the highest wins." "These snowmobilers almost lost it all one morning near Kellogg, Idaho" "A friend videotaped the action as a wall of snow came plunging down." "They would all escape unharmed and spend the rest of the afternoon tempting fate on other slopes." "But in January 1998, three friends exhilarated by a crisp clear day outside of Bend," "Oregon were not so lucky." "It was all virgin snow." "Everything was smooth and just real billowy and soft looking." "And being the first one to make the tracks is kind of a thrill." "That's where you really get your adrenaline going and just let the throttle do what you can with the machine." "And we could get twenty or thirty miles away from anything and see country see a lot of country in a day that was nobody else was around." "The snow just looked like a big a big pillow it was just smooth and soft looking." "When you got on it it would kind of fall apart beneath you because there was nothing holding it from below." "Both Art and I looked at this big clearing off to the right of us." "Art took a couple of stabs at and I watched him go up the mountain or go up the slope." "He must have gone up I don't know," "I'm guessing six seven eight times." "He came down and I decided to go up and I got up on top and I got stuck." "At that point in time I was pretty much stuck like this." "So I got off the low side of my sled and pulled down on my front ski." "My machine just moved over me and everything just started moving." "I was almost to the bottom getting ready to turn around and go back up." "I just got a big push from behind and snow dust everywhere." "And when the dust had gone down enough I turned around." "The snowmobile was buried to the seat and my legs were buried right along with it." "And I turned around and I could see the ski of Brian's snowmobile, but no Brian." "Buried alive, Brian has little more than 30 minutes to live." "And when everything came to a stop it just turned real dark." "My eyes couldn't focus on anything." "And I went into a very frantic time frame." "After trying to get control of the situation and just calm down," "I tried to move anything and everything I possibly could." "I tried to move a finger in my glove inside my glove and I couldn't even do that." "And I ran up to where his snowmobile was and looked around but I didn't see any sign of him." "It's about the most helpless feeling you can have." "You know that there's somebody that needs help and you don't have any idea where they are." "The snow was compressed to my chin like this" "I..." "I could move..." "I felt my cheeks moving and my eye, my eyelids." "I could only move my stomach inward." "I just screamed." "And after I calmed down" "I just remember saying "help me God."" "And we kinda started digging just with our hands within just a minute we realized that that wasn't getting us anywhere." "We could only dig maybe a foot or two deep." "It was just gonna take too long." "So then I figured out that I thought we needed a probe." "And I asked Mark if he had anything and all he had was a saw." "So Mark took off with his saw to find a stick or tree or something that we could use." "When you try to search for something you can move other then your lips and your eyelid you just surrender." "I just remember surrendering." "And I just kind of went to sleep." "I didn't know what else to do." "We were probing close to the snowmobile and started working up the hill, and probably within 10 probes I hit something that felt... it had some elasticity, it wasn't, it didn't feel solid." "And I told Mark I think I have him." "Brian was seconds from dying of asphyxiation not just from the lack of air but from the extreme pressure on his chest" "Barely a few feet down, he might as well have been cast in concrete." "They reached him just in time and learned a lesson they are eager to share." "In retrospect there were some signs." "And had we been as educated then as we are now about avalanches we probably would have recognized them..." "But the basic bottom line I think is just common sense and the awareness." "Being snow smart out there carrying shovels and probes and beepers is a big factor." "I would like to see the people that are gonna go in the back country get some basic survival gear and some basic survival knowledge and just try and be prepared for some of the events that can happen." "Such events have been happening for thousands of years and no one has experienced a longer or more grievous struggle with the avalanche than the stalwart people of the Alps." "In the Great Saint Bernard Pass sits a hospice founded in the 11th century to aid and protect weary travelers." "Today the hospice still welcomes those who come to visit the ancestral home of the legendary Saint Bernard." "In earlier times, both the monks and their dogs quickly responded to travelers in distress." "With their keen sense of smell and massive strength, nothing could stop the noble Saint Bernard from locating avalanche victims." "During the several centuries that the Saint Bernards served at the hospice more than 2000 lives were saved." "But the legendary brandy keg never actually hung around the Saint Bernard's neck." "The tradition originated with 19th century English painters beginning with Sir Edwin Landseer." "The last thing a hypothermia victim needs is brandy." "In World War I, the Alps saw a more sinister response to the danger of the avalanche." "When Austrian and Italian armies met here, each side deliberately triggered deadly snow slides upon the other." "An estimated 40,000 men were lost in this lethal use of nature." "Avalanches are intentionally triggered today... but for an entirely different reason." "Fire in the hole!" "Artillery and explosives are used in preemptive strikes, releasing potential avalanches, preparing the mountains for another kind of invasion" "Each morning before skiers hit the slopes the ski patrol hits them first, to make them safe." "But for some a tamed mountain is not a sufficient challenge." "Extreme skiers seek remote places where the powder is fresh and alive." "In 1996, three of them were shooting an adventure film that almost ended in disaster." "Miraculously, they all survived." "Others filming the glory of unbounded snow sports have pushed the margin of safety a little too far..." "These experts escaped with their lives but near ski resorts, those caught in unsafe areas can find themselves in trouble with the law." "Here in Loveland Colorado, instead of going to jail this avalanche offender chose to be buried alive." "I'm kinda scared right now actually to tell you the truth." "Buried beneath the snow for up to half an hour, he'll have plenty of time to identify with avalanche victims" "And retrieving him is great training for the dogs." "Angel search." "That's good." "Easily the furriest and friendliest part of any rescue effort, rescue dogs often arrive too late to save lives and end up being used to recover bodies" "Humans on the scene are usually the only ones who can help in time." "Therefore avalanche safety schools across the country teach as many as possible the techniques of rapid rescue." "Avalanche "victims" are taught various means of escape and survival, such as using swimming motions to stay on top of the slide and creating a breathing space with their hands before the snow hardens." "Radio beacons are a modern aid to fast rescue." "A transmitter worn by a victim emits a signal that others can home in on." "But the best defense remains avoiding the avalanche altogether." "The danger is well known." "Warnings abound but sometimes they are discounted or ignored." "On January 23, 1998, a French Alpine guide broke all the rules as he led a group of teenage hikers and their teachers off of marked trails near Les Orres in the Alps." "None of them were wearing beacons." "Some of the children slammed into a grove of larch trees they had just walked through." "Their bodies caught in branches and wrapped around trunks." "More than 150 rescuers combed the scene in a heart breaking search for survivors." "Yet it could have so easily been avoided." "The group had discussed avalanches and had even watched a video illustrating the risks." "But when some of the children questioned the wisdom of hiking that day, they were ignored." "The accident gripped the heart of the nation." "Eleven died, nine of them school children." "It was the worst avalanche disaster to hit France in almost 30 years." "89 years ago in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, disaster struck travelers who had never expected to even touch snow." "Number 25, a Great Northern Railroad passenger train is followed by Number 27," "Great Northern's fast mail train." "Heavy winter storms trigger avalanches causing both to stop just before the Cascade Tunnel." "On the following day the tracks are finally cleared and both trains slowly steam through." "The trains are diverted to a side track outside the railroad town of Wellington." "There they remain helpless." "Crews work to clear the tracks but for each foot they clear another falls and the peaks above are a looming white wall." "Without warning an avalanche crashes down from the mountains destroying the cook shack where passengers had eaten the night before." "The tracks ahead and the tracks behind are now completely blocked." "There is nowhere to go." "Five days pass." "Some passengers slog to Wellington for food and comfort, returning to the train to sleep." "A few risk the perilous trek to the next town." "Everyone else remains." "Then on March 1st around 1:30 AM the white death falls hard from the mountain." "A slab a half mile long, and twenty feet deep surges over the tracks" "Rescue workers follow trails of blood in the snow to unearth bodies" "Mothers, daughters, salesmen, sons, lawyers, ranchers, shepherds and miners crushed beyond recognition in the frozen deluge." "The final toll is 96 dead, with 22 survivors" "This remains America's worst avalanche disaster." "In Europe, the threat of such tragedies has hovered over" "Alpine residents for centuries." "Some homeowners fearing what their ancestors called the "avalanche beast"" "have built barrier walls for protection." "A 17th century church meets the avalanche head on, like a ship plowing through a sea of snow." "One of the best protections is the natural one." "Dense forests of trees can prevent some avalanches and slow others down." "Yet years of mindless deforestation have left some towns hanging precariously on the edge of disaster." "Today as the slow process of reforestation continues, steel and concrete barriers do the work of trees." "Although unsightly and expensive, they offer some protection." "While the search for better methods continues." "With their dense population and mountainous landscape, the islands of Japan are a prime target for avalanche tragedy." "A devastating slide hit near Niigata, in 1986." "It was one of the worst avalanches to hit Japan since World War II." "This disastrous slide would provide crucial data for scientists in Japan." "Prompting Dr. Kouichi Nishimura of the Institute of Low Temperature Science at Hokkaido University to begin his research on avalanches." "A computer model shows just how the tragic slide progressed." "Here in Sapporo at the sight of the 1972 Olympics, he recreates an avalanche on a small scale to increase his understanding of the internal flow of snow." "Tracking individual particles of snow as they behave in an avalanche is all but impossible." "Nishimura's inspired substitute over 300,000 ping pong balls!" "The behavior of the balls will be fed into a computer to learn more about how hard, how far and how fast an avalanche will run." "Dr. Nishimura hopes to better predict how and where it is safe to build." "In Juneau, Alaska, that lesson has still to be learned." "As the city has expanded into several avalanche paths," "Juneau is a disaster waiting to happen" "Just past 5 AM on March 22, 1962 above Behrends Ave in the Highland district... a fast moving avalanche raced down Mt." "Juneau and smashed into the neighborhood below." "Miraculously no one was hurt." "But there was an immediate public outcry." "Yet none of this should have come as a surprise." "Avalanches had fallen in the past and Behrends Ave lies directly in their path." "Studies were commissioned." "Plans were made, but nothing happened." "Mayor Dennis Egan remembers..." "The city and borough of Juneau has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing avalanche research, doing studies." "In fact what we did was list high hazard areas right on the maps so when folks see those and go out to purchase a home from someone else and come into our Planning Department, they'll know that they'll be buying a piece of property" "that's in a high hazard area." "Now we tried to put language in the deeds that when the property was sold and was refinanced through lending institutions that they were in a high hazard area." "But the property owners were violently opposed to it as well as the financial institutions and it didn't pass." "In fact, we had talked about a program to buy the properties back and the folks were violently opposed to that as well." "It's the place they want to stay, it's the place they want to retire and they don't want anybody telling them what to do." "They know they're in a hazardous zone but they've come to accept it." "This summer I started in July and I've now built this deck and I'm working on this building which..." "I'm building as I think of it." "I'm not I don't have an exact plan but it," "I know what I want." "I want a hot tub right here." "I want to be able to see that avalanche come and get me." "And I guess it's sort of a King Lear thing, uh blow ye winds and rage ye hurricaneos." "I like the weather." "I love the weather." "It's everywhere." "Apparently the risk of dying in an avalanche is less than that from choking on meat and I'm not a vegetarian so you know, it's just... whatever you do, wherever you live," "I mean, people live in flood plains, people live in mud zones, people live in hurr..." "I went to school is Sarasota Florida where we waited for hurricanes on a regular basis." "You know, there's no place on earth, I don't think, that is completely hazard free." "My friends they make jokes about it." "They call this Fort Liston." "And I get a charge out of it, I think it's pretty funny." "And they say, well we know you're going to be seeing the avalanches coming down and I say..." "Bring it on!" "In 1972, a powder blast rocketed straight into the center of Juneau." "Luckily by the time it hit town, it's energy had already dissipated." "Many residents thought it was simply a fast and furious local blizzard." "A look up should have been enough for all to see the truth." "Experts say that it's not a question of "if"" "but "when" the next disaster will happen." "While some choose to live in danger zones others must earn a living there." "One of the most incredible survival stories took place at the Bessie G mine high in the La Plata mountains of Colorado." "In November 1986, Lester Morlang was working frantically to build a snow shed with his partner, mentor and best friend Jack Ritter." "We knew this storm was coming and we had to get this timber in place before the storm came." "That was the whole purpose was to keep that old east portal open for our ventilation inside." "Because of winter weather, the Bessie G had only been worked three months a year." "But Jack Ritter, who knew more about gold mining than just about anyone, had figured out how to operate her year round." "Yet this was the worst weather Jack had seen in over a decade." "Two feet of snow had already fallen and both men were in a race with the storm." "Lester was in the bucket of the skip loader and Jack was handing him timbers when everything suddenly turned white." "When it initially hit when I come out of the bucket." "I'm sure that was only a matter of seconds before I landed." "And just naturally you put your hands in front of your face in kind of ball up because you don't know what's happening to you." "But for the first few seconds, my whole life's flashing in front of my eyes." "And I'm seeing things I could never remember normally." "I'm actually seeing things like my son graduating from college and you know I was sure I was going to die right there." "Although the snow was packed loosely around him," "Lester Morlang's odyssey had just begun" "When I come to of course I had my hands in front of my face and everything was packed." "One of the first things I could do was get the snow away from my face because you go to inhale and you were just inhaling a mouthful of snow." "And then of course, I was screaming for Jack, you know, I just, screaming and crying and everything at the same time." "I mean it's trying to take your mind over." "Jack was already dead." "And now... buried only a few feet from Lester, the skip loader's diesel engine was spewing deadly exhaust into the snow." "I could feel the vibration in the snow and I could hear it, definitely hear it and I knew to keep away from it because I knew it would have been a big pocket of gas." "For if I'd a dug into that loader why that would have been it." "Lester knew where not to dig." "But which way was up?" "And when I had my face free I was kind of overlaying over on my side." "I had moisture from my mouth and I could feel it running across the corner of my eye." "So I knew I was laying kinda of on my side, head down, so I knew I wanted to start the incline you know to get back up." "What Lester couldn't know was that he would have to dig through almost 30 feet of snow fighting cold, claustrophobia and a fear so intense, it sickened him." "Several times I would go into convulsions and I did throw up." "It seemed like every half hour, why you'd have the dry heaves and some convulsions kind of like attacking you." "I wasn't thirsty at first" "I knew not to try and eat the snow but my mouth was drying out and everything and I'd take a little bit of snow in my mouth, just to wet my lips, and spit it back out." "Every second." "Every hour." "Every minute there's something there wanting you to lose control of your senses." "And you know I'm thinking about my family and the position I'd be leaving them in and a couple of times I almost thought my wife was right there with me because I could smell her perfume, it was just as distinct as..." "I know it was there." "I could smell her and it and that was good because that kind of gave me some strength to know that I was, somebody was thinking about me." "Many people were thinking about him." "Word of the missing miners reached Sheriff Bill Gardner." "As soon as I heard I knew that this was the real thing." "I can't describe the feeling." "It..." "My heart sunk." "My stomach turned and literally chills went up my spine because I knew what we were up against" "This was a significant winter storm." "We had snow of at least two inches an hour." "We knew that we had winds of in excess of 50 miles an hour." "And we knew that the site was totally isolated." "That the only way to the site was either by air, or through a canyon that was literally avalanche alley." "Avalanche safety expert Chris George was brought in to bomb the area, clearing it of potential avalanches, making it safe for the rescue team." "The road into the Bessie G up the La Plata canyon was already a serious hazard I mean just driving that road." "Just because one avalanche runs doesn't mean to say that everything else is secured." "You know you'll have one or two people trapped somewhere." "You send another 40 people in there." "It's not secure." "It's something we have to do." "After almost 22 hours of digging," "Lester finally inched closer to freedom" "I could tell I was seeing a little bit of light and so I was about, maybe two feet under and of course the adrenaline started pumping then and I just started digging and beating and jumping and I can remember just breaking out and just screaming" "Thank God, you know, I just, I made it." "I can't believe, I made it... and then, to get out in a freezing storm, snowing, blowing, that's when I got cold." "Bitterly disappointed with no rescue in sight," "Lester was forced to return to his snow tunnel for warmth." "He attempted to settle in for the night." "I tried to go to sleep and wake up real quick and think I was in bed and had a bad dream." "But a very sad thing when I did wake up," "I was still in the cave." "Then another avalanche hit, burying Lester for a second time." "To hear that crack and that sliding sound and I just assumed it was gonna squash me like a bug in my little hole there." "Luckily it just slid over the top." "Morning came I knew I'm gonna get started as early as I can." "I'm gonna dig my out again." "So it was about six." "I started digging my way out." "Course I only had a couple three feet of snow to go through." "and I got out." "I just started... the only direction I could move was down." "Finally in mid morning the winds abated enough." "We sent in Chris George to do our first aerial surveillance of the accident site." "And we flew by the east portal looking for tracks." "There was no indication of where that portal was, it was just one smooth angle of snow." "I had absolutely no idea that Lester had gotten out and was at the foot of the mountain which is quite a desperate descent under any circumstances." "I'll never forget that helicopter flying approximately the same elevation that I was, but they were looking," "I could look in and see them and they were looking up at the avalanche, of course, they didn't expect me, where I was and then, yeah it made me mad, I was, I was mad." "They just flew past me." "I could almost I thought I felt prop wash they were so close." "This must have been a half hour later." "I heard the thunder or what I thought was thunder and then I realized they were dropping bombs on the slope to secure the slope for the rescuers." "So I knew I had to get out of there." "I finally got up and got behind a tree and it wasn't 15 minutes, I could hear the roar." "It was louder than any thunder you've ever heard." "If the first two didn't get him, the third avalanche certainly wouldn't" "Lester was almost to Junction Creek when he heard the sound of the helicopter overhead." "This time they saw him." "He was flown 10 minutes away to Mercy Medical Center where he was treated for severe frostbite." "They wanted to cut off several fingers but Lester held on." "With physical therapy and personal strength, his fingers remain." "I can't express the mixture of joy and wonder that someone survived this." "I mean veteran mountaineers and search and rescue people were looking at each other." "People were hugging each other." "And we were going we can't believe this is true." "I have read hundreds of reports of avalanches." "I've been teaching snow safety for 35 years." "I've been in mountains, you know for 40 odd years." "To me it's one of the greatest survival stories I've ever heard of." "It's good for me because it gave me a new outlook and I," "I'm a lot tougher than I was and I appreciate things a lot more than I did." "Like a nice warm house and a loving family." "I'm rich, I didn't need to extract all the gold out of this mine to get rich." "I know now what rich is and I'm rich." "Experience teaches when we pay attention." "Wisdom arrives after we learn." "Winter will always come." "Snow will always fall." "All things obey the law of gravity." "In the mountains, ignorance and arrogance can place us in harm's way." "We have a choice." "But if we remain unaware and the mountains continue to lure us, the white death will strike again..." "and again." "You're dealing with one of the fundamental forces of nature here, but unlike a hurricane or even a landslide or a flood or somethin', you can't see it." "It's lying there in wait all the time twenty-four hours a day." "You might just be walking along minding your own business and once it's got you, it's going to hurt you." "It conforms to every single nook and cranny of your body." "You literally cannot pull yourself out even if you're just up to your ankles." "People have always been just terrified of the idea of quicksand." "Its that awful feeling that somehow the ground which you know is solid and you walk on is somehow not there, and you're going to take a step, and you're going to disappear." "Since the earliest days of the cinema it was one of Hollywood's favorite ways to dispose of the bad guy." "Or trap an innocent victim." "Producers created bottomless pits of quicksand out of peat moss, oatmeal, even wine corks" "And helped make the soggy stuff legendary." "But quicksand is more than just a clever plot device." "It's real..." "It's dangerous..." "And it's more common than most people believe." "Quicksand is found along coastlines, on riverbanks, even in our own backyards." "Though one of nature's deadliest traps, quicksand is made of just two basic ingredients... sand and water... its a simple recipe - for disaster." "In 1997, twelve year old Sara Cody and a friend went for a stroll on what looked like a perfectly ordinary beach, on the northwest coast of England." "We were staying at my Auntie Jackie's holiday flat for the weekend, me and my friend Georgina." "We went out on the sand we have been out before and there is actually signs saying quicksands and it was a stupid thing to do, but you don't really think about that at the time." "You think, "Oh, I'm not gonna sink"" "It felt quite muddy at first and it did feel like my feet were gettin' a bit stuck, but it just felt like walking in thick mud." "And then it got kind of more..." "liquidy." "And as I walked along, it was all of a sudden like a big pocket of quicksand I stood into." "It felt like it was sucking me, pulling me down into the sand" "I tried to pull myself out, but that made me sink about twice as fast." "And there was people shoutin' from the prom," ""Stop struggling and just keep still."" "I sunk up to about here-ish, I think." "And, ahm, I remember at first my feet didn't feel like I had them anymore." "There was lots of sand in my wellies and they were being dragged down." "It was liquid, but it was going really hard where I was puttin' pressure onto the sand." "It was just settin' like concrete around me." "Sara was mired deep in quicksand, only 150 feet from the shore." "It looked just like the rest of the beach, but this particular patch of sand was different." "Sara was locked so firmly in place" "She couldn't get out on her own." "What we think of as solid ground - terra firma - isn't really solid at all." "It's billions of separate granular particles resting on each other." "Normally that's all it is." "But quicksand forms when rising water levels in the ground force the grains to lose contact, and they float apart, suspended in water." "The liquefied sand can no longer support you, so down you go." "As Sara realized too late, struggling is a bad idea as it only liquefies the ground even more so you sink further." "Trying to pull your legs up compacts the sand tightly, turning the water pressure into suction, and locking your foot in place." "The finer the particles in the quicksand, the tighter and more vise-like the grip." "Word of Sara's predicament reached the armside coast guard who handle some 30 quicksand rescue every year." "When I arrived on the promenade I saw Gordon, one of my crew, already in there with Sarah." "She really was in a mess." "She was really frightened, she was screaming crying, she was just thrashing, all she wanted to do was get out." "So I radioed, but still we are just talking minutes." "After a while, there were all these people around me." "It was getting really panicky." "There's lots of noise and fire engines and police and it seemed like it was taking forever." "Freeing a victim from quicksand without also getting trapped calls for special gear." "The Arnside coast guard uses portable planks to cross the unstable sands and support their weight during the rescue." "They put a big wooden board over my head." "It was like a big square with a hollow in the middle." "And to pull me out, they pulled one leg out first." "They basically dug my leg out with their arms they put the one leg onto the board so I could lever my other leg out." "And then I was sort of laying in the sand and then they managed to get me out altogether." "And they just picked me up... just ran me across these boards to the shore and I didn't touch the floor until I got to the ambulance." "Since it happened I've been back once." "I came a bit onto the sands, but I stayed mostly by the rocks because I think I've learned my lesson the first time..." "It's not worth the hassle of all the peoples jobs coming out and helping you and really it's pointless going out there in the first place." "In this part of England quicksand isn't limited to the beach where Sara was trapped." "The town of Arnside lies near the entrance to an enormous body of water called Morecambe bay." "The area is well known for its wildlife and scenic beauty." "It is also notorious for some of the world's most dangerous quicksand." "Sands do look nice, don't they?" "And they look safe." "They always look safe to the lay person it looks like any old sand." "And that's its hidden danger." "For centuries, Morecambe bay at low tide has seduced unwary travelers, tempting them to risk their lives for a short cut from one village to another by crossing the sands." "More than 150 people are known to have perished attempting this journey." "By itself, quicksand is not deadly but it is the ultimate trap, locking its victim in place while some other force of nature finishes the job." "In Morecambe bay, it's a 30-foot tide." "You can never out-run it really, because it never tires, the tide." "There is a saying in this area that it can travel at the speed of a galloping horse." "Well, even a horse can get tired, but the tide never does." "To help travelers more safely negotiate" "Morecambe bay's massive tides and infamous quicksand, the British monarchy appointed the first official guide some 600 years ago." "In 1963, Cedric Robinson became the latest in this long line of queen's guides to the sands." "You can only know and read the sands from bein' brought up such as I was, from a very early age." "There's no way you can read a book and say, "Well, I know the route."" "It doesn't work like that." "You have to know the sands intimately and if it can catch you out out there, it will do." "Cedric has lived and worked as a fisherman on Morecambe bay for over 50 years and he knows its perils better than most." "His introduction to quicksand began at the age of fourteen." "I didn't want to do anything, only follow the sands for a livin', same as me father and me grandfather, and even me grandmother." "She was a fisherwoman." "Here on Morecambe bay, fishing has always been a hazardous profession." "At low tide, the bay is transformed into a wet desert - the fish more than seven miles off shore." "In the old days, locals harvested the sea from horse and cart, venturing out on the treacherous sands to set their nets and wait for the catch to roll in with the tide." "Not everyone made it back to safe ground." "Many foundered in quicksand, both horse and driver drowned by the returning tide as it surged over their heads." "As the royal guide, one of Cedric's responsibilities is to educate the public to Morecambe bay's risks by leading "nature walks" out on the sands." "Before taking any group off shore, he surveys the exposed flats." "Come a fine day, before setting foot on the sands," "I can go up onto the tops, with a marvelous view of the estuary, and I can look through the binoculars out there and scan the river down and I can say to myself with my knowledge:" ""Well, that's the place to cross."" "The danger spots are the lowest areas, where the meandering paths of rivers and streams carve narrow channels in the bay... quicksand is formed by the action of the tides as it raises the water table beneath the bay," "saturating and loosening the sand in and along these channels." "It looks just the same as any sand." "It looks firm until you stand on it and it just goes like jelly." "And the more people that goes over that area, the more jellyish it gets." "There are some areas out there where it would be too frightening to go near them." "But there are areas where you can go on it and you can have fun with children." "It may seem unwise to mix kids and quicksand, but Cedric's hope is to prevent future tragedies by teaching children how to recognize it for themselves." "Have you ever been on quicksands before?" "No." "You could get really stuck couldn't you?" "Yeah..." "Yeah that's it." "It clings, doesn't it?" "It's like a suction, isn't it?" "So it's bad there." "And once you go on it, it's worse." "But if you come back to there, that area in two hours, that water will have come out and it'll have hardened up a little bit." "And that's the danger." "If you were in there for two hours, we wouldn't get you out because the water comes out and it sets just like concrete." "Quicksand is always the highlight of the walk, but Cedric makes sure the kids understand that ultimately, it's a serious hazard." "After a certain time one or two of them will get that little bit deeper and - and then it gets past the exciting stage and someone can get stuck." "So Cedric has to blow the whistle, say, "Come on out of there!" "I don't want to lose any of ya'."" "Remember girls, not too deep otherwise you'll have to stay!" "Usually, you find quicksand outside, a product of mother nature." "But with the right ingredients and know-how, you can make your own." "Scott Steedman understands quicksand better than most." "He is a civil engineer who has spent his professional life studying the earth beneath our feet." "At home in the kitchen," "Scott has his own special recipe for quicksand." "This is corn flour which people use for thickening gravy and it shows just all the same properties as quicksand." "Quite extraordinary when you mix it with water you can change it from this solid form, into a liquid and back again." "And uh, let me just show you that because I'll just put some more in, more than I need and we'll see if we can't make a quicksand here in the kitchen." "The cornflower is a hard and fine granular material, so its a bit like sand or fine sand but extremely fine and so we can see in the mixture all the same properties that you see in a quicksand on a beach." "But really in a small scale, here in a glass." "So this is the corn flour paste in its liquid form." "And if I just stir the spoon slowly you can see that it is a liquid." "Lift it up and it drips straight back in just like a liquid." "But if I stab at it with a spoon quickly like a person trying to run across the quicksand they don't sink in." "It is absolutely solid - well it's undulating, but it's solid under the tip of the spoon." "It's got all that strength to hold the person up." "But if the person stands still, it just sinks in." "And then if I grab at the spoon and try and pull it out quickly, like I'm kicking with my legs in the quicksand, it locks absolutely solid." "If I kick from side to side" "I just can't get it out - it's absolutely stuck." "In the movies, getting stuck in quicksand was usually a terrifying experience, and the hapless victim went to extraordinary lengths to escape." "But in reality there are some people around who just can't wait to get into it." "These days my experience with it is filming other people." "People from all walks of life." "They bring their selves or their significant other and they want to jump into a bottomless pit of quicksand to experience it, and I provide that." "Chuck Lang is making his own contribution to the b-movie genre." "Be looking over your shoulder as you're running like you hear the posse coming." "You want me to stand back here and fire a few shots over your head or something?" "Chuck is in high demand for his directing skills, and for his knack for finding quicksand, along the banks of the Mississippi river." "Chuck and his friends are just a few members of an emerging network of quicksand fanatics." "The competition is who can find quicksand first." "And the game is what do you do after you've found it..." "It is almost like you are chained to the ground all over." "You have to move, you have to exercise a lot of energy just to move a little bit." "Imagine yourself in molasses." "It's almost like an exercise." "You are going to burn some calories." "You really are." "To an outsider, playing around with a dangerous natural phenomenon may seem foolish." "But after years of trial and error, these buffs have developed an impressive understanding of quicksand" " its realities and a few myths... including the ones Hollywood made up." "Don't believe what you saw on TV." "You're not going to sink out of sight." "Perhaps its the biggest myth of all:" "that you'll step into a pool of quicksand..." "And disappear." "But that's virtually impossible." "You're actually more at risk in a pool of plain old water." "Because humans are composed mainly of water, we won't stop sinking until we've displaced an amount equal to our own volume, and that puts us beneath the surface." "Quicksand is twice as dense as water, so we won't sink nearly as far, only about chest deep." "The quicksanders have a good time applying their knowledge of buoyancy, but generally they don't tempt fate." "Here on the Mississippi the quicksand they play in is not the most dangerous..." "The sand grains are fairly large so the grip is less "vice-like."" "But just in case something does go wrong, they use the buddy system." "It's not a good idea to ever go out by yourself to look for quicksand." "Because if you find it and you do get stuck you could be there a while." "Bruce Fyfe certainly wasn't out looking for quicksand when he stumbled into it one night in 1999 while chasing his dog." "But find it he did, in a very unlikely place." "Basically, it's dusk, fourth of July weekend, Friday and I'm booking' down nine mile comin' back with the dog and got approximately a little past where the gravel pit is, and she bolts out the back of the truck" "and I stopped the truck, took off through the sandpiles after her." "And she goes down the hill and got out where they dump all their sand trappings and stuff after they clean the rocks and gravel off and it's real soft there in spots and I happened to find a soft spot." "Ended up goin' in and basically a couple hours later realized I was not gettin' out without any help." "Bruce found himself knee deep in a peculiar kind of quicksand an unexpected by-product of the gravel industry." "Water and fine sand particles from the mounds of crushed rock make this quicksand especially "concrete-like"" "and difficult to escape." "Bruce was locked in and looking at an extended stay." "As my feet went into it and got locked you could actually feel it encasing my feet and part of my leg." "From probably mid point from my shins down to the bottoms of my feet" "I couldn't feel anything." "You know it was just..." "they were dead." "And I wasn't going forward, backwards, up or down, and I was stuck." "I think I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to be there overnight, 'cause I... you know, very little traffic, everybody's gone..." "I could hear the expressway traffic, but that's a couple miles away and just well," "I'll wait 'til morning and just start all over again." "And, it just got progressively hotter through the weekend and by the third day" "I did drink the water that was around me." "I was just to that point where I knew something was happening to me physically, because I couldn't focus on anything." "Bruce was suffering from more than just dehydration and prolonged exposure." "At this point, he'd been trapped for three days and four nights... more than 60 hours, and was dealing with a frightening effect of quicksand:" "a crushing pressure on his limbs." "Moving his legs back and forth had compacted the quicksand." "The pressure had increased until it actually cut off the blood supply to his legs." "Eventually, Bruce lost all feeling in his lower extremities as the cells, nerves and tissues were starved of essential oxygen and nutrients supplied by blood flow." "When the quicksand stuff the material it was just like if you were squeezing on your legs hard as this but it went from his mid-thighs all the way down his leg, just a total squeeze down to around his foot" "and kind of just squished it right up..." "I guess you could make the comparison to being in a vise-like situation..." "Believe me coming on to the third morning" "I wanted out." "I wanted to go home." "Bruce's endurance test finally came to an end when the sun rose on Tuesday morning." "I heard the machinery start and I started screaming, and some guy popped up over the bank and he says," ""How long have you been here?"" "And I told him and I said roll the rescue squad and get me some water." "They tried digging with some shovels." "They really couldn't because we were worried about some injuries to his legs." "They dug with some screwdrivers a couple of inches at a time running their hands down his legs to make sure they were not poking into them." "Because he couldn't feel his legs, from the knees down to around his feet." "He had no feeling in there from being compacted for so long." "As soon as my feet came free they just pirouetted me up and got me down on the backboard and got me out of there..." "I was tired, I was hot, and I was just trying to stay with it." "I didn't realize I had developed an infection, my kidneys had started to shut down, and there was a lot of weird things wrong inside of me that I really couldn't tell." "The big thing I knew was that my feet were messed up." "Bruce's kidneys were treated and soon back to normal, but his feet were another matter." "When tissues are starved of blood and oxygen long enough, they die, which can lead to gangrene." "In the worst cases toes or even legs are amputated." "Sometimes if I move my foot just right I get a real bad twinge and that could still be just scar tissue breaking apart." "The Doctor said it could be a year before your feet get back to normal." "Time could have been Bruce's real enemy but luckily, his rescuers reached him before permanent injury set in." "In a swamp north of Toronto, it was the combination of quicksand and cold Canadian weather that spelled disaster for nine year old Ethan Beattie." "The nightmare began one chilly spring afternoon when Ethan and his friend Steven took a wrong turn while playing in the backwoods near their homes." "I got stuck at one point and Steven thought that me and Elmo were behind him, so he went on." "And then we were separated." "We were looking for this path that would take us back but we ended up in the swamp." "As they searched for a way home, the ground beneath their feet began to give way." "Well, it looked like it was solid, but when you stepped, you would start to sink, and it looks like it's shallow but when you step in your leg..." "it will get deeper." "Steven managed to find his way home and told his mother that Ethan and Elmo were still lost in the swamp." "As darkness fell, police and local rescue squads organized an extensive search." "You could see the lights of the fire trucks and the police cars." "There was lots of commotion and you could see people massing down at the corner here, waiting to go in on foot to do a search." "The rescuers had their work cut out for them." "Ethan had disappeared in the heart of a three square mile swamp and it was already dusk when the search began." "We'd also been informed by the police officers that had gone out ahead of time that there was quicksand." "So there's a danger out there that we were actually told not to actually leave the boat unless we had a visual contact with the boy." "You hope for the best, but you expect the worst, you don't want to go up there all pumped thinking you're going to find somebody alive, because if you don't, especially a child." "If you don't find them alive that's devastating." "For several hours the rescue team scoured the swamp but there were no signs of Ethan or the dog" "I can't imagine what a little nine year-old boy is thinking, when it starts to get dark, he can see the helicopter, he can hear the people looking for him." "Ahm, he can't answer because it's starting to get too cold." "He's gotten too far." "He can't get back." "He's getting stuck." "The only thing he's got with him is his dog." "As the night wore on," "Ethan's situation grew more desperate." "Stuck in quicksand, his body trapped in near-freezing swamp water, he was in real danger of dying from exposure." "Elmo the dog sensed Ethan was in trouble, and stayed close to the boy." "When I got too cold." "Elmo would lie on me and when I was falling asleep, Elmo would lick my face so I would stay awake." "Every 15-20 seconds we would call out his name, hoping that we'd get a response." "More than five hours after the search began, the beam of Dave Pierce's spotlight reflected off the eyes of an animal crouched in the reeds." "We got probably within about 50 feet and I was able to see a slightly black shape and then we knew it was a dog." "When we came upon the boy and Dale shouted out" ""He's alive!" boy, that was it." "The adrenaline's pumpin' and we're basically running across there to get to him." "And to find him still alive;" "still alert..." "OK, now we've got a chance." "By now, Ethan was ice cold and extremely weak, sunk deep in the quicksand." "I was up to here in mud and it was, they would " "I think they were pullin' me a lot to get me out." "But the soft wet ground nearly thwarted the rescuers' efforts to free Ethan and get him into the boat." "Dale picked him up." "He turned around, he took one step and boom he went down to his chest in quicksand." "It scared the hell out of us." "We knew it was there, but we didn't step in it before" "The men formed an assembly line, handing Ethan off to each other as they wrestled with the quicksand." "They struggled for solid footing and slowly maneuvered back to their craft." "It was close to eleven o'clock when the rescue team finally carried Ethan to shore." "After seven hours in the cold swamp he was in a state of severe shock, and deeply hypothermic." "His body temperature had fallen to 86.9 degrees Fahrenheit - within just a few degrees of cardiac failure." "Had Ethan been in the quicksand much longer, he may not have survived." "Wandering into swamps and getting stuck in quicksand is one thing." "But Lil Judd certainly never expected to find it in her part of the world." "You've heard about quicksand." "You hear about it, but... but I'd be able to locate it basically in my back yard, no." "No, that, I didn't expect." "Though Hollywood has produced some pretty good fakes over the years," "California seems an unlikely candidate for real quicksand." "Of the two main ingredients, there's more than enough sand, but this dry state can be short on water." "But in 1998 heavy rains had turned a normally dry gully just east of Hollywood into a quicksand trap." "We rode out on the sandbank and we were standing out there for maybe five minutes." "And he decided to take a step forward and it had a drop." "Suddenly all of him was in and I looked around and realized he had actually literally sunk, because as I'm trying to tell him "Get up,"" "he's trying to get up, but he can't." "For a moment there, I just went panicky and I sat down next to him and started crying." "The thing with horses and animals in general when they're in a panic situation like this, they will either give up or very possibly they'll go insane." "So all I could do was hope he understood from my tone of voice." "I gotta go." "I gotta leave you." "I can't get you out on my own." "I have to get help." "I'll be back." "Don't move." "Lay as still as you can."" "Now Lil had to avoid getting herself trapped in the same quicksand that held her horse." "I ran across this area and kept sinking down to my hip." "I just grabbed at whatever I could and pushed against whatever I could and just never allowed myself to remain too long in the same place." "Help was not long in coming, but once the rescue efforts had begun, destined's situation quickly went from bad to worse." "He ends up in the stream." "And all I could think was "oh my god," "With all these people here, he's gonna drown." "I am going to watch him drown." "With a lot of encouragement, destined was able to thrash his way out of the water, but the weight of his 1600 pound body, concentrated on four narrow hooves, made it impossible for the horse to get out of the quicksand." "As a last resort, a helicopter was brought in to airlift him to solid ground." "Somehow they managed to get this harness on him and they started lifting him." "He is flying up in the air." "And he's slipping out of the harness." "And I'm saying, "Put him down." "Put him down."" "But the first place destined landed wasn't solid enough to support his weight." "He continued to flounder in the quicksand until his rescuers adjusted his harness and tried a second airlift." "No one ever said," ""You know, we can't save this horse."" "No one ever said that to me." "And I'm sure a lot of people were thinking it when they saw what he looked like and where he was." "This time, the helicopter pilots gently lowered destined onto firm ground." "Despite four hours in quicksand and two precarious airlifts, the horse was unharmed." "He was up and walking again in just minutes." "I am one very, very lucky horse owner!" "And he's one very, very lucky horse." "Lil and destined were fortunate." "There were enough people, expertise and technology to save the day." "But that hasn't always been the case." "In the 19th century, there were few resources available to American cowboys." "While driving their herds of cattle, they encountered quicksand on a regular basis as they tried to ford sand-laden rivers." "Hauling a two-ton steer out of quicksand was no easy matter." "The best they could do was try and pull the animals free with ropes." "But unfortunately, things didn't always go like clockwork." "As one weary cowboy put it," ""this last method saved many bogged down cattle, but it tore the heads, horns or legs off quite a few others."" "The cattle of the old west were lost in small patches of quicksand." "But sometimes quicksand can spread for miles... and swallow a city." "Perhaps the most remarkable case occurred in 1692." "The city of Port Royal, Jamaica - at the time, one of the wealthiest cities in the new world - was resting quietly on its foundation - a sandy spit of land 16 kilometers long." "Just before noon on June 7th, a huge earthquake shook the ground with tremendous force." "The violent motion pushed seawater up through the loose sand." "In a process called liquefaction, the entire peninsula beneath Port Royal turned to quicksand." "When the shaking finally stopped after ten minutes, a third of the city had slid into the sea, and 2000 people were dead." "The water had drained back out of the ground, locking people into graves of hardened quicksand." "Written accounts from survivors describe some of the most horrifying moments." ""No place suffered like Port Royal where whole streets were swallowed up by the opening earth and houses and inhabitants went down together..." "Some were swallowed up to the Neck, and then the Earth shut upon them, and squeezed them to death... some were left buried with their heads above ground." ""The shake opened the earth;" "the seawaters flew way up and carried the people in alive." "I lost my husband, my son and all I ever had in the world"" "Port royal went down more than 300 years ago, but despite the hazard, we still build cities on low-lying, sandy areas near rivers or the sea." "The phenomenon of liquefaction is of vital concern to engineers who must factor in the risk of quicksand conditions whenever they plan new construction in earthquake zones." "At the university of Bristol in England," "Scott Steedman uses models to demonstrate how buildings will react when the ground beneath turns to quicksand, as it did in port royal." "We're building a beach here to demonstrate some of the properties of quicksand." "It's a special sort of quicksand, because it's a quicksand that's formed in an earthquake." "The shaking in an earthquake creates extra water pressure in the ground and that boils up to the surface and produces all the same phenomena as quicksand." "This is the ocean down here, and stretching up the slope here is the beach and behind the beach here is the flat ground, behind where you may have a town or people..." "This is quite a high building next to a rather steep slope." "On a shaking table," "Scott subjects his model high rise to simulated earthquakes of seven or eight on the Richter scale - magnitudes easily strong enough to liquefy the earth, and turn it to quicksand." "You can see how the building has sunk in and rotated here, mainly because the slope has given way beneath it." "And so that's forced it to tilt over this direction." "As the shaking progressed, the water pressure's built up in the sand underneath the foundation of the bottom block, and as that happened the ground got softer." "And with the shaking and the frequency of the earthquake, it started to get more and more dramatic and in the end, of course, with the lean becoming more and more pronounced, eventually the top blocks just rolled off and fell down the hill." "Just east of anchorage, Alaska is Turnagain arm, a 50 mile long fjord filled with quicksand." "Over the eons, the slow movement of glaciers has ground hard rock from the mountains around the arm into an extremely fine powder." "Meltwater carries that powder downstream and into the waters of Turnagain arm." "When the tide retreats, a vast expanse of glacial silt is exposed." "In Alaska, they call this the mud flats." "But when these tiny particles mix with subsurface water from the incoming tide, this powdered rock has all the properties of deadly quicksand." "More than a million people visit Alaska every year." "Many of them come to enjoy the waters of Turnagain arm." "Most have no idea they are in serious danger of getting stuck." "The Lukens family has lived beside Turnagain arm for thirty years, but despite knowing about the quicksand, they've turned the fjord at low tide into a playground." "We've never had any trouble getting out of the mud." "Of course, you know, we don't sit there and see how deeply we can get ourselves imbedded either." "We try and get out right away and move..." "As long as you keep moving you really don't get stuck." "So far the Lukens have been lucky." "But that's not always the case." "Most people are tourists, and they go out there and they think it is a relatively safe area" "They play around with it" "They know the stuck of this kind of lake below and they stay with it and then they play with it." "and then they get one ankle stuck and they try to pull that out." "They get the second ankle stuck and pretty soon they're they're in up over their knees." "As usual, quicksand is just the trap." "In Turnagain arm, the real killers are the cold water, and the enormous tide, the second highest in the world." "It is swift and extreme, rising forty feet in less than six hours." "Rescuing people from quicksand is tough enough." "Trying to beat a racing tide ups the stakes dramatically." "Four times a year, the Girdwood fire department runs a thorough simulation to check their gear, and make sure every member of the team is ready for a real life quicksand rescue." "Dan sill is the operations commander." "When we show up on scene we are going to go out, we are going to evaluate the situation, evaluate the mud and the currents and the tides and the winds and everything else." "We'll make a game plan." "We'll either set up a person here or here." "Everything we do out there, we've trained for it numerous times." "Everybody knows what the game plan is, including the victim." "We'll take Bob out there and put him the mud no more than his knees." "There are plenty of suitable areas in Turnagain arm to stage a drill." "Some of the worst quicksand is just off the highway." "This salty peninsula thirty-five miles east of Anchorage is perfect for testing the Girdwood team's rescue skills." "It has all the hazards they face on real calls, including the debilitating element of cold." "This mud is the same temperature water is - about 45 degrees, which is really, really cold." "And if you're out here without the proper protective equipment on, you're gonna get hypothermic when you struggle to get out of it." "You're gonna get cold." "You're gonna get exhausted, and you're going to take and go down and die real quick." "Having the right clothes can make the difference between a successful rescue and a fatality." "Full dry suits, life jackets, and helmets protect the men and increase the amount of time they can spend working to free a victim from cold quicksand." "Mike Tumey has been with the department for more than a decade." "He knows all too well the pressure of trying to rescue someone trapped and in desperate circumstances." "In 1988, he witnessed one of the saddest quicksand tragedies in recent Alaskan history." "Mr. and Mrs. Dickison were newlyweds and, ah, they had a little more gumption than most of us and had chose to spend their honeymoon, ah, gold mining up in Seattle Creek, which is just around the corner here." "To get there in their four-wheeler, they had to travel across the mud flats." "Jay and Adeana Dickison headed out early in the morning to catch the low tide..." "Just three hundred yards off shore, their four wheeler bogged down in the silt." "Adeana jumped off to push from behind." "But struggling with the atv liquefied the ground beneath her feet and she sank up to her knees." "When she stopped moving the quicksand closed around her legs with an iron grip." "Her husband labored frantically, but after three hours he had only managed to free one of Adeana's legs." "By the time jay ran for help, the tide was pouring into Turnagain arm." "About nine o'clock in the morning we got a call for a, ah, possible victim stuck in the mud." "We responded from the station." "It's about a half-hour response time to this location, hiked on the trail with all of our equipment" "As I reached the shoreline," "I heard the screams of a young woman crying for help" ""Please don't let me drown." "Please save me."" "There was a, ah, woman trapped in the rising waters with the water just below her chin." "I went below the surface to try and feel what was taking place there," "I felt her leg and it seemed to disappear in the sand and I thought, "She's buried all the way up to her knees,"" "you know, probably straight down." "And at that point I tried to tug on her leg," "But when I came up, I saw her gasping for breath." "So every time I tugged her, I pulled her under." "Each time it's violent." "I'm pulling with even more strength now, but each time it's jerking her under the water and thrashing her at the same time." "I go under again to try and free her leg and when I come back up she's under the water now." "The tide's gone over her hand and everything was in a..." "small circle." "All I could see was this little area here in front of me, but I'm looking down into her face and she's under the water holding her breath." "And I'm thinking, you know," ""What a desperate situation this is." "What a... you know, this brave woman she, despite all the odds, she's gonna..." "she's gonna stick with us." "She's gonna fight with us all the way to the end."" "Anyway, I didn't know what to do." "She's underwater now and she's holding her breath and, I can't thrash her now because she's got one breath left." "At that point, ah, her husband took a... a tube off their suction dredge and they stuck it in her mouth." "And, I..." "I stroked her forehead and said," ""Just keep breathing,"" "and I went down again to try and free her leg and I just pulled as hard as I possibly could and I just sat there." ""We've got to get her out," you know, pulling as hard as I possibly can and, ah, I couldn't free her." "While mike struggled beneath the surface, the tide continued to rise." "When he finally came up for air, Adeana Dickison had drowned." "It wasn't until low tide later that afternoon the, ah, rescuers that went back to recover her, ah, found her, ah, still where we'd left her, ah, still trapped just from the knee down by one leg in the mud" "and at an angle like this." "The tide had come in swept over her, gone back out with all that force and that leg was still trapped, snared in that mud." "They had to dig her out with shovels." "The tragedy devastated the Girdwood team." "On that fateful day, they were beaten by the rising tide and a lack of time." "For more than eleven years they've continued searching for ways to perfect their techniques and speed up their operation." "I literally spent months and months dreaming and fantasizing about a tool that I could build that I could expedite the rescue." "And literally in minutes." "What Dan sill came up with turned the Girdwood team's greatest enemy into their most important ally." "Water became the key component in their fight against the clock." "For everything to work, the floating pump which capitalizes on the water around them must be kept running." "I just want you guys to make certain if something does happen and does go wrong that we are relying' on you." "So no matter what it takes, that pump is your responsibility." "You can not let it shut off." "I don't want to freak you out or anything, but once Bob's in the mud he's our responsibility." "So we're not gonna let him die." "OK, I'm up to my knees" "Feel like you're sinking anymore?" "A little." "I'm ready." "You ready?" "Ready." "Go ahead, fire it up!" "The float-a-pump sucks water up through the hose and into a long perforated metal tube." "High pressure blasts of water liquefy the dense quicksand and unlock the grip on Bob's legs." "With the new device, the extrication takes less than a minute." "After each run-through, the team gathers for a debriefing." "I could not move my legs I could feel it." "It felt like cement was around them." "And the more I tried - before Scott was there, I was just playing around - but the more I tried the further I was sinking." "The thing is, what typically these people do, and I was watchin' you do that, is, ah, they'll get one foot stuck, so they'll try to pull this one out." "This one goes deeper." "Then they realize that and they go," ""I'll stand on this foot,"" "and they'll try to pull that out." "Then that one goes deeper." "So they're caught in a see-saw motion where they're goin' back and forth and they're actually forcin' themselves to get deeper." "So once both feet are in what are you going to do if you can't get either one of them out?" "Concentrate on one foot." "Wiggle one foot to get one foot out." "That foot gets on the highest piece of ground that you can find." "Then you work on that one." "And vibration is what'll get it out." "What if both are in and you aren't getting them to move at all?" "You need to fall forward on your belly, get all your weight off... off..." "Sometimes it's not possible because you're up to your knees." "What you have to do is get the weight off of one point and work to get one..." "one leg out or one foot out, roll 'til you can get the other one out, do a roll and run for high ground." "The bottom line is..." "is you shouldn't be out there." "It's - there's nothing..." "nothing for you out there." "It is just nothing but danger, and I've said it again and I've said it before." "It's you're flirting with the devil." "You're literally flirting with the devil." "Sadly, Dan and his colleagues, along with rescuers around the world, fight that devil all too often." "Quicksand by itself is not the killer, but locked in its relentless grip, any one of it's accomplices:" "time, tide, cold or heat can finish us off." "Again and again, we seem to ignore the warning signs and fall prey to one of the world's most insidious traps." "Quicksand can be found almost anywhere." "So the safest bet is to watch your step." "Our world is lit by two fires" "One above." "And one below." "Nothing can contain the inferno beneath our feet" "In the past thousand years, volcanoes have claimed more than 300,000 lives" "No beauty more deadly than the fire within." "The rocky heights of the Andes, in South America, are more than mere mountains." "Many are sleeping volcanoes." "In Colombia, a peak called Galeras has slumbered more than four decades." "Then in 1988, soldiers stationed at its summit reported small earthquakes, and the smell of sulfur." "Some six miles away, the city of Pasto is built on rich volcanic soil the pride of local farmers." "Galeras has never harmed Pasto." "But a large eruption could threaten up to 400,000 lives." "Colombian officials invited Standley Williams, of Arizona State University, to work with local volcanologist," "An expert of Latin American volcanoes" "William helped organize the international Galeras Workshop, in January 1993." "El volcan Galeras es el volcan historicamente mas activo en todo el Colombia..." "Close to a hundred volcanologist from fifteen nations attend." "After three days of meetings, they head for the summit." "Galeras has been stable for six months a reassuring sign to Williams and his colleagues." "We were volcanologist with a lot of experience." "We had been working for five years by that time on this volcano." "We thought we understood Galeras." "In fact, we thought Galeras was in a relatively calm time for an active volcano." "Most scientist join field trips on the outer slopes of the mountain." "Williams leads a group of twelve on a grueling, two hour hike to the inner crater." "As his colleagues explore the terrain, Williams keep watch." "Everybody opened up their cases and backpacks and collected samples of the gases of read the gravimeter." "Geoff Brown, professor from England, is the expert of the world on how use gravity in volcanoes." "The two Colombian scientists with him were really happy that they had a chance to work with family of volcanologist." "Igor was working that day with Nestor Garcia and Nestor's a Colombian, very good friend." "It was an exciting, positive field day." "Then all of a sudden, with no warning we began to hear a lot of noise." "I looked down into the crater and at Igor and Nestor and I yelled," "We better get outta here now." "I made it running, not very far, before, the first big rock knocked a big hole in my head, broke my jaw, ruined my ear." "Made it another 20 or 30 feet, I don't know, not very far, a lot of rocks hit me," "But the next big one broke my left leg shattered my right leg." "I tried to run, but my foot was standing" "It was hardly moved my legs" "I crawled." "The problem was, I was on fire, so I had to roll over and try to get the fire out." "So I crawled behind a big rock." "The eruption spares everyone on the outer slopes." "But members of Williams group appear at the summit with grim reports." "At least two scientists are dead." "The names of the missing are quickly tallied." "Andrew, Mike, yo, Standley, y Jose Arles." "Luis with help, and Andrew McFarlene with help can make it out." "With help." "Not by themselves." "We gotta send somebody down there." "Yeah." "Within 15 minutes, the eruption is over." "Now Williams struggles to remain conscious." "I had hours of time lying there with dead people very close and thought about going home and being with my wife and kids." "I didn't want to die, that's for sure..." "Less than three hours after the eruption, rescue teams arrive from Pasto." "Three hikers and six volcanologists are dead in a blast no one could foresee." "Several bodies will never be found." "Rescuers locate Williams when he cried out for help." "He's the last survivor lifted off the mountain." "In 48 hours, he'll be flown by Lear jet, to a hospital in Arizona." "Sixteen surgeries saved a mangled leg, and patched a hole in Williams' skull." "Skin grafts hide burns." "A hearing aid remedies a ruined ear." "Only his determination survives intact" "Galeras remains a threat to thousands who live in its shadow." "A danger undiminished by the tragedy of nine deaths." "The loss of friends and colleagues breaks the heart but strengthens the will." "I've worked on Galeras now for about eight years and I've tried hard to essentially get control of Galeras, and Galeras says, No, I can't be controlled." "Ha, I'm much bigger than you Mr. Williams." "And I come back and say," "No, I'm not going to let you do that, I'm going to come back, and uh, I'm going to get on top of Galeras." "I've been in the crater again." "We're sort of battling it out." "In the past five decades, nearly thirty scientist have died in eruptions." "Volcanology is a young and dangerous science one that pits us against the power of the Earth itself." "We live on a fiery planet." "Nearly 2,000 miles beneath our feet, the Earth's inner core reaches temperatures of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit." "Molten rock, or magma, rises to the earth's surface, a cold, rigid crust fractured into some twenty plates." "When magma breaks through crust it becomes lava, and gives birth to volcanoes." "Most blossom along the unstable boundaries where one plate dives beneath another, or two plates spread apart." "Earth's oceans conceal some 80 percent of all volcanic activity." "An underwater ridge 46,000 miles long marks the boundaries between spreading plates." "Lava fills the gaps." "This deep sea fire fuels hot springs." "At more than 700 degrees Fahrenheit, water rich in sulfur supports an entire ecosystem, in the total absence of sunlight." "Some volcanoes rise from the deep." "November 1963." "Just south of Iceland, fishermen report explosions." "Within days, the windswept isle of Surtsey is born." "Earth's fire also forged a tropical paradise." "The Hawaiian Islands are the work of a single plume of magma burning its way across the pacific plate." "There may be no finer setting for the spectacle of the living earth." "With nearly continuous eruptions dating back to 1790," "Kilauea is the most active volcano on earth and one of the most benign." "At 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, its fluid lava can flow for miles, and ruin real estate." "But it can generally be escaped at a brisk walk." "This congenial fire has been attracting tourists for over a century" "It also captured the attention of an eminent east coast geologist," "Thomas Jaggar." "He believed, the only way to know a crater is to live with it a visit to Kilauea in 1909." "convinced him he had found the most livable volcano in the world." "In Jaggar's day," ""volcanology" meant little more than a short term expedition to the aftermath of a major eruption." "It was too little, too late." "In 1912," "Jaggar founded what today is called the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory." "Serving three decades as director, he measured earthquakes, collected gases and charted subtle changes in Kilauea's slopes." "Eventually, he successfully predicted several eruptions." "Many consider him a founding father of modern volcanology." "Today, Hawaiian volcanoes are the best studied on the world." "Decades of firsthand observations are revealing patterns and precursors." "Predicting eruptions is almost routine" "Each volcano is unique, with its own pulse, its own life cycle." "But one rule of forecasting applies to all:" "The key to the future is the past." "Sakurajima." "The "Island of Fire," in southern Japan." "A noble man commissioned these watercolors to commemorate an eruption in 1779." "Written accounts of this volcano's fury date back to the eighth century." "Sakurajima is home to some 7,000 people." "Another half million live just across the bay." "This life at the foot of an active volcano." "Sakurajima has been consistently active since 1955." "It erupts up to 400 times a year, and drops millions of tons of ash on its surrounding." "Local scientists forecast these outbreaks with impressive accuracy." "Residents tune in for ash fall reports." "Eruptions are as commonplace as changes in the weather." "And ash clean-up is a way of life." "Soil enriched with ash yields prime produce, such as loquats." "But each fruit requires individual protection from airborne assaults." "As does every school child on Sakurajima." "Most ash collects on the volcano's slopes harmless until it rains." "In a flash, rivers can swell into mudflows that wash out roads and bridges." "Safety channels equipped with sensors and surveillance cameras, help contain the threat." "Volcanic mudflows can travel up to forty miles an hour, and sweep up boulders the size if cars" "When the rains end, tons of deposits are dumped in the sea." "It's a model system." "But at any moment, Sakurajima could break all the rules." "1914." "Lava buries six villages." "More than half the islanders lose their homes." "Twenty-three drown trying to swim across to the mainland." "The anniversary of the 1914 disaster is observed each year with an evacuation drill." "For a day, residents abandon their homes to the volcano." "A long, familiar history of eruptions keeps these volcano-dwellers vigilant." "Consider them lucky." "Most volcanoes lay quiet for centuries then take is by surprise." "A few of the deadliest have been labeled "extinct"" "Some 35 centuries ago, a Mediterranean island sparkles with art and science." "Then suddenly Santorini blows itself apart." "Seawater rushes in where once stood a mountain and a civilization vanishes beneath the waves." "The legend of Atlantis still haunts the place today." "79 AD." "Few residents of Pompeii realize Mount Vesuvius is a volcano." "Those who know believe it will not harm them." "Showers of scalding ash seal them in their final agony." "1815 Mount Tambora, Indonesia." "Some 20 cubic miles of debris are launched sky-high." "Most fall back to earth." "But a cloud of ash circles the globe for several years, blocking the sun." "1816 is the "Year without a summer."" "In Europe and New England, snow falls in July." "Crop fail, and 80,000 starve." "It's the most powerful eruption in the last 10,000 years." "By contrast, the 1980 explosion of Mount Saint Helens was almost 80 times smaller." "Yet it packed the punch of 500 atomic bombs." "Magma contains gases that expand violently as they reach Earth's atmosphere." "It's like pulling the cork on a bottle of champagne the size of Mount Everest." "A volcano need not explode to be deadly." "Lava too thick to flow can ooze up slowly, and form a teetering heap of hot rock." "Collapse triggers a searing avalanche of pulverized rock, gas, and ash called a pyroclastic flow." "At 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and more than 100 miles an hour, it consumes nearly everything." "1902." "The Caribbean town of Saint Pierre prospers at the foot of a sleeping giant until May 8th, when Mount Pelee unleashes a pyroclastic flow." "In two minutes, 30,000 people are incinerated." "One survives." "Though badly burned, this prisoner was somehow protected by the thick walls of his cell." "Elsewhere, the devastation is eerie." "Pyroclastic flows are virtually unpredictable and relatively rare." "Many volcanologist have seen them only in photographs." "May, 1991." "Southern Japan." "Mount Unzen serves up an extravaganza some 35 pyroclastic flows a day." "The flows are small." "But a village lies too close for comfort." "Evacuations are ordered." "From a safe distance, villagers find the spectacle irresistible." "No less captivated, journalists and volcanologists from around the globe flock to the scene among them Maurice and Katia Krafft." "In the volcano world, these are superstars." "Here you have a pyroclastic flow." "It don't occurs all the time." "When you have lava flow, then it will happen all the time." "It's why this is so interesting, because you have very few." "After more than two decades of filming eruptions, the Kraffts have a discriminating eye." "Today, Unzen underwhelms." "This is one of the smallest pyroclastic flow I have seen." "I hope to see bigger one than this one because this is very small really, yes" "This is no idle bluster:" "Maurice and Katia Krafft have probably seen more eruptions, at more volcanoes, than anyone on earth." "The Kraffts hail from France, but "home" is wherever then earth breathes fire." "For me, an active volcano, especially volcanoes that I know very well, those are like friends, there really is a sort of dialogue between the volcano and me." "I don't know exactly why." "For me, the danger is not important," "I am afraid when I go in a car, but on volcanoes I forget everything and there is no more danger for me." "For the Kraffts, there has never been another calling." "I fell in love with volcanoes when I was seven years old." "I saw my first volcano with my father Stromboli, in Italy." "And this was really a discovery for, for me, to see a mountain, a sort of cone and at the top to have a fire." "to have explosion every minute, was fantastic." "And I have seen this eruption from very bear." "And I was really fascinated, so I decided to become geologist." "I fell in love without seeing active volcanoes." "I have seen films and photos and was, uh, interested in geology, and so you decided to be volcanologist." "And only two years later I asked to my parents to go to Italy to see really the volcano." "And I was also impressed when I see for the first time what I wish to do." "We met in fact at the University." "I was in geology and Katia was in geochemistry." "So I was crazy about volcanoes, she was crazy about volcanoes, and so we loved each other after, it's an aftereffect of loving volcanoes." "When we went to Vulcano, in Italy, we were a group of friends, we were students at this time in geology, in geochemistry, and so on." "So we stayed at the foot of the volcano and we were making a lot of research, but with a very low amount of money." "And I remember that we don't had so much clothes at this time, but those gasses are so acid that our clothes were completely burned with a lot of holes in it because of the gases." "So, after two or three days we were looking really like beggars." "From the start, the Kraffts photographed their fieldwork." "Soon, films and photos became their bread and butter." "Through the lens, they would share their passion for volcanoes with the entire world." "Iceland, 1973." "The isle of Heimacy was abandoned in a single night." "On this empty stage, the Kraffts stood spellbound." "My work is different from other volcanologists because, uh, when I see an eruption, sometimes it's so nice that I just drop my instruments, and look." "That is to say, I cannot only study the eruption." "I want also to film volcanoes, to show it to other people." "So, I am as much interesting in esthetic than in science." "As was often the case." "The Kraffts were the only foreign filmmakers on the scene." "Katia and Maurice had no children, no academic appointments." "Nothing to tie them down." "One year they circled the globe eight times." "Tanzania, 1988." "They shot the first footage of lava flows at a unique volcano called Lengai." "I think, really, to see Lengai from near is something that is outside the earth." "I have never seen such an unusual volcano than this one." "And what is very peculiar for this volcano is that those lava are black, it's not mud, it's lava." "And once you see those black lava flows going the here and there in this crater," "24 hours after emission those black lava became white." "We were very surprised by the fluidity of this lava and with this low temperature because it's only 500 degrees Celsius." "And to take this samples of lava with this spoon." "And what was very exciting also that in the night it was red, like other lava." "The Kraffts never denied the dark side of volcanoes." "The face of human suffering." "The numbing devastation." "For UNESCO, they began producing safety films on volcanic hazards, shown around the world." "Footage of aftermath was impressive, but the Kraffts aimed to capture pyroclastic flows in action." "Alaska, 1986." "A close encounter on the slopes of Augustine produced amazing footage and whet their appetite for more." "We have seen so much big eruptions that now we wanted to see bigger and bigger and bigger and these don't happen so often, so, sometimes we have to wait, a one year or even two years to see something really enormous" "and more enormous it is, better it is for me." "The quest leads them to Mount Unzen in 1991." "They set up camp inside the evacuation zone indifferent to the possible danger." "I am never afraid." "Because I have seen so much eruptions in 23 years, that even if I doe tomorrow, I don't care." "On June 3rd, Maurice, Katia, and a bevy of journalists move to a valley about two miles from the summit" "It's a fatal miscalculation." "Something triggers a pyroclastic flow about ten times bigger than all that came before." "Within moments, it overwhelms the valley." "By the time a TV camera I the village record this scene," "Maurice, Katia and 41 others are dead." "Surely, no one loved volcanoes better than Maurice and Katia Krafft." "Every time we marvel at their films, we are seeing the world through their eyes." "And for a moment, it's as though they are with us again." "November 13th, 1985." "A Colombian volcano, Nevado del Ruiz erupts around nine p.m." "Part of its summit glacier melts." "Water cascades down canyons, stripping them of soil, trees, boulders." "Soon, the mudflow is 130 feet deep." "Just before midnight, nearly 30 miles from the volcano, it engulfs a city called Armero." "23,000 people are buried alive." "Only weeks earlier, scientists had surveyed the volcano and determined Armero was at risk." "Somehow, their report was shelved." "Yet a simple evacuation plan could have saved thousands." "On the ruins of Armero, volcanologists vowed, "Never again."" "One year later, the US geological Survey helped create a unique program." "Fifty miles from Mount Saint Helens, the Cascades Volcano Observatory is home base for the Volcano crisis Assistant Team." "With a cache of portable monitoring equipment, the five-man team can mobilize at a moment's notice." "Hey guys, I just got a request from Bob Tilling." "A mission begins when a foreign nation asks for help in assessing a volcanic threat." "Andy Lockhart has ten years experience in rapid response." "If there is a typical mission, it would consist of getting the call on Friday afternoon, going to the books, finding our if it's a volcano that we don't know much about." "If it's a full blown response we'd take an entire observatory." "We'd take all of the sensors, all of the computers and that takes some putting together." "Lockhart and his teammates have seen action at more than 15 volcanoes in 13 countries." "Their most memorable mission took them to the Philippines." "April 2nd, 1991." "Fifty five miles northwest of Manila." "Plumes of steam are spotted at the summit of Mount Pinatubo by tribesmen who have lived on its slopes for generations." "They've never seen anything like this." "Word reaches Ray Punongbayan, director of the Philippine Institute for Volcanology and Seismology in Manila." "It has 4 seismometers near the volcano." "They reported that they were recording over 400 volcanic quakes and that's unusual." "Right then and there," "I said that something unusual is happening inside the volcano." "The reports arouse concern at Clark Air Base just 15 miles form Pinatubo." "At the request of the US Air force and the Government of the Philippines, a team from the US geological Survey arrives at Clark on April 23rd." "They begin briefing a Crisis Action Team directed by Colonel Richard Anderegg." "I think I was like most people, I didn't know a lot about volcanoes until the United States Geological Survey Team came here it was a total educational process for me." "I had, you know, when I thought of a volcano," "I thought of a volcano like in Hawaii where the lava flows out at a nice leisurely pace and people take pictures of t and it's a, a very pretty thing to watch." "A joint U.S. Philippine science team sees a different picture form the air." "Pinatubo has no written history of eruptions, but it's surrounded by huge deposits of ancient pyroclastic flows." "Lockhart and his teammates see the threat in a whole new light." "For two weeks, they install a monitoring network on ridges around the volcano." "Lockhart outfits each station with a radio transmitter that sends data to a makeshift observatory on Clark." "Pinatubo's activity increases daily." "The science team urges local authorities to consider evacuations." "It's a big responsibility in the sense that you are causing people to move out of their abode and transfer to evacuation centers and suffer there and wait for something to happen and, if nothing happens, then, uh, our reputation is at stake." "So, we were very careful about that." "June 5th." "Swarms of earthquakes prompt a level 3 alert:" "Eruption possible within two weeks." "Twenty thousand Filipinos living within six miles of the summit are ordered to relocate to temporary shelters." "But the Air force stays put." "Scientists brief the Senior Officer at Clark, General William Studer." "They admit there is a chance the volcano may not erupt at all." "June 7th." "Pinatubo releases clouds of ash." "The science team issues a level 4 alert:" "Eruption possible within 24 hours." "Most ominous is the appearance of a plug of thick lava the kind that generates pyroclastic flows." "General Studer wants to see it for himself." "Lockhart remembers his conversation with another scientist." "The general says, God, that's a lot of ash!" "and Hoblitt says, that's nothing!" "And he points out these big ignimbrite sheets, these things that look like a Japanese parasol stretching out ten kilometers in every direction from the volcano and says," "See these big sheets out here, this is what this volcano does when it erupts." "And then we wheel around in the helicopter and he says," "There's your base down there." "And you could see it very obviously at the leading edge of one of these sheets that came down that valley." "And so we headed back to the base." "And the general says to Jeff Grime, he says, uh, 'Do it tomorrow.'" "With those words, Studer orders the evacuation of Clark." "One June 10th, some 14,000 Americans leave for a Navy facility, 25 miles away." "A small security force, and the science team stay behind." "After the base was evacuate on June 10th, we felt two ways about it." "One, that it could happen any time and the people were gonna be safe." "On the other hand, now that the base was evacuate, the clock was really starting to tick." "A century of volcanology is put to the rest." "From afar, an entire nation awaits the unknown." "June 12th, 8:51 AM." "The wait is over." "Pinatubo blows an ash column nearly 12 miles into the sky." "Communities fifty miles away are showered with ash, and sand." "Eruptions continue for two days." "The evacuation radius is enlarged." "More than 80,000 people leave their homes." "Clark radar now shows a major typhoon headed straight for the Philippines." "Exhausted from round-the-clock shifts, the science team suspects the worst is yet to come." "June 15th, 2:00 AM." "Pinatubo's finale begins." "At dawn, pyroclastic flows stream down the volcano's flanks." "There's concern its entire summit may be collapsing." "Ash fall turns 10 AM black as midnight" "When the typhoon comes ashore, rain and ash mix like wet concrete." "Continuous blasts overwhelm monitoring stations." "It's time to consider the possibility that pyroclastic flows might reach Clark." "I went out to look out the front door." "And I was standing there looking onto the darkness." "You could see some runway lights about a quarter mile away from us, looking towards Pinatubo." "Little line of red lights." "And I thought, well, if it comes down this far, it'll, it'll cut those lights." "And if it cuts those lights, I'll run like hell towards the back of the room." "And that's about 400 yards if it's coming 60 miles an hour, that'll give me about enough time to make it to the back of the room for whatever it's worth." "And that was the most terrified I think I've ever been, standing there looking at those lights listening to that eruption." "Around 2 PM, the largest explosion yet knocks out all bit one of the monitoring stations" "I noticed that without much big ado and really no organization, each of the volcanologist was making sure he had his knapsack packed with the kinds of things that if he was going to have to leave he could grab very quickly." "And when that particularly large eruption occurred about three of those guys turned around and picked up their bags off the floor and they weren't slowing down when they went out the door." "So, I figured if it was good enough for them it was good enough for the rest of us." "Clark is finally abandoned." "Around midnight, the eruption is over." "By morning, people return to towns crushed by ash." "Collapsed buildings claim 300 lives." "But tens of thousands are saved in the largest evacuation ever staged as a result of eruption forecasts." "For volcanology, it's an unprecedented success." "Still, Pinatubo's summit is gone, in the largest eruption on Earth on half a century." "Over two cubic miles of debris blanket the landscape." "Rain wreaks havoc with those loose deposits." "In the days after the eruption, mudflows claim hundreds of lives." "With each typhoon season, mudflows claim more homes and more lives." "Some two millions people have been affected." "Echoes of the eruption are likely to plague the region well into the 21st century." "Today, Pinatubo sleeps again." "But for how long?" "The earth harbors some fifteen hundred potentially dangerous volcanoes." "More than half a bullion people live within their reach." "To live on harmony with volcanoes may be little more than wishful thinking." "But for better or worse, we could not exist without them." "If not for the fire within, the earth would be a barren sphere, worn smooth as a blue marble." "Volcanoes provide the lifeblood of our planet." "They build mountains, and create new land." "Their fireworks recycle life giving gases and minerals." "Most atoms in our bodies were once inside the Earth." "Volcanoes brought these atoms to the surface." "No matter where we live, we have all been touched by fire." "That has got to be a violent tornado." "Get those kids in that basement." "Get 'em in that closet." "Get away from the windows." "Get away from the windows." "Get away!" "Get away!" "People underneath the girders of this overpass." "They're still hanging on." "Oh my God, we're having an earthquake." "Wait a minute." "Hold on." "Hold on." "Can you feel that?" "There go the lights." "Oh!" "We have a major fire burning near San Francisco's marina district." "We have the band now approaching the coast." "So we're just starting the long period of about 12 to 16 hours when we're going to experience the thrust of this hurricane." "Can we spend most of our lives learning how to control ourselves and our environment?" "And suddenly, you wake up with the realization" "I am not in control." "In cities all across the world, we go about our daily routines, secure in our surroundings, confident that our lives are orderly and predictable." "But at any moment, that confidence can be shattered, as nature demonstrates that it still has the upper hand." "When we least expect it, when we're least prepared, disaster can strike." "And few disasters are as unsettling as an earthquake." "The quake that hit San Francisco on October 17, 1989 was actually centered 50 miles away, near a mountain called Loma Prieta." "Even in an area accustomed to earthquakes, this one struck like a hammer." "It was tremendous, believe me." "I just held on to dear life." "There was a sudden movement like this, shaking, whole store rattling." "I mean, the roof, everything, the beams." "My TV screen popped out, and glass began to break, you know, things like that." "Big marble table flew across the room and shattered like glass almost." "The Loma Prieta earthquake lasted only 15 seconds, but in that quarter minute, northern California suffered six billion dollars in damage, and 62 people lost their lives." "Earthquakes are not nice." "The ground is moving beneath one the very essence of stability is questioned." "And that's quite apart from the damage, the destruction, the deaths." "There's something awful about an earthquake and it's not fun at all." "My guess is that earthquakes are really so scary because you don't have any warning." "It's the only thing besides a nuclear war that can really one second you're living in a big beautiful city and ten seconds later, it's flat." "Earthquakes leave their trail of destruction on every continent." "In 1948, the city of Fukui, Japan was leveled by a tremor several times more powerful than atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki." "Mexico city was struck by a huge earthquake in 1985." "Nearly 10,000 died in the greatest disaster in Mexican history." "In September 1993, a quake devastated the Indian state of Maharashtra." "In spite of warning shocks, most of the victims were asleep when their houses collapsed around them." "Every day the earth is shaken by hundreds of small earthquakes." "Most go unnoticed." "They usually occur along the boundaries of the thin plates that cover the earth like an eggshell." "Driven by the heat deep within the earth's core, the plates grind against each other along lines call faults." "When the plates find their motion blocked, stress builds up." "Finally the fault gives way." "The released energy races through the earth in the form of seismic waves." "One place where the boundary between plates is dramatically evident is the 700-mile-long San Andreas fault." "This is the source for most of California's earthquakes." "But for California, as for much of the world, the movement of plates like these is also an indispensable creative force." "If we didn't have earthquakes, if we didn't have this great flow of heat from the interior of the earth, the earth would be a cold, dead place." "If it wasn't for this great flow of heat, there'd be no continents, no oceans, no atmospheres, the earth would be as dead and dry and cold as the moon." "Everywhere you look in California, the hills are really created by, by the action of the earthquakes, for the most part." "It's really the earthquakes that create the topography, the valleys, the mountains, control the river streams, where things go." "Earthquakes have been shaping the landscape of California for eons." "It's only in the last few hundred years that civilization has gotten in the way." "Around the turn of the century," "San Francisco was a booming metropolis, an emblem of California's newfound prosperity." "But on April 18, 1906, that prosperity was shattered by the most famous quake in American history." "Most of the city was destroyed in the tremor and the fires that followed." "Much of charred rubble from those fires was pushed into San Francisco Bay, adding to an existing landfill that eventually became part of the city itself." "Today, that landfill lies beneath a section of the marina district." "This was the area hardest hit in the 1989 quake." "The problem here is the rubble from the tremor of 1906, buried underground." "Shaken by the new quake, it literally fell apart, and so did much of the neighborhood." "The practice of building on such unstable ground is a problem throughout the world." "Mexico city was built on top of a dried-up lake bed." "The 1985 quake was actually centered hundreds of miles away, but it turned the soft land under the capital into a nearly liquid mass." "The buildings simply collapsed;" "victims were crushed under tons of concrete and steel." "It's a modern nightmare:" "urban infrastructure crashing down around us." "As geologists and engineers like to remind us, earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do." "Certain structures, like bridges and freeways, are especially vulnerable to tremors." "In San Francisco's quake, most of the deaths occurred on the Nimitz Freeway, when a one-and-a-half mile section of the upper deck collapsed on the roadway beneath." "Ed McVey was driving a freight truck when it happened." "There was no traffic." "I was doing about 55, and all of a sudden it felt like I had a blowout." "I had no control over the truck." "Luckily, there was nobody beside me because I was just all over the place." "I hit the brakes." "In the rearview mirror," "I could see what looked like the freeway falling, and that didn't make any sense." "I saw cars and trucks disappearing underneath the rubble." "And I just knew I was dead." "I had no way of getting out of it." "There was nothing I could do." "McVey was lucky that day:" "his truck just happened to stop under the only section of freeway that didn't fall." "I don't deal with it as well as people think I do." "I can be driving along anywhere, and all of a sudden I've got freeway falling down on top of me." "Ed McVey escaped without a scratch." "Forty-two other motorists died." "Five years later, when an earthquake hit Los Angeles, there was a similar freeway collapse." "Fortunately, the tremor struck before dawn, when the road was virtually empty." "Next time this could happen at rush hour." "Yet overall, in spite of the freeway disasters and the loss of some apartment buildings and houses," "San Francisco and Los Angeles weathered their tremors extremely well... largely because most of their tall buildings were constructed with earthquakes in mind." "Too often, in other parts of the world, that's not true." "In December of 1988, a relatively mild tremor struck the Armenian city of Leninakan, and its acres of cheap, shoddily constructed housing." "Eighty percent of the city was destroyed, and more than 25,000 people killed." "Specially trained dogs were brought in to help locate survivors and victims standard practice in such urban catastrophes." "Fortunately, Leninakan was a small city." "Tang-shan, in northern China, was not." "Just before dawn, on July 28, 1976, an earthquake tore through Tang-shan." "It was the first quake in modern history to score a direct hit on a major city." "As nearly as anyone can tell, it left close to a quarter of a million people dead." "Entire families were wiped out, so it was impossible to find out from the survivors exactly how many had perished." "Besides falling buildings, earthquakes create other special problems in urban environments:" "broken gas lines spark fires, and broken water mains can make fire fighting nearly impossible." "We have a major fire brewing in San Francisco's Marina District." "In the 1989 quake, the San Francisco Fire Department battled 34 major blazes simultaneously." "With underground water supplies cut off, fireboats had to be used to pump water from San Francisco Bay." "Unfortunately, earthquakes in large cities, with their accompanying horrors, are not rare events:" "When you look at a map of the world and plot the truly great cities of the world, and compare it with a map of the great really destructive earthquakes of the last thousand years, there's an almost one-to-one correspondence." "I think we may find ourselves witnessing a large number of destructive earthquakes in the next three or four decades that is going to really horrify the world." "The next great urban earthquake may happen in Tokyo." "This vast metropolis, with its population of more that 27 million, lies near the busy intersection of three tectonic plates." "Small tremors are an everyday occurrence here, and big ones strike all too frequently." "In 1923, Tokyo was nearly destroyed by a massive earthquake." "Much of the destruction, and most of the 140,000 deaths, were not caused by the quake itself, but by the fires that raged on for days afterward." "September 1, the anniversary of the 1923 quake, is commemorated every year as "disaster day."" "Fire departments and emergency crews stage public demonstrations, while ordinary citizens can get a sense of what a major earthquake feels like, and try their hands at putting out fires." "The Japanese are proud of their earthquake preparedness, and they have good reason to be." "Modern Tokyo boasts some of the most advanced earthquake-resistant architecture in the world." "Its skyscrapers are "smart buildings"" "incorporating features like motion stabilizers and internal gyroscopes." "But the vast majority of Tokyo's eight million buildings are older, wood-frame structures." "They're squeezed along narrow, twisting streets that could prove to a night mare for fire fighters." "To make matters worse, the city is fringed by an incendiary jumble of oil refineries, fuel storage tanks, and chemical plants much of it constructed atop unstable landfill on Tokyo Bay." "In short, even earthquake-conscious" "Tokyo is a disaster waiting to happen." "The unsettling reality is that no place in the world is completely safe from earthquakes... not even areas where tremors are rare, and preparations nonexistent." "The eastern United States and Europe are hardly hotbeds of seismic activity," "but large quakes have occurred nearly everywhere on earth at one time or another, and unlike lightning, earthquakes do strike twice." "It's just a matter of time." "No other force in nature can come close to matching the power of an earthquake - except one." "Tornadoes strike with the intensity of a quake and the surgical precision of a guided missile." "They have the power to fascinate as well as terrify, and with the advent of video camcorders, the terror is being well documented by home moviemakers." "This is in Haysville, Kansas." "It's gonna hit our house, Mom." "Just looking for it to hit - this tornado." "Sometimes a cameraman gets more than he bargained for." "On a lakeshore in Minnesota... an idyllic summer afternoon is about to be transformed by the arrival of a tornado." "Look at that funnel." "Within seconds, curiosity will be replaced by panic." "Look here." "Look at the highway trees." "A power line just went out." "A power line just went out." "Look at it." "Oh..." "This is cool." "There it goes." "Here it comes." "Here it comes." "It's right out here." "I'm ten feet from it and all the electricity, all the power lines are going." "I'll film from the inside." "We're filming." "Hold it right there." "Don't stand by the windows." "There goes the windows." "Oh, get away from the windows." "Tree just blew over." "Get away from the windows." "Get away." "Get away!" "Get away!" "Get away!" "Where is everybody?" "Where is everybody?" "Oh no!" "Where is everybody?" "Oh, my God." "Are you guys okay?" "These tornado victims were incredibly lucky:" "there were no injuries, and only superficial damage." "The devastation is usually far worse." "A tornado can strike in any country." "But more twisters develop over the midwestern United States than anywhere else." "And in their wake, they leave a trail of destruction and despair." "Simulated in a laboratory, a tornado is fairly simple to analyze." "It's really a whirlpool of converging opposites:" "upwelling warm air confronts down-tumbling cool;" "dry air encounters moist;" "winds aloft collide with winds below." "In nature, that produces torrential rains, dangerous lightning and hail storms, and violent winds of up to 300 miles per hour." "Tornadoes travel fast, especially across the flat landscape of the plains." "When a television news crew found themselves trapped in the path of a Kansas twister, their only sensible option was to take cover." "Let's go, let's go, let's go." "Go, go, go." "Shoot it." "You better floor it." "You better floor it." "Shoot it." "We're all right." "Just stay here." "You're okay." "You're okay." "Keep going, man, keep going." "Faster?" "No." "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." "Lots faster, lots faster!" "Lots faster." "Greg, it's catching us!" "You gotta go, buddy." "You gotta really go." "You gotta blaze, buddy." "Yeah, we want to jump out." "We want to get in front of the van." "Get under here!" "Keep rolling." "Yeah, I'm rolling." "Got it?" "Let's go!" "Get up under the girders!" "Get up under the girders!" "Is that where we want to go?" "Yes." "Underneath the girders." "Keep rolling." "Hang onto the girders." "You're all right." "You're okay." "Tornadoes are among the most destructive of all natural phenomena, and in the United States alone, they're responsible for dozens of deaths every year." "But a tornado cuts a narrow path, and rarely lasts for more than 20 minutes." "Even more devastating are the forces unleashed by tropical cyclones, called typhoons in the Pacific and hurricanes in the South Atlantic and Caribbean." "These monster storms can be hundreds of miles wide and last for days, tearing vast swaths of destruction." "Tropical cyclones visit some parts of the world with frightening regularity, and cause staggering losses of life and property." "In 1970, a huge typhoon struck what was then East Pakistan, leaving more than 300,000 dead." "Frustrated in part by the slow pace of relief efforts, the people of the region seceded a year later and created the new nation of Bangladesh." "Bangladesh continues to be pummeled frequently by killer typhoons, made worse by storm surges" " wind-driven walls of seawater that flood this low lying country." "In the Western Hemisphere, the islands of the Caribbean and the southeast coast of the United States are prime targets for hurricanes." "And the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history was Hurricane Andrew..." "We have the band now approaching the coast." "So we're just starting the long period of about 12 to 16 hours when we're going to experience the thrust of this hurricane." "When Andrew struck Florida on August 23, 1992, its winds were clocked at 164 miles an hour, and they were still climbing when they broke the wind gauge at the National Hurricane Center." "The storm hit hardest just south of Miami." "Though it came and went here overnight," "Andrew, like all natural disasters, left behind a legacy of ruin." "It created massive environmental damage that could last for generations." "For the survivors, life would never be the same." "No insurance." "My car is devastated, but I'm not the only one." "You know, there's quite a few people that are going through the same thing." "Look all around." "It's a very lost feeling." "Pictures of the family." "That's my niece and my great..." "Before it began its rampage across South Florida," "Andrew was born, like most hurricanes, as a cloud disturbance off the African coast." "Swirling storms are formed when warm, moist air rises and cools." "The storms grow larger and faster as they race westward, developing into violent cyclones that can rip through the west Atlantic from June to November." "The hurricane's center, known as the eye, remains calm, but the eye walls are packed with intense thunderstorms that generate fierce, gusty winds." "And winds have rarely been as savage as Andrew's." "The storm left a total of 62 people dead." "And it left parts of South Florida a wasteland." "This hurricane caused more destruction of property than any other natural disaster in the history of the United States." "We're talking in the order of 15 to 30 billion dollars." "It could have been much worse." "Andrew missed the densely populated center of Miami by only 20 miles." "As it was, 160,000 people were forced from their homes." "Besides the thousands of personal tragedies, there was an immense environmental problem." "In one day, hurricane Andrew created at least three million tons of garbage..." "There was enough burnable debris to fuel fires at more than a hundred sites at some of them 24 hours a day." "The smoke was bad enough, but Andrew created other, more insidious dangers." "Mike Palmer's specialty is containing hazardous and toxic spills." "After Andrew, he and his crew sifted through devastated neighborhoods for household hazards." "Now, what you may normally see with one house and the typical chemicals they'll have - like, you know, a small thing of acetone or a thing of brake fluid, and here's some clear stain- you know," "you'd say well what's the big deal?" "You know, what's - how bad could this really be to the environment?" "Well, you know, if I opened this up, and I poured it on the ground here, you know, would it absolutely contaminate the groundwater for this whole area?" "No, it probably wouldn't." "But we don't have that here." "What we got here is we've got these quantities or more in every single house." "And if this equipment comes in here and they rupture these containers and it goes in the environment all at once like that, it is too much." "This is only a fraction of the hazardous waste recovered from the wreckage of thousands of homes." "No one knows how much toxic material remained unaccounted for." "In the chaos following a natural disaster like Hurricane Andrew, human survival is the first priority." "But animals are victims too." "Miami's Metrozoo lay directly in Andrew's path." "The zoo suffered serious losses, including hundreds of prized tropical birds, and five large mammals." "Miraculously, most of the animals came through unharmed, even though they were out in the open, exposed to the fierce intensity of the storm." "No one knows quite how they survived, because no one was around to watch." "Many of the zoo's exhibits were ruined." "And it will take decades to replace the crucial shade trees." "But the long process of recovery began right away." "I've received checks and letters from every state in the country supporting the zoo." "People who've never heard from before." "People who've never been here." "And I think one of the most moving things in that whole situation was," "I received a check one day, and I noticed the return address was from Homestead." "And Homestead is here in South Miami, and it was probably the most devastated area from Hurricane Andrew." "And I opened the letter, and there was a check there, and it said, "Please, please accept this donation in memory of our daughter, Naomi Browning who was killed in the storm."" "You feel almost guilty that something has not happened to you because there's tragedy's around you like this." "And here you have a lady sending you a check in the memory of her 12-year-old daughter who happened to have been a volunteer here at the zoo, volunteered her time." "And I said, "Ms. Browning, why?"" "And through her tears, and as she was crying on the phone and talking to me she said, "Ron, prior to this beam falling down and crushing her, the only thing she kept saying all night long was" "'Mom, I'm so worried about the animals at the zoo."'" "In the aftermath of a hurricane, the survivors must try to make the best of what remains." "It's a long, slow process, restoring shattered lives and replacing broken dreams." "But the residents of South Florida must also come to terms with the certainty that another big hurricane is on the way, perhaps next year, or the year after." "The long-term problem is that people build their homes in areas most vulnerable to tropical storms." "All across the globe, if coastal development continues unabated, more and more people will find themselves in the paths of major hurricanes and typhoons, and those storms could be more expensive and more deadly than ever." "Most natural disasters are mercifully quick:" "earthquakes last only seconds." "Tornadoes rarely touch down for more than a few minutes." "Even hurricanes come and go in a matter of hours." "But a flood is a disaster in slow motion." "It can last as long as the rain continues to fall, as long as the water continues to rise." "Some floods are of biblical proportions, dragging on for weeks or even months." "Such a flood was the one that struck the Mississippi Valley in 1993." "The people who live here are accustomed to the river's periodic rise and fall," "They've often joined battle with the elements to preserve their homes." "They refuse to remain passive in the face of disaster." "But 1993 brought the worst deluge in a century and a half." "The Mississippi became a monstrous adversary, and the struggle would last for months." "The waters from nearly one quarter of North America drain down the upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers." "In the spring of '93, their tributaries were overwhelmed by relentless rain, turning the land between the rivers into what some called a "sixth Great Lake."" "By mid-July, with record crests converging at St. Louis, dozens of town downriver faced the danger of being wiped off the map" " towns like Ste." "Genevieve, Missouri." "Founded by French settlers in the 1740s," "Ste." "Genevieve is the oldest European settlement on the western banks of the Mississippi." "Some of its French colonial architecture exists now here else in the United States." "And if the river had its way, that rich heritage would soon be gone." "Where the waters were held at bay, the town owed its safety to a makeshift wall of sandbags" " and an extraordinary volunteer crusade." "People from all walks of life- from the locals to the National Guard" " joined hands to try to save what was left of Ste." "Gen." "The battle raged all summer long, as the river continued to rise." "But in one way, the people of the Mississippi Valley were fortunate." "As they waited for each new crest, they could prepare for the onslaught." "But many floods happen fast, too fast for any response." "In southern France in 1992, torrential rains raised river levels as much as 50 feet in just a few hours." "The resulting flash floods overwhelmed defenseless towns, and dozens drowned." "The people of Ste." "Genevieve had time to meet the river's gradual advance, and they were ready for the worst." "One of those leading the fight was Vern Bauman, a local contractor." "Vern was president of the Downtown Levee District, the agency responsible for maintaining the dikes now swallowed by the river." "He coordinated the efforts to save what was left of the town." "Did you get any sleep tonight?" "Well, what 15 minutes or what?" "We got contractors." "We got the National Guard in here, and a lot of civilian help and local people here." "And we got-we just start coordinating everything, trying to get the unions to work together." "And it's just a minute..." "Sonny, we're gonna need we're gonna need..." "The rising tide had brought a flood of people to the town as well, nearly 10,000 from 34 different states." "But in spite of all their efforts, after two and a half months of flooding, more than half of Ste." "Genevieve lay underwater." "Temporary levees wove through town creating an artificial waterfront." "A man-made island rose where Wehner Street had once met North Main:" "the work of four families who banded together in a desperate battle to save their homes." "And they seemed to be winning, at least for now." "But in the struggle to hold back the river, the families had faced a heartbreaking decision:" "only the homes of those who could stay and fight were protected by the dike." "It was agreed all at one time that all five was gonna be here." "Then later one house was not included, and I really feel bad about this one." "It belongs to Henry, Henry Stackle, and he's, he's in his 70s." "And he was always one who always fought." "A few years ago, he probably led the area up here." "Now, he's-the river just keeps coming back, and he's not as young as he used to be." "He's a very hard fighter," "and I guess this is the first one he ever lost." "This skirmish had been hard-won, but the compound was, at best, only a makeshift substitute for the permanent levees, the ones that had failed." "Those had been built by the Army Corps of Engineers, as part of a vast network designed to tame the Mississippi." "Over the course of a half-century, the corps had constructed some 2,200 miles of concrete-retaining walls and earthen embankments, designed to defend towns and farms, and "correct" the river's natural course." "The farmers themselves, together with state and local governments, had built thousands miles more." "But the plan created new problems." "For 10,000 years, the great floodplains of the American Midwest served as a natural spillway for their rivers." "Only in the last few centuries has civilization encroached on the river's domain." "As the river walls were extended and raised, they cinched the flow tighter and tighter, and the speed and pressure of the water built up behind them." "When the river could no longer be held back, it would strike with a force and impact multiplied by the tremendous volume." "That's what happened in the summer of '93 at places like Kaskaskia Island, nine miles south of Ste." "Genevieve." "There, no amount of effort could maintain the levees or save the town." "It was an amazing sight." "The Mississippi River flexing its seemingly unlimited muscle." "Dozens of homes and other buildings including the town's church, all underwater." "Some islanders believe the flood will be the death of a community whose history goes back nearly 200 years." "Now all of Kaskaskia's inhabitants, human and animal, were forced to take refuge on the only high ground available:" "the very levee that had failed them." "Yeah, there's water on the whole island and all around the dike." "Probably the only part right now that does not have water on it are the very high ridges out in the center, and the water's going to continue coming up." "It's continual rain up north, and a lot of dikes are broken both north and south." "So I'm sorry to tell you honey, but we lost everything, but us." "I love you, sweetheart." "We'll see ya later, okay?" "All right." "Bye-bye, hon." "I just wanted to get off." "I wanted my kids, my husband off." "My furniture's all still there." "Everything we worked for." "Had dogs, cats, two cows." "But I got my family." "My husband was born and raised over here." "I don't want to come back." "I'm not gonna lose it again." "All over the mid-west levees have provided the fore sense security for the growing populations of the floodgate." "By the end of the summer of 93' 2/3 of all the levees have been bridged thoro-top." "As the river continue disturbed your sort." "Throughout the world, and throughout history, people have always settled on floodplains, taking advantage of their fertile soil, and the rivers' own resources." "In many places they must be protected by artificial levees, and levees have a tendency to fail, sometimes with catastrophic results." "In China, in the 1930s, floods breached the levees along the Yangtze and Huang Rivers." "The Yangtze floods killed three and a half million people in one of the greatest natural disasters of this century." "Around Ste." "Genevieve, even where the levees were higher than the crest of the flood, the river could still find a way to penetrate them." "After eight waterlogged weeks, trouble spots were cropping up on the earthen walls." "Better get some bags here quick." "Even a small seep of water could pose a grave threat." "In just minutes, this situation went from threat to catastrophe." "Unwilling to give in after fighting so long," "Vern Bauman took one last gamble, and drove out to the break." "With luck, Vern hoped to stem the tide and buy time for those families whose homes stood in the waters' way." "He took earth from wherever he could, even the footings of the levee beneath him." "As hard as he worked, he was no match for the river." "Soon, the outcome was clear." "All that remained was to pull men and machines off the crumbling embankment and evacuate the houses behind." "There was two chances, slim and none, once that truck fell in." "What amazed me about the whole thing was how quick it went." "Throughout the Midwest, the floods of 1993 took a tremendous toll:" "$10.5 billion in damage, 56,000 home flooded or destroyed." "306,000 square miles underwater, and some 50 lives lost to the river." "As for the town of Ste." "Genevieve, it had been saved, at least most of it." "But hundreds buildings were lost or damaged." "Ste." "Gen can't afford many more victories like this one." "There were important lessons to be learned from these floods, and some people took them to heart." "In the past, most flood victims had returned and rebuilt as a matter of course, but this time would be different." "In some places, the river will be allowed to keep the land it reclaimed." "Thousands of acres of low-lying farms will be left open for future flooding." "Many families - and even entire towns- have decided to give up the struggle and move to higher ground where they'll be safe the next time the river floods." "These changes in practice and policy amount to an admission that we can't fight nature and win." "It's finally becoming clear that we can't prevent natural disasters, but perhaps we can learn how to predict them..." "In California, scientists are trying to predict earthquakes." "The site is the sleepy little town of Parkfield." "Just about every 22 years, a powerful earthquake rumbles through here." "And when the next on hits, seismologist Allan Lindh hopes to be ready for it." "Parkfield will really be our first opportunity anywhere on earth to really capture an earthquake in all its glory, to really be sitting there waiting with all our tools out and sharpened and waiting to go." "The U.S. Geological Survey has spent millions of dollars wiring parkfield." "All over the valley, highly sophisticated instruments, like this laser, are poised to detect the tiniest movement along the San Andreas Fault." "If the earth shifts even a few millimeters before a quake strikes, seismologists may be able to issue a warning." "The parkfield experiment is not just designed to predict when an earthquake will happen, but also exactly where it will strike." "It's based on an idea called the "seismic gap theory."" "Seismic gap theory is really just a very simple notion." "And all it says is since motion is occurring all along a plate boundary, there are gonna be earthquakes everywhere along it." "And the places that haven't and 'em lastest are going to be the places to have them "next-est."" "By pinpointing places with the greatest likelihood for a quake, scientists and urban planners can focus on protecting buildings, and people." "But geologists can't create an earthquake in the lab." "The only way for them to test their theories is to wait for one to happen, and hope they're still around afterwards to analyze the data." "Panning back." "I've got to get this updraft just once in my life." "Observing tornadoes presents its own challenges, and thrills." "Every spring and summer, tornado season in the Midwest, an army of amateur storm chasers is out in the field." "And video cameras are now standard equipment." "That has got to be a violent tornado." "Going head-to-head with a twister is an obsession for both amateur storm chasers and professional scientists." "It may look like fun, but it pays off with valuable information about the birth and behavior of these killer storms." "There goes the windshield." "Just as important as direct observation are remote sensing techniques like Doppler radar." "Over the past two decades," "Doppler radar has revolutionized the study of tornadoes." "First used by the military to detect unfriendly missiles," "Doppler is so sensitive it can track the movement of insects 40 miles away." "In the field, portable Doppler radar units can be used to record data at dangerously close range." "I'm on the left side of that tight circulation and I'm gonna go over." "With the information they've compiled, scientists are creating computer models of severe storms to learn even more about their structure and behavior." "As with earthquakes, the key to avoiding catastrophe is alerting the public." "At the National Weather Service, scientists have introduced NEXRAD, the "next generation" of advanced Doppler radar." "NEXRAD's enhanced imagery makes it easier to spot tornadoes as they form, and that can save critical minutes in alerting those in the twister's path." "Hurricane prediction is also becoming more precise, as scientists gain a new perspective on these giant storms, with the help of powerful new tools like the space shuttle and weather satellites." "And as the accuracy of forecasts improves, hurricane fatalities are declining." "The beginning of the hurricane conditions will start there anytime after dark this evening." "Today when hurricanes form over the Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center in Miami serves as a central clearinghouse analyzing data, issuing forecasts, and, most important, broadcasting warnings, to the public." "There's a fine line between alerting the community and creating panic." "Evacuations are expensive, and false alarms can damage public confidence." "But in the face of an approaching hurricane, it's a good idea just to get out of the way." "Like floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes, hurricanes remind us that there are powerful forces beyond our control." "We have not conquered nature - and we never will." "But perhaps we can learn to survive nature's fury." "C'mon, Matt!" "Attention all stations." "Stand by for an urgent tsunami warning for the Big Island and the islands of Maui, Lanai and Oahu." "This warning is based on a 7.5 magnitude earthquake near Kailua-Kona." "Could it really happen?" "Could a giant wave really menace the beaches of Hawaii?" "There is something out there and it threatens coastlines around the world." "It's one of nature's least understood forces:" "Tsunami!" "We often see hurricanes and typhoons that churn up higher-than-normal tide." "They can flood low-lying coastal communities." "But as dangerous as these storm surges can be, they are not the worst of all possible waves." "The real monsters are tsunamis, freak waves usually produced by undersea disturbances like earthquake." "They can race across entire oceans and swallow cities whole." "And they can leave tens of thousands dead." "Throughout history, tsunamis have generated legendary disasters..." "Reversion the shores nearly every ocean and sea." "Without warning and without mercy." "killer waves have struck again and again." "And tsunamis are as mysterious as they are deadly, because so few have ever been observed by scientists." "This extraordinary footage was shot in 1952, in the Kuril Islands off Russia's northern Pacific Coast." "A typical tsunami, it moved inland like a rising tide, but with far greater speed and force." "Fortunately it caused only minor damage here... and no deaths." "But tsunamis can be catastrophic." "In the last century alone, more than 50,000 people have been killed by tsunamis." "Most had little or no warning." "Few were even aware of the danger." "But for the people of the Pacific Rim, deadly tsunamis are not rare events." "They live in the most seismically active part of the planet, an area criss-crossed by earthquake zones and dotted with volcanoes, so it's not surprising that the vast majority of the world's tsunamis occur here." "In the middle of the Pacific, the Hawaiian Islands lie isolated and exposed." "It's people are certainly no strangers to tsunamis." "But some of them are acutely aware of the risk." "Dr. Walter Dudley is director of marine science at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and a leading expert on tsunamis." "We'll have a little on-site safety briefing." "Today he's taking one of his classes on a snorkeling field trip." "But first, a few words of caution." "Okay guys, everybody listen up." "We're only about 30 miles from the epicenter of two of the largest earthquakes that have ever struck this island." "In both cases, they generated large destructive tsunamis." "The waves took about ten minutes to get here and were about 10 to 15 feet high." "So if you are out there on the reef, and you feel a big earthquake, drop your gear and get out of the water and move ashore as quickly as possible" "Okay, let's have a good lab." "They are among the most catastrophic of all natural phenomenon." "Unlike things like hurricanes, there are no warning signs." "The weather doesn't get bad." "You don't feel the earth shake." "It can be just a beautiful day and then, all of a sudden, the ocean can come up and come ashore 30 feet high." "In the Hawaiian Islands, we've recorded tsunami wave heights as great as 56 feet on this island from the 1946 Aleutian tsunami." "In prehistoric times, wave heights may have reached over a thousand feet." "Hilo has been struck by tsunamis as long as there has been a Hilo." "But it was really in 1946 when there was a built-up downtown Hilo that we had a very, very large tsunami" "Nineteen forty-six..." "after four years of war," "Hawaiians can relax." "At last, their island paradise is safe from attack." "But more than 2,000 miles away, a new threat emerges from the sea." "On April 1, at around 12:30 in the morning, an undersea earthquake off the coast of Alaska generates a huge tsunami." "Within minutes it will make its first landfall on the Aleutian island of Unimak," "90 miles from the epicenter." "Inside the island's Scotch Cap Lighthouse, the men feel the tremor, but they have no idea what's heading their way." "When the wave slams into their island, it's more than 100 feet high." "After it passes, the Scotch Cap Lighthouse has disappeared, and so has its crew." "The tsunami continues racing south toward Hawaii at over 400 miles per hour." "And just as in Alaska, no one here suspects a thing." "It's first impact in the islands is deceptive." "Some waves are as small as two or three feet, barely hinting at the tsunamis awesome power." "By the time it arrives at Coconut Island in Hilo Bay, the tsunami has begun to swell to monstrous proportions." "Its waves wash over the island, easily overtopping the 30-foot palm trees." "Lining Hilo Bay were dozens of homes." "Kapua Heuer's family lived on a bluff high above the bay." "My family ventured as close as it could to the edge of this bluff when we saw this mammoth wave come in." "It's 32 feet from here down to the ocean." "We had to step back because where we were standing, all of a sudden, it was ocean." "In the city of Hilo, residents panicked when the first waves hit, fleeing for their lives." "Many try in vain to outrun the tsunami" "We heard this horrible clash in Hilo and we knew that the buildings on the ocean side were being knocked down." "There was turmoil all day long." "The whole town was awash with water and hurt people and lost people." "We did see people in the ocean struggling, dogs trying to swim ashore." "We saw that." "But you couldn't do anything about it." "The force of the water was so great, you couldn't venture into it." "You had no chance." "You felt very helpless and wondered was there anybody out there that you knew." "One photographer watches in horror as a wave overtakes a dock worker trapped on a pier." "In the next frame, taken after the wave has passed, the worker is nowhere to be seen..." "swept away like so many others." "I had gotten up, gone downstairs to wash up..." "Larry Nakagawa was 14 when the wave struck his home in Hilo." "...and as I was washing my face and brushing my teeth," "I heard this strange sound of gravel being thrown on the pavement." "So my brother came out and said" ""It looks like we are having a tidal wave." "We better get on the tree."" "So he hoisted me up and then my father was hoisted." "He and my father were on the same branch and, because of the way the branch was, he had to hold my father around, to grab hold of the trunk." "And I think that when the wave came, he felt that if he hung onto my father... the way... the force of the wave would push him, and if he hung on, he would take my father in." "So he let go and he went with the wave." "It was strict horror to go into the mortuaries." "When they found somebody, identified somebody all the bodies were covered they put a tag on a toe." "But they were covered with a blanket." "And when you pulled back the blanket to see if you recognized them, the horror on their death..." "was terrible... when they died." "They were frightened." "Eyes open, mouth agape." "And just a terror looked-face on them." "It was very unpleasant to look at." "Twenty-five miles northwest of Hilo, the little peninsula called Laupahoehoe lies exposed to the full fury of the tsunami." "Students have just arrived in the Laupahoehoe schoolyard and are waiting for classes to start." "Among them are Bunji Fujimoto and his two brothers." "That day remains vivid in Bunji's memory." "I could see a wall of water coming in from out in the ocean." "It compared to filling up a cup of coffee." "You just keep pouring and once it hits the brim, it spills over, and that's what happened back here, up on the wall." "It didn't stop with the wall." "It just came over, spilled over." "And we could see we were in trouble." "We had to run." "We started running." "When the water started coming over, we started running up to higher ground to my left, where the school building was." "Fortunately, we made it in time." "A bunch of the other children didn't make it, the other students, mostly students in this area." "My brother was down here and we never found him." "We always wondered what he would have turned out to be like later on." "He was 14 years old and just getting to his prime of life." "You can't do anything about it." "You can't do anything more than just think and talk about it" "Bunji's brother was among the 25 who died at Laupahoehoe, mostly students and their teachers." "Almost all of the bayfront area was nearly totally destroyed." "The businesses were ripped right off their foundations." "Many of the structures were wooden and they were totally collapsed." "The railway which was built on wooden railway ties the wooden ties were floated out by the water and the rails twisted into pretzels." "One hundred fifty-nine people died that day 96 in Hilo alone." "Over time, the city would rebuild." "But this tragedy would mark a turning point." "Those who lived in the shadow of the tsunamis were determined to be better prepared for the next killer wave." "Just two years later, in 1948, the U.S. government established the Pacific Tsunami warning center in Honolulu." "Today, the center remains on alert around the clock, coordinating the efforts of dozens of Pacific Rim countries." "We try to get a warning out as quickly as possible, and we have to go to our resources to find out where the earthquake is and what its magnitude is." "And then, given that information, we issue this warning to the various participants in the warning system in the Pacific." "Equipped with state-of-the-art satellite technology, seismic sensors, and a vast network of wave monitors, the warning center can track any major earthquake on the planet and determine whether a tsunami is on its way." "Scientists know that an undersea earthquake, or a volcanic eruption anything that causes the sea floor to shift suddenly can displace huge volumes of water." "When this disruption reaches the surface, a series of waves spreads out." "They can move as fast as 600 miles per hour." "Unlike a normal wave caused by wind or tides, the energy of a tsunami is evenly distributed all the way to the ocean bottom." "In deep water, there's barely a ripple at the surface" "But as a tsunami wave approaches land, the seafloor rises." "The energy is compressed and the waves can be pushed up as high as 100 feet or more." "It's always a number of thousands of people that could possibly live or die, depending on our decision." "Here in the Hawaiian Islands, for example, every few years, we have..." "That's interesting." "We've got an earthquake to deal with." "It looks like it's a small local quake in the central part of Alaska." "The center detects two or three quakes every week." "Most like this one present no threat of tsunami." "But even when a tsunami alert is issued, not everyone will take it seriously." "When you go from one tsunami to the next tsunami, people don't even know what they are." "So it's hard for them to even consider them a threat." "First of all, you have to convince them that there is such a thing, and secondly, that it can cause destruction." "Even in Hawaii, with its tragic history of tsunamis, people can forget the lessons of the past." "In 1960, 12 years after the warning center was established, a massive earthquake off the coast of Chile generates a tsunami that fans out across the Pacific." "Hawaii lies directly in its path." "Early on the evening of May 22, the warning center issues its prediction" "...a tsunami will hit Hilo sometime around midnight." "But with midnight long past, and only small waves washing ashore, many ignore the alert, and return to the downtown bayfront." "A few even gather at the Suisan Fish Market to watch the waves come in." "The 35-foot wall of water strikes like a bomb." "Once again Hilo is brought to its knees, with $30 million in damage and 61 dead." "This wave will change Hilo forever." "Today, as you look at downtown Hilo, you see the highway along the bayfront, which used to be the railway before the tsunamis." "You see a big expanse of green parkland soccer fields and places where people picnic and play ball." "All of that was homes and businesses... very, very heavily populated before the tsunamis." "If you go there today, you can see the old roads which go in, driveways, all leading to nothing." "They see that area and they think what wonderful urban planning we have in Hilo to have all that parkland." "That's planning thanks to Mother Nature and at great expense to the city of Hilo, both in terms of property and loss of life." "Tsunamis have been rare events." "There has not been a destructive Pacific-wide tsunami in over 30 years." "But if you look at the number of tsunami events over the last century there's been on the average one destructive tsunami every seven years so in many ways you would say that we're long overdue for the next tsunami" "Walter Dudley is not the only scientist who's worried about the next one." "In the Seattle office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration," "Dr. Eddie Bernard is spearheading efforts to alert the public to the dangers of tsunamis." "Most certainly they're killers." "If you look at the history of the United States since World War II, more people have died from tsunamis than from earthquakes in our country." "It's one of the few natural disasters that has such broad impact." "Most natural disasters are very localized." "An earthquake, although it may be several hundreds of miles, doesn't affect anything outside of that hundreds-of-miles area" "But if you add up the dimensions of the Pacific Rim shorelines, it's on the order of 100,000 miles." "So one earthquake, properly placed, can affect the coastlines thousands of miles away." "In Japan, however, the greatest tsunami threat comes from earthquakes generated not thousands of miles away, but much closer to home." "This island nation lies on top of one of the most seismically active regions on earth." "The Japanese know that the sea's bounty is often matched by its wrath." "In 1896, an offshore quake sent 100-foot waves crashing into villages on the Sanriku Coast." "The next morning, local fishermen returning to shore were stunned." "A few miles out at sea, they had not even noticed the tsunami passing under their boats." "Now they found their homes destroyed, their families decimated." "More than 22,000 had drowned." "Four decades later, it happened again." "1,500 vessels were swept ashore by the wall of water and many in their crews drowned." "Government aid is being rushed, but it will be a long time before this stricken region can be restored in the land of the rising sun." "The Japanese are no strangers to tsunamis." "Killer waves, like the ones recorded in the news footage, visit their shores with frightening regularity." "But even the Japanese can be taken by surprise." "In 1993, a quake off the coast of Okushiri Island generates tsunami waves that reach shore in less than 10 minutes" "It's the middle of the night, and most do not have time to evacuate." "One of the lucky ones is television cameraman Hiroshi Nakamura who records his own escape on video." "There was a straight road from our hotel to the hills." "We reached the crossroads as we were driving to the hills." "Usually, we would turn to the left, but the driver saw something like white waves ahead on his left side" "The disaster I saw from the hill was just like a war movie." "The devastation was something that made a strong impression on me." "The fact that the whole town vanished is something I haven't forgotten." "Nearly 200 died that night in Okushiri." "On the southern tip of the island, where there were hundreds of homes, only rubble remained." "Dr. Eddie Bernard arrived in Okushiri two days later with a special tsunami task force." "Well, my emotional reaction was... it was like being at ground zero of the atomic bomb or something..." "You just couldn't believe the destruction." "The power of these waves was far more than I had expected." "Although I had been studying this phenomenon for 25 years..." "I'd never seen the power of a devastating tsunami... and what it actually could do." "You just look at some of the structures that were ripped apart and saw how things were destroyed entirely." "Then you start to appreciate the forces at work here." "Looking at a photograph of a young girl who wasn't too much older than my daughter at that time, really brought home the fact that most of the people who died in this event were young children or the elderly." "What we actually could see were the remnants of people's lives." "Then you realize that... these 500 homes had destroyed the lives of hundreds of families." "And, of course, death was part of that process." "And so... you had to be very respectful of what we were actually looking at." "Although it was scientifically important, we didn't want to be disrespectful for those people who had passed away" "And it motivated me as a research scientist to realize that the real reason for studying tsunamis in the research mode is to save a few lives." "And that's the bottom line." "Today Okushiri is slowly recovering from its tragedy." "The people are rebuilding their homes and repairing their lives." "But because space is at a premium here, most new homes must be built where the old ones stood... making them just as vulnerable to the next tsunami." "There is no one spot, however, that will probably never be rebuilt." "The devastated southern tip of the island will likely remain an empty zone, a reminder of what was taken by the sea" "Two hundred miles to the south is another town that has long suffered the ravages of tsunamis." "Over the past century," "Taro has seen 3,000 of its citizens swept away." "The people of this town have learned to carry on in the face of tragedy, to live with the continual threat of disaster." "The last great wave struck here in 1933" "It left Taro in ruins, and wiped out nearly a quarter of its population." "A year later, the survivors fought back." "They built a wall to keep the sea in check the next time it rose." "Today, the wall dominates the town, a reinforced concrete battlement 34 feet high and in some spots, 80 feet thick." "For the people of Taro, it's become a familiar and reassuring part of the landscape" "In the summer, the seawall gets warmed up and I cannot sleep because the heat reflects off of it." "At that time I wish there were no seawall, but I never forget its reason for existing." "If there were no wall, I wouldn't want to live here." "Taro is also protected by its own tsunami warning center." "Besides the usual satellite technology there are video cameras, permitting technicians to monitor the harbor 24 hours a day, looking for changes in sea levels and awaiting the inevitable." "And if alarms are sounded, Taro is ready." "Crack teams of gatekeepers carry out regular drills, closing the wall's six doors against the sea." "Each of the massive steel doors must be sealed in under four minutes." "They've never been tested against a major tsunami." "The seawall certainly offers the people of Taro a measure of comfort, but that may not be enough." "It's 34-foot height should stop most waves." "But the infamous tsunami of 1896 had waves over 90 feet high." "There's just no way to know how big the next one will be." "Back on the wave-ravaged island of Okushiri, they're building their own wall." "When it's completed, it will surround nearly a quarter of the island, providing at least partial protection against the next tsunami." "But the people of Okushiri haven't put all their faith in reinforced concrete." "In a ceremony held every June, they pay homage to the dead, including hundreds of tsunami victims, enshrining their memories in stone." "As darkness falls, a bonfire is lit to serve as a beacon, guiding home those who were lost to the waves." "Paper lanterns symbolize the souls of the victims, released once again to the sea." "It is an act of remembrance and perhaps a prayer for deliverance." "The threat of tsunami is not as distant as most of us think." "Half a world away from the fishing villages of Japan lies the Northwest Coast of the United States." "The town of Crescent City, California, shares a tragic legacy with Taro and Okushiri." "People here can still recall their own encounter with a deadly wave" "March 27, 1964." "Good Friday." "A violent earthquake off the coast of Alaska generates an enormous tsunami." "The Pacific Coast of North America, from Vancouver to San Diego, lies in its path." "At 11 that night," "Crescent City Civil Defense Chief, Bill Parker, receives urgent news." "My first experience with a tsunami was a teletype that came into my office" "And it said that there was a probability of a tsunami and it gave an estimated time of arrival in Zulu time." "Well, we didn't even know what a tsunami was, let alone know how to spell it." "And we certainly didn't know how to convert Zulu time to our time." "And we were really devastated as to what the threat was and what to do." "On March 27, we received this teletype telling us there was a good possibility that Crescent City would have a tsunami." "And we were really frightened." "But not everyone in Crescent City was frightened." "Many were intrigued by the novelty and went down to the waterfront to watch the waves come in." "Among them was Ray Magnuson." "I parked the car down by the entrance to the dock and I met my wife there and started walking down the road." "As I went down the road, I could hear a roar." "Some guys said," ""Hey look, hey look, it's coming over the jetty."" "Well, I assumed it was a tidal wave coming over the jetty, which was not too good a thing to be hearing, since I was not very far above sea level." "I waited and watched and watched, and pretty soon up the road, you could see water coming." "Then there was a cafe on the right hand side of the road looking down, and the cafe slid across the road." "I thought at that time, I said," ""I better get out of here."" "So I turned and started walking." "The water was chasing me, still behind me, and I got back to the car." "Anyway, the water kept coming and kept coming, and as you know, Volkswagens float." "Well, sure enough, ours began to float" "You could hear the explosions up in town." "Then, as things began to be destroyed you could hear things break a big hunk of lumber stopped in front of the car and it made a breakwater, and the car just floated there." "Water went out and we drove away." "We had no idea of the extent of the damage." "And we were all dumfounded." "When we looked out, we could not believe it." "I gave a report to the director of emergency services of the state of California." "He was giving a report to the governor, and I told him I think that Crescent City is gone." "The final toll: 11 people killed;" "more than $7 million in damage." "And now we all knew:" "A tsunami could happen anywhere, not just far away, but right here at home." "Three decades later, the people of Crescent City are better prepared." "But unlike the Japanese, they have no seawalls, no computerized warning system, no video cameras guarding the town." "If a tsunami struck here tomorrow, this town could be devastated once again." "Was the Crescent City disaster a unique event?" "Or could another tsunami strike the Pacific Northwest?" "Giant waves are part of the oral traditions of many native American tribes who lived along these shores." "The Tolowa people spoke of one such event." "The grandmother told the two children to go right away as fast as they could." "The two children ran as fast as they could," "upstream away from the harbor." "Halfway there, they looked back." "They could see the water come." "They could hear the people cry." "They could hear the cries rise and fade away." "When they reached the top of the mountain, the boy made a fire and they sat around it." "When the sun came up, everything was gone." "They went back to where their house had been." "There wasn't anything there." "Everything was swept clean." "It's only a legend, but it may be based upon a terrifying reality." "Just off shore and several thousand feet down lies the Cascadia Subduction Zone." "It's a 900-mile crack in the earth's crust, capable of producing powerful earthquakes." "A tsunami generated here could reach the coast in less than 20 minutes." "Near the mouth of the Copalis River in southern Washington... geologist Brian Atwater seeks evidence of just such an event... evidence that would correspond to some of the ancient stories." "The first indication of a catastrophe:" "a dreary grove called the Ghost Forest" "These trees were flourishing some three centuries ago, when an earthquake caused the river banks to sink, and what had been high ground became a salt marsh, poisoning the trees." "The same earthquake almost certainly generated a tsunami here." "Atwater believes he's found more clues in the banks of the river telltale signs embedded in the soil itself revealing that this region was indeed flooded by a tsunami." "Got a big piece of burned wood in here." "I assume it's a campfire." "We might have a fire pit coming out of this here." "We got a three-layer cake here." "We go back 300 years or a little more to a time when this site was a forest." "It had sitka spruce, it had western red cedar, and it had native people who were cooking, using rocks like this." "The brown layer records a campsite and the forest floor." "The gray later represents the tsunami generated by an earthquake 300 years ago." "The tsunami comes in, dumps the sand on the campsite." "Then the mud builds up on top of the tsunami deposit, because the land had dropped during the earthquake." "But this wasn't the only great wave to strike the coast of Washington." "Atwater and other scientists have found more evidence of earthquakes and tsunami in the distant past." "There was a tsunami about 1,000 years ago generated in Puget Sound by an earthquake probably as large as the Kobe earthquake, on a fault that goes right under downtown Seattle" "During an earthquake, land was moved upward 20 feet." "The floor of Puget Sound probably moved upward as well." "If the floor moves up, the surface of Puget Sound up here moves up." "Temporarily, it's 20 feet higher than it wants to be." "Gravity takes over and you get a big wave." "So that's what happened 1,000 years ago in Puget Sound." "And it could happen again." "Scientists believe there's a one in ten chance of a major tsunami striking the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years." "Here in Washington, there are many places where people do not yet have enough information from public official about what they should do in the event of one of these." "They do not yet have posted the kind of tsunami warning signs that one sees in Oregon now that help to direct a person, just sort of put it in the mind, everyday as you drive past it." "You see this on the outer banks in North Carolina:" ""Hurricane Evacuation Route"." "These kinds of signs need to be up on this coast so in the event of one of these kinds of tsunamis, people think, "Oh, yeah, I remember about that sign." "It said, 'Go up that road."'" "And there might be high ground, far enough up that road, far enough away that you could survive the effects of a tsunami." "Brian Atwater isn't trying to scare people." "He just hopes to raise public awareness." "And the message is finally getting across:" "Government officials have begun developing new strategies to save lives when the next tsunami strikes." "The state of Oregon has recently drawn a line in the sand, establishing a 300-miles-long inundation zone along their coast." "Because of the risk, no new schools or hospitals can be constructed close to shore without special permission." "One town that lies within the zone is Cannon Beach." "It's a quiet little resort town whose population swells to as much as 20,000 in the summer." "Cannon Beach is more prepared for a tsunami than most towns, conducting regular tests of its warning system." "Test, test, test." "But they don't want to frighten the residents or the tourists, so the shrill siren is replaced with something a little bit friendlier." "The folks in Cannon Beach have maintained their sense of humor, but they do take tsunami seriously." "They know they have a lot to lose, especially here at Cannon Beach Elementary, only 400 feet from the ocean." "We're going to add "re" to the beginning of the word." "So what would be the new word if you add "re" to the first word?" "Brian B?" "Regain?" "Regain is right." "And how do you spell regain, Nathan?" ""R-E-G-A-I-N"" "Right." "These kids are well aware of the tsunami threat." "And they know what to do when the alarm bell rings." "Let's exit calmly, class." "They have only a few minutes to get to higher ground." "You guys did it this time in 13 minutes and 30 seconds." "Great job." "Great job." "You hustled all the way up." "I saw people encouraging one another." "You not only focused on keeping yourself and your partner straight, but you also and safe but you also were encouraging people all the way." "I really, really appreciate that." "Great job." "Give yourselves one more hand." "Alright." "Great." "Plans are in the works to relocate the school, but until then evacuation drills will continue." "It's the only way to prevent a catastrophe." "The last tsunami hit Cannon Beach 30 years ago." "And in the school playground, there's chilling evidence of its power:" "The steel swing set bears scars inflicted by trees, uprooted and hurled about by the waves." "Fortunately, that tsunami struck at night, when the schoolyard was empty." "The next one could happen anytime." "Cannon Beach is well aware of the dangers of tsunami." "But there are other towns at risk along the Pacific Coast... and many of them are simply unprepared" "For the state of Washington, there's a resort area called Long Beach" "It's a low-lying sand barrier." "And during the summer months, sometimes there's as many as 40 or 50,000 people that are out there in recreational activities." "That would be by far the worst case scenario, because there's only one way out of that, and that poses a very gruesome picture." "Probably the people couldn't evacuate in time." "And anything that's not reinforced concrete would be wiped out." "And it becomes timber in the water, then causing more damage, because now it's incorporated as part of the wave." "Automobiles become floating objects and they'd be propelled all over the place." "So as the wave sweeps back and forth, it would probably just bulldoze and leave probably six or eight inches of sand." "So when it's all over, it'll be nice smooth sandy beach without any of man's structures on it anymore." "Warning systems and evacuation procedures are well-established here in Hawaii." "But they're only effective if people trust them." "Leave the area." "This is an update on the civil defense tsunami alert." "At this time, you are advised to stay in your room until further notice." "Roads out of Waikiki are now closed." "In 1994, a tsunami warning was issued here and beaches were evacuated throughout the islands." "Three hundred thousand people responded" "But this tsunami alert may have done more harm than good." "Well, in 1994, there was a large earthquake in the northwest Pacific Ocean." "It was big enough to have generated a Pacific-wide tsunami." "The early indications were that there was significant run-up of the water in the tidal stations closest to the earthquake." "So the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center declared a tsunami warning." "They accurately predicted the arrival time of the waves, but they are incapable of predicting how large the waves are actually going to be." "When tsunamis occur as rarely as they do and with as little money as is available for research, we as yet just don't know how to predict how large the waves will be." "So in Hawaii the waves came ashore six inches high." "And unfortunately most of the public interprets that as a false alarm, when in fact it's just our lack of understanding." "It could've been a potentially devastating tsunami." "The problem with over-warning people is of course, they lose confidence in the system." "They say, "Oh, it's just another false alarm,"" "and we don't bother." "Or the flip side of this is they become so cavalier about it they will actually go to the beach to see what it is." "So I think it's incumbent upon us as scientists to try to find a more accurate way... of forecasting the effects of these." "Now the technology finally exists to do just that." "In a government warehouse near Dr. Bernard's office, you can see the future of tsunami forecasting." "A 20-foot signal buoy, coupled with advanced wave sensors, could put an end to false alarms and help save lives." "Anchored in the middle of the ocean as part of a Pacific-wide network, the system will make it possible to predict the height of tsunami waves as well as when and where they'll strike." "Undersea gauges will take the precise measure of each passing wave and transmit the data to the buoy floating above." "A satellite will complete the link to the tsunami warning center." "The new system could eliminate false alarms and build public confidence in the tsunami warning system." "But there are certain types of tsunamis that can strike so suddenly and with such force that even the most sophisticated system would be unable to provide a warning." "Here in the Hawaiian Islands, where all of the land is built by volcanic eruptions, the islands grow up from the sea floor, and then periodically the sides slide back down onto the ocean floor." "They've created magnificent cliffs along the sides of all of the islands in the chain." "But when those chunks of the islands slide off onto the Pacific Ocean floor as huge landslides and debris flows... they have the potential to generate giant destructive tsunamis" "And there's evidence that they have created waves as high as 1,000 feet on some of the islands in the past." "These landslide waves may be part of Hawaii's future as well as its past." "Here on the Big Island, a huge crack in the earth is opening up" "It's 60 miles long." "And it's growing wider every year." "Some scientists think it's gradually detaching one side of the island from the other." "The great crack is one of these fault zones." "At one time, it may have actually had magma in it." "But now, it's probably serving more like a hinge, where part of the island is beginning to slide down and may someday slip away toward the ocean floor." "A thousand-foot tsunami on the coast of Hawaii would be catastrophic." "But a giant tsunami could happen anywhere, even without earthquakes, volcanoes, or landslides." "A few scientists are beginning to examine another possible cause extremely remote, but terrifying." "Recently, the effects of a meteor impact have been studied." "Depending on the size of the meteor, you could have some very destructive waves generated by the splash from a meteor in the ocean." "You could have a wave formed hundreds of feet high." "It is probably the surprise no one's prepared for." "A giant tsunami generated by a meteor may only happen once every few thousands years." "But it doesn't take a giant tsunami to devastate a community." "At the memorial park near Hilo, where the Laupahoehoe school once stood today's students gather with survivors on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy." "People ask me, "If we have another tsunami..."" "And I say, "No, it's not if we have a tsunami." "It's when the next tsunami strikes."" "Because there will definitely be another one." "It might not be this year or next, or even this decade." "But it could be tomorrow as well." "In Hawaii, they know what a tsunami can do." "The rest of us would be wise to listen to their lament and learn from their experience." "This is the bottom of the ocean" " an ocean of air as vast and volatile as any sea." "Above the earth's surface, currents ebb and flow." "Some spiral into whirlwinds." "The dust devil has more bluster than bite." "Other twisters are downright deadly." "Tornado on the ground on highway 44!" "Damage everywhere." "We've got numerous people injured!" "Get away from the windows!" "Tree just blew over!" "Get away from the windows!" "Get away!" "Get away!" "Tornadoes pack the fastest winds on earth." "But in magnitude, this spinning giant goes unmatched." "Hurricane, typhoon, cyclone all equally fearsome." "By any name, the greatest storms on earth." "Severe tropical storms afflict every continent except Antarctica." "In this century, they have claimed over half a million lives." "Tornadoes have killed over 10,000 in the United States alone." "Today, electronic eyes pierce the atmosphere, and map its shifting winds." "Scientists chart the anatomy of a storm." "Their sensors record speed and bearing." "Make yours the same level as the tripod." "But none can predict the birth of a killer." "That thing's a right mover!" "We gotta get out of here, fast!" "Let's go!" "Nothing in our power can stop the fury of Nature's whirling winds." "Early spring, 1991." "A southern sun heats the waters of the Gulf of Mexico." "Warm, moist air rises, and travels northwest, over Texas, Louisiana, and on toward the central United States." "More than a thousand miles away, cool dry air rushes south from Canada." "Rising over the Rockies, dry upper level air flows east, then spills onto the Great Plains." "These forces collide over Tornado Alley on Friday, April 26th, 1991." "Fast winds high above the ground, over slower winds below, make the air roll horizontally, like a pencil on a table top." "The atmosphere is unstable." "Thunderstorms erupt across the plains." "Here and there, an updraft lifts the horizontal spinning of the air into a vertical position." "Now the storm rotates as it feeds on warm, moist air near the ground." "The day gives rise to "supercells"" " the most complex and dangerous thunderstorms on earth." "Their underbellies bubble with instability." "Lightning and hail are the least of their threats." "Under the right conditions, they can also spawn monsters." "The National Weather Service has tracked the warning signs for a week, predicting severe weather." "By April 26th, conditions are text-book perfect for a major outbreak of tornadoes." "Throughout the afternoon and evening, across the central states, fifty-six twisters are reported." "Honey, be careful." "Is it going away from us?" "Honey." "Honey." "Is it going away from us?" "I sure hope you're right." "Then, at 5:57 a killer touches down in Kansas." "In Wichita, residents are sitting down to dinner when warnings send them running to basements and storm shelters." "Look at this stuff floating in the air, Ginger." "Take cover!" "Around 6:20, the tornado takes on a pinkish hue as it pulverizes a nursery full of geraniums." "By the time it hits McConnell Air Force Base, the twister is nearly 300 feet wide." "The base hospital, school, rec center and over a hundred housing units are leveled." "6:29." "In Andover, the town siren fails, but most residents heed warnings by police, and news reports." "The tornado's funnel has widened to almost 600 feet." "At 6:40, it tears through the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park." "The twister finally dissipates northeast of Andover." "Within minutes, its parent storm drops another funnel along the Kansas Turnpike." "Can you get in the left lane, Greg?" "Yah!" "I'll like you know this go away." "You're okay, you're okay." "Keep going', man." "Keep going'." "Faster?" "No." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Lots faster." "Lots faster!" "A local TV crew tries to outrun it." "Lots faster, Greg." "It's catching us." "You gotta go buddy!" "Even at 85 miles an hour, they can't get out of its way." "They stop at an overpass where a father and his two daughters run for cover." "As the twister spins out its final moments, a dread calm takes its place." "We need some place to sit down." "Along the turnpike, people are pulled from trucks and cars tossed like children's toys." "Andover is hardest hit." "In what was the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park, ten bodies are found." "Is anybody in there?" "Kansas bears a bitter toll:" "over 1,700 homes destroyed or damaged, and 20 dead." "Survivors will never forget." "The car was hovering." "It was about three foot off the ground, and just sort of floating in the air." "Then all of a sudden the car left, and went right out the roof." "What looked like typing paper floating around was really not, it was like Garage doors." "Garage doors and window frames, parts of houses." "Ambushed on a country road," "Brook Ibarra took shelter under the nearest tree." "In a flash, she was airborne..." "then dropped a thousand feet away." "The cows all of a sudden started running like a stampede." "I was picked up by the tornado and there was all sorts of debris." "One thing I remember was the cow that flew past me." "He was screaming." "And then, before I knew it, it was over." "I was just laying in the field next to a tractor engine." "Wounds are healed." "Neighborhoods rise from the rubble." "The human spirit endures." "Such is life in Tornado Alley, USA." "Midwesterners once called them "cyclones"." "Early photographs and motion pictures held viewers spellbound." "Tornadoes begat their own myths." "Some claimed they fused coins in people's pockets, and cooked potatoes in the ground." "In truth, they make airborne missiles of everyday objects." "Some have deposited heirlooms forty miles from home." "Do they pluck feathers from chickens?" "No." "Blame that on sheer fright." "They inspire no less terror in people." "April 3rd and 4th, 1974." "In the largest outbreak on record, 148 tornadoes race across 13 states." "March 18th, 1925." "The deadliest tornado in history leaves the longest path." "219 miles of continuous devastation." "689 dead." "Until the 1950's, accurate tornado wind speeds remain a mystery." "Then a frame-by-frame analysis of this footage clocks flying debris at 170 miles an hour." "Tornado science takes a leap forward in 1953 when Dr. Ted Fujita leaves Japan for the American Midwest." "Main reason why we are here is to find out what tornado did." "And in case of future tornadoes what people should do." "That's the kind of thing we want to find out." "Four decades of research will earn him the title "Mr. Tornado."" "I think it's a grain elevator up there." "At disaster sites, Fujita proves there's much to be learned without braving a twister directly." "He likens tornadoes to criminals who leave their fingerprints behind." "Ground markings are clues to a twister's inner structure and dynamics." "To test his theories, he builds a tornado machine at the University of Chicago." "He discovers that most strong tornadoes are actually several small twisters rotating around the center of a larger one." "These mini-tornadoes can lay waste to one house, yet leave its neighbor unscathed." "Fujita's ideas have been amply confirmed in Nature, and remain a cornerstone of tornado science." "Although they occur around the world, three out of four tornadoes streak the skies over the United States." "They favor the springtime, and the warm hours between noon and sunset." "We say a tornado "touches down"." "It actually sucks in air from near the ground and carries it upward in a spiral." "Most range from 150 to 1200 feet in width, and travel over land at about 30 miles an hour." "The funnel is often hollow, a tube of condensed water vapor that takes on the color of dust and debris." "In North America, most tornadoes rotate counterclockwise." "Perhaps one in a thousand spins in the opposite direction." "Twisters appear in many guises." "They can bring to mind the snapping of a bullwhip... or the delicate dance of ghosts." "A single storm can spawn several distinct funnels" " a grouping referred to as a "family."" "For all their fury, most tornadoes are short-lived." "Many last only minutes." "To the scientists who would study them, they are elusive prey." "How to penetrate the twister's secrets?" "Aiming weather balloons and instrumented rockets into tornadoes have yielded limited results." "All right." "Three." "Two." "One." "Fire!" "There!" "Perfe..." "No." "In the 1980's, researchers at the National Severe Storms Lab tested the "totable tornado observatory", nicknamed TOTO, after Dorothy's dog in The Wizard of Oz." "This four-hundred pound package of sensors was to record what no human can even approach without risking life and limb." "But predicting the path of a tornado proved to be nearly impossible." "TOTO had one close call, no direct hits." "For now, the safest way to see inside tornadoes is to probe them from afar with Doppler radar." "Like an x-ray of a storm, the system displays wind speed and direction." "In 1981, scientists first detected the spiraling signature of a tornado on Doppler radar." "Today, the system is used to issue warnings to the public." "Still, we're not exactly sure why twisters form at all." "For Howard Bluestein," "Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, there's only one way to find out." "Satellite pictures are nice." "Radar pictures are nice." "But you need to look out the window and see the clouds at a very very fine scale to get a feeling for what's happening." "I don't understand how one can study a phenomenon without actually experiencing it." "Seeing it or feeling it or tasting it." "To me, that sets everything in motion." "That makes me want to understand why it's there, what causes it, what's gonna happen to it." "They just issued a tornado warning for right where we are." "Every spring, Bluestein exercises two considerable talents:" "chasing tornadoes, and measuring them with the latest technology." "Portable Doppler radar is like a meteorological magnifying glass." "It allows Bluestein to measure wind speed in very fine detail, in specific regions of a tornado." "Okay, we better get going quickly." "That thing is starting to form a nice funnel." "Actually, hold it." "Hold it." "Hold it!" "Can you turn it on?" "It is starting to form a funnel and it's not that far away." "I'm on the left side of that tight circulation." "Bluestein's success rate is better than most storm chasers'" "The funnel cloud is just to our north, northwest." "We're packing up the radar..." "He estimates one in nine expeditions ends with an encounter." "OK, tornado is crossing the path of the radar." "Debris in the air." "Strong tornadoes almost always form under the southwest edge of a storm." "Bluestein plots his course accordingly, and tries to place his team roughly two miles from touchdown." "Center it right on the funnel!" "Oh, what a classic!" "Should I go to FM?" "Only if you have a good CW signal." "We're detectives." "We're looking for lots of bits of evidence." "And the more pieces of evidence we have, the more likely it will be that we'll be able to solve the puzzle of why tornadoes form and what's their structure." "April 26th, 1991." "Bluestein and his team track the outbreak that will ravage Andover, Kansas." "A spectacular funnel stops them in Red Rock, Oklahoma." "Their Doppler radar will capture the fastest windspeed on record:" "nearly 280 miles an hour." "In the heat of the chase, even Bluestein can miss a beat." "Let's get out of here fast, let's go!" "For less frenzied fieldwork," "Bluestein turns to these hunting grounds: the Florida Keys." "August, 1993." "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Geographic Society reunite Bluestein with Dr. Joseph Golden, expedition chief scientist." "As a graduate student," "Bluestein once joined Golden to explore the skies over Key West." "This expedition marshals state-of-the-art scientific and photographic technology." "The quarry?" "A phantom twister that haunts these tranquil waters." "In 1967, on a vacation trip," "Golden took a sightseeing flight over the Florida Keys, and had a chance encounter with one of our atmosphere's most startling apparitions." "Since that time, he has become the world's leading expert on waterspouts." "Our knowledge of these ethereal ribbons was once based largely on mariners' accounts." "Golden first emphasized their similarities to tornadoes." "Though usually smaller than a twister over land." "They form in gentler weather than most violent tornadoes, allowing close inspection." "Smoke flares will help visualize airflow near the sea surface." "For Bluestein, this is an unparalleled ringside seat." "When we're out in the great plains looking at tornadoes, we cannot see what's happening right at the ground very clearly, nor can we see what's happening at cloud base extremely clearly." "The perspective that we get from the helicopter in that we can look down at the sea surface... and see the effect of rotation at the ground level and also be at cloud base and practically kiss... the condensation funnel that's right outside the window" "is really spectacular." "Ultimately, the ghostly waterspout may reveal the hidden forces that trigger tornadoes." "Joe, I guess climatology works." "That was incredible!" "Other whirling winds demand a more lofty vantage point." "Book a seat on the Space Shuttle for the perfect view of these monsters" " over 500 miles wide, and some ten miles high." "Creatures of the sea, they breed in the warm oceans of the tropics." "Depending on their birthplace, we call then 'cyclones', 'typhoons', or 'hurricanes'." "These giants can stir up more than a million cubic miles of the earth's atmosphere every second, and travel across an ocean at up to 30 miles an hour." "Yet they have humble beginnings." "In the summer and fall, the sun heats vast stretches of tropical ocean to over 82 degrees Fahrenheit." "Warm, moist air rises over these hot spots, forming bands of thunderstorms." "Upper level winds push storm systems westward, as surface winds spiral into the low pressure beneath the clouds." "Occasionally, one such spinning wheel of thunderstorms gathers strength, feeding on moisture and heat." "When winds reach 74 miles an hour, a hurricane is born." "The storm's architecture is highly organized." "Rain bands up to 300 miles long converge in the most violent sector:" "the "eye wall"." "Here, winds of up to 200 miles an hour spiral upward." "Within the "eye", down drafts of dry air create an eerie calm." "Most severe tropical storms spin out their lives, uneventfully, in the open sea." "When one threatens to come ashore, the world's eyes are trained upon it - including those of Jim Leonard." "A professional storm chaser, Jim checks forecasts religiously." "He prowls the globe for weather that most people would simply flee." "Among chasers, Jim has few peers." "Some say he has videotaped more severe storms than anyone on earth." "He has no formal training, no college degree in meteorology." "Just a life-long passion." "When I was ten years old" "I had my first real hurricane experience with Hurricane Donna." "We got probably winds of 80, 90 mile an hour." "It was quite an exhilarating experience at that point." "People think I'm crazy but, that's, you know, that's their own opinion." "It's not gonna change." "I've always been crazy about storms, I always will be." "The best of them all, probably, was Hurricane Hugo, went down to Puerto Rico and got a direct hit." "And as it got stronger and stronger, debris was starting to be lifted off the parking lot, and it looked like it was gonna get blown back toward us." "So we decided at that point to start going down the stairway." "As we're going down the stairwell, the rain is being driven into the walls through the stairs, coming down the stairway." "And the wind you see up here squealing." "At this point it's probably in excess of 150 miles an hour." "And that was quite an experience." "It was like, one of the chasers called it the Hallway from Hell." "I have no reason to be in a storm if it's gonna scare me." "I'll, y'know, get to the point, y'know, y'know, play the safe route as far as I can." "But if I want to get that ultimate shot, y'know, of course you're gonna take some chances." "1992." "Typhoon Omar, in Guam." "Now is this a piece of wind or is it a piece of wind?" "Really!" "I wouldn't miss a great eye wall like this for anything." "Jim and a fellow tracker have a close call as Omar's eye wall comes ashore." "Now the storm's placid eye engulfs them." "It seems over, it really does, but it's not." "We're gonna get blitzed again." "It's so eerie." "I know." "I can't believe that we're going to get blitzed again." "It seems impossible." "That was flabbergasting." "The unsettling lull does not last." "Here, the trailing edge of the eye wall rushes in, with winds blowing in the opposite direction." "God, I didn't... no way!" "It looked like it was gonna wait a few minutes!" "It wasn't comin' on as fast." "Yeah!" "If I knew it was this, I would've hurried more." "In 1991, Jim achieves a personal best." "Typhoon Yuri, when it came, approached the southern part of Guam," "I did a little bit of carelessness there but I got the storm surge shots that I always wanted to get." "The water came up a little faster than I thought it would." "Winds and low pressure allow the sea surface to rise near the storm's eye." "When it hits land, this mound of water rushes ashore." "That's what you call storm surge!" "Great." "Oh, great!" "When the surge is waist-deep, Jim retreats." "He, more than most, knows that a hurricane's most deadly weapon is not wind, but water." "Nine out of ten hurricane victims are drowned by storm surges." "They can raise tides more than twenty feet above normal, and flood a hundred miles of coastline under ten feet of water." "Fifteen percent of the world's population live at risk from severe tropical storms." "Atlantic hurricanes assault the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean." "Typhoons born over the western Pacific Ocean batter Japan, China, and the Philippines." "Mostly deadly are the cyclones that strike Bangladesh." "Here, millions farm a river delta in places only inches above sea level." "Escape routes are few." "Loss of life has been appalling." "In a single 1970's storm, over 300,000 dead." "Of all the atmosphere's threats, these giants should hardly catch us off guard." "Weather satellites track them from birth." "But no technology can predict exactly where one will go." "To penetrate the hurricane's secrets, researchers ride a flying laboratory into the eye of the storm." "David?" "Yes, sir." "We're gonna go in at 10,000 feet." "At ten, No?" "Yeah." "We're playin' it safe." "Looks impressive, anyway." "We have about 15 miles to the beginning of the wall here." "External sensors measure temperature, air pressure, humidity, and wind speed as the plane braves the turbulence of the eye wall." "We've got a hundred knots of wind, now." "I thought it might drop off but it hasn't." "Not yet." "If it hasn't by now it probably won't." "We may see some 200 knot gusts here." "25 knot updraft." "Okay, we're just coming into the edge now." "An oasis of calm over nine miles tall, the eye is virtually clear from sea to sky." "You guys see the center down below there?" "I think we're just about directly over it." "Looks good, looks good." "I think we got the center." "OK, I'll mark it." "The eye's exact location and vital statistics are sent to forecasters on shore." "Data also flows to this meteorological think- tank, the Hurricane Research Division, in Miami, Florida." "What global ingredients determine how many hurricanes are born each year, and what paths they follow?" "Stanley Goldenberg, research meteorologist, says clues range from the El Nino phenomenon to rainfall in Africa." "He crafts computer models based on the premise that an organized piece of weather like a hurricane can be defined in mathematical terms." "The atmosphere is an orderly universe." "There's physical rules, physical laws that govern these things." "It's just a matter of having the right data, looking at it with the right tools and the right analyzes." "I mean, the real art is pulling the information out of the data." "Goldenberg helped refine one of the models the National Hurricane Center uses to issue forecasts." "But he had never experienced a hurricane on the ground until 1992." "On August 17th, Tropical Storm Andrew takes shape, about halfway between Africa and the Caribbean." "During the following days, the storm slowly intensifies." "Then, high level winds begin to tear Andrew apart, slowing its momentum." "It's slower." "It's the slowest one." "Three days puts it here." "So by four days..." "To Goldenberg, and most other meteorologists," "Andrew has only the slimmest chance of ever becoming a hurricane." "Friday, August 21st." "As high level winds die down," "Andrew begins to reorganize, and quickly gathers strength." "Computer models show Andrew might head toward southern Florida, but Goldenberg and his colleagues dismiss any immediate threat." "Stan leaves work early, to prepare for an important weekend." "His wife Barbara is due to deliver their fourth child on Sunday." "750 miles from Miami," "Andrew's winds exceed 74 miles an hour on Saturday, August 22nd." "Hurricane warnings in effect for Dade and Brown Counties." "Hurricane watch in effect..." "The first hurricane of the Atlantic season is born." "By noon on Sunday, massive evacuations are ordered along the Florida coast." "Sunday afternoon." "Right on schedule, Barbara has been in labor since around 6 AM." "Here we have from the hurricane to the other action in this room." "Which is Barbara going through early stages of labor." "Four centimeters contracted, going through labor pains," "In the birthing suite, Stan videotapes the proceedings with all the fervor of an expectant father." "Still, the meteorologist in him can't help but be distracted." "And we still have, waiting for the hurricane." "Beautiful skies." "Calm." "You'd never know what was going to happen here in the next 12 to 14 hours or so." "Late in the day," "Andrew's winds accelerate to a hundred fifty miles an hour." "Traveling nearly due west, it descends upon the Bahamas." "Around 6 PM, it strikes Eleuthera Island, packing a storm surge 23 feet high, taking four lives." "Having a boy makes you feel like a father and having a little girl makes you feel like a daddy." "Stan steals a few hours with new arrival Pearl, then leaves the hospital." "He'll ride out the storm at home." "In Miami, violent skies herald Andrew's approach." "Inland, residents take routine safety measures." "Seven miles from shore," "Stan and his boys are joined by his sister-in-law and family." "Sunday, 23rd of August." "We have the family here:" "Jonathan, Daniel, Roger, Benjamin, Joseph," "Aaron, Ruben." "We have Ann." "And we're gonna weather it out through the storm." "Say hi, Daniel." "Hi" "In the dead of night," "Andrew suddenly intensifies as it approaches the tip of Florida." "August 24th, around 4:30 AM." "Andrew comes ashore." "Our TV's out, maybe the power's out for the duration of this." "You can hear that outside..." "You'll start hear the rule outside." "In the hallway of the Goldenberg house." "Winds outside," "I think, are at least a hundred, hundred and ten miles an hour or more..." "Arie, are you OK?" "It's okay, it's OK." "And there is the cat..." "And there is..." "every body here?" "Just waiting it out in the hall because we lost the plywood on the front window" "The rear plant gate would probably layers." "And we are sitting back here resting in the Lord," "In the hall way." "We can feel our ears possibility cut?" "pressure drops." "Yes, Johnson." "Lord we thank you and ask for your protection." "This is Stan, at 8:30 in the morning." "We have been through a night." "This is our street, trees down everywhere." "The back street is a history in front of me... just one window broken on that car." "Trees down everywhere." "These are our sweet precious neighbors" "These shadows survive the storm every window cover with these type shadows survived." "But our house, which had wood shutters, the roof lifted off." "and as you can see, we have no house." "This wall fell on us, containing the refrigerator, the stove." "This is the wall, fell on top of us, the stove down there, the cabinets, all fell on top of us, and that small space you're looking at, the mattress and everything, that's where we were pinned during the worst part of the storm." "Incredibly, three adults, six children and a kitten emerge, unharmed, from the wreckage that was Stan's home." "The scope of the disaster has not yet dawned on Miami." "At the hospital, Barbara rests assured that her family is safe." "We will perhaps get the first look at what's going on, up in the air." "The hospital had an emergency generator, so we still had power." "And we saw all of the first footage of this destruction and storm, and we were in shock." "The first areas they went through they were kind of relieved, saying, "Oh..." and just making interesting comments about how this car is thrown here and there." "But they became much more sober as they went farther south." "It did not look possible that anybody could be alive." "And that was just a mile or two from my house." "And at that point, I really felt despair." "One two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight." "And there must have been about, oh, let's say, counting and trying to estimate at least three to four hundred mobile homes here." "The rest are just completely gone." "In the morning, my wife finally got through to somebody there just to find out that I was okay, somehow we both had a peace, that each of us was okay." "But I still remember the first time," "I got through to her on the phone, I just wept." "I mean it wasn't just the excitement of me getting through to her, as me pouring out the emotions of what I'd been through." "I mean, we'd been through an incredible experience." "Andrew's storm surge wreaked havoc along the Florida coast." "But its winds devastated an area larger than the city of Chicago:" "some 135,000 dwellings damaged or destroyed." "The homeless numbered 160,000." "It seemed miraculous only 44 died." "Not one official wind gauge survived Andrew's peak winds." "No one knew how fast they had gusted." "Intrigued, Dr. Ted Fujita "Mr. Tornado"" "flew to Miami to study the aftermath." "Roofs ripped from homes." "Trees snapped in half." "Concrete beams carried hundreds of feet." "Plywood embedded in a tree trunk." "Fujita finds evidence of winds up to 200 miles an hour." "But his most startling finding comes from aerial surveys with local meteorologists." "They point out narrow streaks of total devastation near areas with lesser damage." "To Fujita the patterns are eerily familiar." "He develops a theory:" "that the worst damage in Andrew was caused by "mini-swirls":" "tornado-like rotations, brief but violent, embedded in the eye wall." "The theory has personal meaning for Stan Goldenberg." "We never expected the kind of damage we experienced." "Not only were we in the areas of some of the maximum areas of the storm, we had in addition, we believe, an area of more intense winds probably caused by the mini-swirls that Ted Fujita talks about." "There was a strip, right through my house, of homes that were devastated, and I was right in that strip." "Stan would relocate his family to a new house." "Parts of Florida remains scarred to this day." "Andrew also ravaged the Louisiana coast, taking 17 lives." "Finally, the storm would vanish over the mid-Atlantic states, some two weeks after its birth." "Andrew was America's costliest disaster." "But it had a silver lining." "It spared New Orleans, a city defined by water." "Repeatedly flooded and drained over the past three centuries, the metropolis was built on swampland surrounded by the Mississippi River." "Shaped like a bowl, the city's terrain rises near its edges, and dips in its mid-section to below sea-level." "Lake Pontchartrain crowns its northern shore." "Over a hundred miles of levees and flood walls up to 20 feet above sea level keep river and lake at bay." "Massive floodgates fill the gaps." "New Orleans has one of the best drainage systems in the world, powered by 21 colossal pumps." "The city has known hurricanes in this century, but not a direct hit from a storm like Andrew" " and not with up to a million people to evacuate over narrow bridges and causeways." "Former Meteorologist-In-Charge of the New Orleans National Weather Service office," "Bill Crouch fears the levee system provides a false sense of security." "It's a two-edged sword, because it protects the people's homes most of the time." "But if water ever comes over the levees, it's going to get as deep as the levees are tall." "And the lake would be 19 or 20 feet deep." "This means that in parts of New Orleans that are below sea level, the water could be 30 feet deep." "That is you would not be safe even in a three-story house." "So, those are the scenarios we look at, which would force people to go upward in the buildings down town, and even using that refuge, it's my belief there would still be a great loss of life." "One day, five, perhaps fifty years from now, a hurricane like Andrew might descend on New Orleans." "The city might be jammed with tens of thousands of tourists" " oblivious to the dangers of hurricanes." "Evacuation would be ordered, and many would heed the call." "But advance weather could move in quickly and flood the causeway, knocking out bridges." "A hurricane approaching from the southeast could fill Lake Pontchartrain with its storm surge." "Water would rush over hurricane protection levees." "Pumping stations would be overwhelmed." "This grim scenario may be imaginary, but the threat is not." "A hundred thousand might be stranded in the heart of the city." "The city of New Orleans has enlisted federal, state and local emergency management agencies to prepare for just such a nightmare." "There are many other potential disasters along the U.S. coastline." "It is only a matter of time before another great storm exacts its toll." "Nature has given us fair warning." "A gossamer veil of atmosphere is all that protects us from the sterile reaches of space." "What we call 'weather' is simply the Earth's attempt to balance heat and moisture around the globe." "Swirling winds may spawn tornadoes and hurricanes, but they can also breed whimsy." "A hay devil on a summer afternoon..." "Our home is a planet perpetually in the making, forever new." "The same awesome powers that sustain life can also wreak destruction." "It is up to us to be prepared." "There lies the challenge, and the delight, of living on this dynamic Earth." "On the edge of a lush forest in Coastal Siberia, a hunter is on the prowl." "Terney, A small town in Far East Russia." "This is no longer a place of exile, but today's Siberians must eke out a hard living, trapping, fishing, and logging." "They live on one of the last frontiers - surrounded by a vast and largely untamed wilderness." "And still, out there somewhere, a legend lives." "A creature of fearful power and stunning beauty." "It is the biggest cat on earth..." "the Siberian tiger." "Today wildlife biologists seek to study the tiger and perhaps to save it." "About three hundred Siberian tigers survive in the wild." "And they are perilously close to extinction." "These Russian and American scientists must get close to one of the most dangerous animals in the world." "But while some seek the elusive tigers in the wild... one Russian scientist is studying them in captivity:" "mating and hunting." "Made for Siberia, this splendid cat can sprint across the snows at fifty miles an hour." "Magnificent." "Mysterious." "Highly dangerous and highly endangered." "This is the great Siberian - The Tiger of the Snow." "A vast stretch of forest blankets Russia with a fourth of the world's timber reserves." "Until recently the Siberian Tiger thrived here in secure isolation." "Under the strict dictates of the old Soviet system, the tiger was protected." "But today, enforcement is lax." "Rampant poaching has dramatically reduced the population of tigers in the wild." "In the Asian medicine market, everything from the eyes to the tail is valued for its legendary curative powers." "The magnificent coat alone might fetch ten thousand dollars." "But poachers aren't the only threat." "The tiger's habitat, part of the largest natural forest in the world, is rapidly disappearing." "It's being cut at a rate of ten million acres a year." "When authorities confiscate a pelt from the poachers it must be destroyed so it will never find its way to market." "Recalling a poet's famous words..." ""Tiger, Tiger burning bright in the forests of the night..."" "The coast of Eastern Siberia." "The Siberian tiger once ranged across much of the Asian continent." "Once they numbered in the thousands." "Now, only some three hundred survive in a narrow band of mountains on the Sea of Japan." "The Siberia of legend is a frozen wasteland." "In fact, parts of the forest are temperate - even subtropical." "Here, Russian and American scientists are seeking to study wild Siberian tigers in a last-ditch effort to save them." "Dr. Maurice Hornocker, an American big cat authority, has brought desperately needed technology to this crucial effort." ""Yeah, that's good, too."" "In the past, Russian scientists could study the tigers only in winter, when their tracks could be followed in the snow." "Now, with radio tracking devices, the elusive cats can be studied sight-unseen - and year-round." ""My first work with cats, with the mountain lions in North America, in Idaho, everyone said it couldn't be done - and I've always liked a challenge." "We've used the tiger population as target species but we've studied the entire ecosystem." "Because of the immense area that the tiger needs to exist defines entire watersheds, entire systems that the prey must also utilize." "So you can literally define an entire ecosystem by studying a big cat."" "The scientists pick up a radio signal from a tiger somewhere in the thick forest below." "In fact, it's a number of tigers." "And incredibly, they're out in the open." "Siberian tigers are so rare and elusive that even a fleeting glimpse like this is a landmark event for the scientists." ""When we saw that female and those cubs on its lakeshore - wide open view - first time that a female Siberian tiger and her cubs had ever been observed and photographed from the air - it was one of the most thrilling events in my professional career."" "Hornocker's team has tracked some dozen tigers by radio, trying to determine such essential facts as their range and distribution." "At the field lab of the Hornocker Wildlife Institute," "Maurice is briefed by Dale Miquelle, who's been coordinating the field study for the past three years." ""...we've got five females that we've got good information on their home ranges." "Um, we've got Olga, the four, first female we captured who's now in a home range that only includes a little piece of the reserve, actually, um, and then we've got..."" "Together with their Russian colleagues, they need to quickly establish a management plan for the tigers." ""The, one of the things that's interesting about all of this is that all these animals travel outside the boundaries of the reserve so, even though the reserve is vast, it's not large enough to maintain these females" "in their entire home range."" "Time is running out." "Even now, logging roads skirt the reserve, where only some twenty tigers roam over 1300 square miles." "The researchers receive word that a tiger has been caught in one of their snares... a chance to add a new animal to their study group." "Bart Schleyer and Dr. Hornocker prepare to sedate the tiger." ""I don't see her."" "There is no way of knowing how securely the tiger is trapped." "He could suddenly pull free and then they would have only a few seconds to save themselves." "A tranquilizer dart should quiet the tiger down." "Still, the dosage required is always in doubt." "Too much endangers the tigers." "Too little, the researchers." "It's a three-year-old male." "When fully grown, at about age six, he'll weigh six hundred pounds or more." "But even now he's an armful." ""This is about all we can do, guys." "He's just too heavy." "This is good."" "They carry the tiger to better ground." ""Gonna lubricate his eyes."" "His eyes must be artificially lubricated since the blink response is sedated." ""Let's get this snare off."" "These massive jaws can crack the spine of a wild boar with a single bite." ""Young male tiger."" "Its feet are like thickly padded snowshoes... with retractable claws!" ""Boy, he's a beautiful animal."" ""Yeah, gorgeous."" "The radio collar allows them to track the tiger and help answer some crucial questions:" "How much territory do the tigers require?" "How many elk and deer and boar?" "How do they react to human encroachment?" "Suddenly, the tiger is having trouble breathing." "They desperately try to revive him." ""I'm gonna give him something."" ""And someone should keep..."" ""His eyes are moving."" ""Yeah, but his breaths are real low."" ""Give it to him."" ""That collar's cut, Maurice?" "That collar's cut?" "'Cause we might have a cat that comes up real quick."" "The tiger must be given a stimulant." "Slowly he resumes his normal breathing rate." ""Yeah, he's breathing." ""Yeah, he's breathing." "I think the danger's passed." "Whew, man, that was..." ""Yeah."" "The biologists must now take their samples hastily... before the great beast fully awakens." "They're reluctant to lose sight of him before he's safely on his feet - but also eager not to be in his way." "Now at a safe distance, the team receives a signal from the radio collar." "The tiger is up and about..." "and on the prowl again." "In another part of the reserve, the team is concerned about the signal from a tigress named Olga." "She was the very first collared with a radio." "Olga, it appears, has remained in the same area for a long time, a sign that she may be dead - or that she has found a den and given birth." "Dr. Evgeny Smirnov, Russian tiger specialist, determines that Olga is, in fact, moving about her den site." "The researchers decide they'll attempt to enter the den to earmark the cubs." "They'll need to wait until night when the tigress should be out hunting." "Hopefully, far from home." ""I asked if he thought, uh, it would be dangerous or we'd, we'd be in trouble if we went there and he said," "'Of course, it'd be dangerous, there's only one variation there, to approach when she's not there, because it's simply too dangerous to make an approach with the, the mother present."'" "He said, "Thank God", we have the telemetry equipment to check on whether or not Olga is there and so we know, exactly, when she's left the den site." "Without that it, it'd simply be a, a suicide mission to walk in there.'" "The fading radio signal indicates that Olga has left her den." "But if she returns she would probably attack instantly." "They test flares they hope would drive Olga off." "Protecting a den is one of the rare circumstances when a Siberian will turn man-killer." "Night is the time when tigers are most alert and aggressive." "Their night vision is far superior to humans." "The signal from Olga - once faint - is getting louder." "The team must quickly be in and out of the den." ""Yeah this is it." "This is it, Bart."" ""Yeah, yeah, we've got the spot." ""Do you see a cat?"" ""Yeah."" "Gloves soaked with tiger urine are worn so the mother will not detect their intrusion and reject her cubs." ""Get away."" "It's a healthy male." "Two months old, the cub already weighs about 13 pounds." ""Dale, I'm still getting a signal and it's really not that weak right now, we're probably going to have to hurry, if you can."" "Unlike other cats, tiger kittens never learn to purr." "An ear tag is inserted for future identification." "They christen the cub Sasha." ""I'm getting a signal, we're going to have to hurry, she's back, she's come back over the ridge."" "Their daring has set a new precedent." "For the first time ever, scientists have examined and returned a cub to a den in the wild." "In towns and villages throughout coastal Siberia, people have learned to live with the idea of tigers." "But attacks have happened and some are afraid." "In the village of Guyvaron, however, one man is happy to have tigers in his own backyard." "Maurice Hornocker and Howard Quigley are working with a Russian biologist who has two orphaned cubs in captivity." ""That's a big male tiger."" "Victor Yudin has raised the cubs from infancy." "Victor is the author of a definitive natural history of the Russian wolf." "But he soon learned that Kuchur, the tiger and Niurka, the tigress, are different animals indeed." ""To study tigers in captivity is absolutely necessary, because many of their biological traits cannot be learned in the wild." "Comparing the results of the tiger studies that were done in captivity and in the wild helps us to develop the methods of how to preserve the tiger as a species in reserves like Sikhote-Alin."" "The young tigers have outgrown their cages, and so, with the support of the Hornocker Wildlife Institute an enclosure is built in the adjacent woods." "Though a far cry from the hundreds of square miles a tiger in the wild would roam, these six acres will provide the young captives with the opportunity to run and hunt" " and hopefully - even mate and have cubs." "But there are neighbors in the area." "Victor knows the importance of keeping them well informed." "Especially now, when the tigers will soon be turned loose into the enclosure." "So he brings local school children to the compound." ""Villagers often come to see the tigers." "They often ask me:" "why keep tigers in this enclosure since it's so different from life in the wild?"" ""I explain to them that there are limitations to what we can and cannot learn from observing tigers the way we do in the wild, by simply following tracks through the snow." "Afterwards, when people realize that it's not just for fun, that it's serious work they look at me in admiration, as if I were a superman, I guess."" "The day has come when - for the first time - the tigers will step into the natural world they were intended to rule." "No one knows how they will react to their new enclosure." "For Victor, it's an especially anxious moment, for he hopes the enclosure will be home to these tigers for the rest of their lives." "The male, Kuchur, steps boldly out." "For the first time..." "the light through the trees, the smell of grass and leaf, the feel of the soft earth." "Niurka, the female, is unsure of all this - and even tries to close the gate." "But soon, curiosity overcomes caution." "To Yudin's surprise," "Kuchur begins to feel a little frisky and tries to mate." "But Niurka will have no part of it." "For her, the time has not yet come." "Exhilarated by their freedom, they soon vanish into their little private forest." "To feed his feline charges, Dr. Yudin collects road kill." "Victor feels he knows the mood of his tigers so well he can risk entering the enclosure." "In the wild, most attacks on humans occur when they invade a tiger's territory or when cubs are threatened." "Unlike Bengal tigers, Siberians have never been known to hunt man." "As the tigers settle into their enclosure," "Dr. Yudin begins his observations and controlled experiments." "He hopes to learn which behaviors are innate and which would need to be taught to captive tigers before they could be released into the wild." "Tigers live in a world of feast or famine." "Still, Kuchur must wait his turn." "Dr. Yudin notices it's the female who feeds first." "With the coming of fall, the first brisk winds blow in from the Siberian Arctic." "As if designed for these autumn colors, the tigers blend with the landscape." "In the wild, their coloration becomes lighter as winter approaches, anticipating snow." "Dr. Yudin confronts one more problem that makes the study of tiger behavior so difficult." "The tiger is largely a creature of the dark." "With their extraordinary night vision," "Kuchur and Niurka come fully alive only after sunset." "Recently, they've begun to roam restlessly in the dark." "Victor wonders if night has awakened an instinctive urge to hunt." "When he releases a small rabbit in the enclosure, he quickly learns the answer." "After several weeks, the tigers have established their territory in the enclosure." "How would they react to another of their own species?" "Yudin and Hornocker set up an experiment involving a full-sized model tiger." ""Okay." "A little more."" ""I'm interested to see what you think of this, Victor." "Is that as big as Kuchur?"" ""Yes..."" ""These will match right up on the right side." "You got that back there?"" ""Yeah, it's good."" ""Yeah, that's a good fit." "Okay, let's see what it looks like standing up."" "Victor's dogs are convinced." "They immediately recognize an arch enemy." "Tigers in the wild are solitary animals and fiercely territorial." "Is this behavior innate or learned?" "And, if innate, how soon does it develop?" "The reaction to an intruder by the captive-raised tigers may help provide an answer." "The scale model is covered with tiger urine, the scent that establishes territory." "Recordings of tiger calls will be played into the enclosure." "The stage is set." "Kuchur, the male, is curious." "He spends hours observing this strange creature." "But by light of day, Kuchur keeps his distance." "It's only overnight that the researchers discover the tigers' real attitude towards the intruder." "Every shred of color has been ripped from the model's skin." "Only when the model no longer looked like a tiger, did Kuchur leave it alone." "The defense of his territory is already a powerful instinct." "It was the long Siberian winter that created the tigers of the snow, demanding robust size, padded paws and thick fur." "But it is also winter when they are hunted, when they are most easily seen..." "this time by a scientist." ""We've had to develop and evolve all our techniques here." "No one had ever worked with Siberian tigers before." "So, we utilized foot-snaring to capture the tiger and it's worked very successfully." "But, some of them are becoming very trap-shy, some of them have become very, uh, difficult to capture..." "So in order to maintain the continuity of our data collection, in order to keep track of certain individuals we've had to utilize helicopters."" "The hunt begins to re-collar certain tigers." "The information the collars provide is critical to understanding the boundaries required for the tiger's survival." "Their territories are extensive." "Females may range up to two hundred square miles, males perhaps five hundred." "Losing contact with a study animal is their greatest fear." "Each one is precious to the scientists." ""The collars we put on animals last about two to two-and-a-half years and then the batteries, lithium batteries run out, so they simply need to be replaced." "Once we've invested two years in an animal gathering information, that animal becomes very valuable to us because it has a history." "And the longer we can maintain contact with an animal, the more we learn about its life-history patterns:" "how often it has young, how long they live, its whole life history."" "The pilot spots something below." "It's a wild boar running for its life." "And in pursuit a tiger." "Tigers miss most of their prey." "This time the helicopter provides a distraction, saving the boar." "The tiger is not amused." "Eventually they pick up the strong signal of another familiar tiger." "It is Olga, mother of the cub found in the den." "The helicopter quickly searches the area hoping to spot her cub, Sasha." "And Sasha is there - no longer a small cub, but thriving well." "The young are raised by the mother alone." "Sasha will stay with her for eighteen to twenty months until it's time to establish his own home range." "The search continues for Kouza a young male who has outgrown his radio collar." "Kouza is just beginning to mark off his territory and it's difficult to know the extent of his range." "Tranquilizing a Siberian tiger is not an exact science." "The size of the tiger, its mood - and the placement of the dart can influence the drug's effectiveness." "Always, out of concern for the tiger, the team tries to inject a minimal amount." "After long hours and much precious fuel, the tiger is spotted." "In pursuit, the helicopter must fly very low over dense forest - a dangerous maneuver." "It's a far cry from hunting on foot for Bart Schleyer." ""There's usually just a real narrow opportunity to dart and sometimes there's a limb in the way and there's been a number of times when I probably could have gotten a dart into an animal, but I'm too worried about a deflection of the dart" "and having the, the dart deflect into a improper placement in the animal which would injure it, which we don't want." "So, I'm real, real stressed by trying to get a proper hit on an animal."" "As the tiger moves deeper into the forest, the helicopter follows so closely it almost touches the tree tops." ""The pilots we're using, I'm real confident in the pilots because you are operating real close to tree level and you just hope that the pilots can see what's going on, around behind them particularly with their back rotor" "and particularly the other day when we were in close on one of the tigers, there was a conifer tree that was actually almost butted right up against the helicopter."" "The first shot is a clean hit." "They hover patiently waiting for the tranquilizer to take effect." "But they can't wait too long - for they're running low on fuel." "Bart fires another dart into the tiger." "Most big cats need two doses." "And the second one appears to take effect." "Bart and Rybin Nikolai must quickly be landed." "This too is a dangerous maneuver." "But they can't leave the tiger sedated for long." "The pilot is very concerned now." "They must refuel." "He radios Bart to abort the mission." "But Bart insists - for the tiger's well being - they must remain below and finish the job now." "The helicopter races back to refuel." "As they slowly approach the tiger, their worst fears are realized." "The tiger is up and moving." "The dosage was insufficient." "Still, they must get a closer look to make sure he's all right." "They proceed with caution knowing they are intruding in a fierce young tiger's newly claimed territory." "Kouza appears groggy but otherwise all right." "But he's much too dangerous to follow." "Now they can only await the helicopter's return." "And hope the young tiger has seen enough of them." "For now, the tiger has eluded them, but at least they know where he can be found." "Eventually, he'll be located and fitted with a new collar." "At last, they are brought aboard - to the relative safety of a helicopter hovering in the tree-tops." "Not long after, they spot a tigress named Marivana." "She is very aggressive - and even climbs a tree to attack the helicopter." "She only provides a better target for Bart Schleyer." "Unlike the larger male, a single dose sedates the tigress quickly." ""Let's take blood and that's about it..."" "The old collar is measured against the new one - which is given an extra notch for growth." "They carefully monitor her heart rate and respiration." ""Where's that?" "10?"" ""That's right..."" "Mission accomplished." "The new collar will provide crucial data for at least another two years." "Not far from the cold, forbidding wild, the success of the venture is celebrated" " Russian style!" "It's also Bart Schleyer's birthday." "For American and Russian alike it's a camaraderie born of years of shared dangers and shared dreams." "At Victor Yudin's compound winter has transformed the enclosure." "The Siberian winter seems to invigorate the captive tigers." "This is truly the season of the Tigers of the Snow." "As Victor Yudin observes," "Kuchur, the male, continues to stake out his territory, spraying the trees with his scent." "In what is called a 'flehmen' the female tests the air for his scent." "Then it's Kuchur's turn to detect if his mate is in heat..." "And she is." "Niurka, the female, initiates the coupling." "And so the mating period begins." ""If we succeed in getting young cubs it would be great, because then we can develop the best methods for returning the young tigers back into the wild." "We'll try to bring them up in natural conditions so they will more easily adapt to joining the wild tiger population here in the reserve."" "As for a successful mating, all Dr. Yudin can do is hope for results." "Victor's wife, Lena, has a special relationship with the tigers." "She's nurtured them since they were cubs." "When they must be brought in at night because of the dangers of poaching, only their Babushka can lure them home." "Over the next few days, the tigers breed often." "Sometimes dozens of times a day." "At last, the breeding ends, and Niurka moves into her den." "She should give birth in about a hundred days." "Springtime in Siberia." "Dr. Hornocker receives word from Victor Yudin that Niurka has given birth." "But something's wrong." "Victor's observed that the mother is not taking care of her cubs." "This is not uncommon when big cats give birth in captivity." ""Does Victor think she's fed them at all?"" ""Probably not."" ""Then we better go in and look, Victor."" "They isolate the mother, Niurka, so they can safely approach the den." "One of the cubs is up and about but looks hungry and unkempt." "The other cub is barely moving and Victor is clearly concerned." ""How is he?"" ""Yeah, oh yeah, the poor little guy."" "Suddenly, the cub stops breathing." "Victor rushes it inside where he will try to revive it." "It appears the mother has neither groomed nor nursed her cubs and this one is near death." "With infinite patience, Victor massages the heart." "Hoping - against all odds - to bring the cub back to life." "The mortality rate of Siberian tiger cubs can be up to thirty percent." "With so few born in the wild, the survival of captive cub is critical to the species." "One cub is lost, but her brother - under Victor's tender nursing - recuperates quickly." "He's named the cub Globus - for a world that cares about him, even if his own mother hasn't learned to." "Eventually Globus will be brought to the United States as part of a captive breeding program." "When he is, he'll be following other cubs, orphaned in Siberia and sent by Dr. Hornocker to the snows of Omaha, Nebraska." "They're now part of the world's most successful breeding program for large predators." "The tigers are bred here with the goal of returning the cubs back to the wild." "But what kind of environment will await them?" "Back in Russia," "Dr. Hornocker strives to educate Siberia's future caretakers." ""If we're to save these big carnivores as the world population increases, we must convince the younger generation that it's worthwhile conserving them." "It's always so rewarding to me and gratifying to see how children accept this." "They really love these big animals." "They want to save them." "And if we can convince them that it's in their best interest then it's to their advantage and to ours."" "Soon, much of this magnificent forest - the Siberian tiger's last domain - may be cut down for a world hungry for lumber." "But the years of difficult and dangerous study have given birth to a plan to save the forest..." "by saving the tiger in the wild." "Selecting the tiger as the umbrella species to be saved means that the forest surrounding the reserve must also be protected." "But in a land of political uncertainty, there are no guarantees." "Poised on the edge of extinction, the tiger of the snow evokes an old Russian proverb:" "Hope is the last to die." "In remote corners of South America lives a feisty animal, the elegant camel-like guanaco." "You've got to be taught to survive here, especially if you're a male guanaco." "In the southern Andes Mountains, fierce blizzards and crippling cold threaten to freeze you to death." "Then there are killer cats." "This is the home of the mountain lion known here by the Inca name, puma." "It's strong and powerful predator." "If the puma does kill you, a long list of animals will gladly dine on your remains from little gray foxes to giant Andean condors." "And you can't even trust your own kind." "If the cold or the cats don't kill you, rivals for your territory will certainly try." "But without a territory, you can't get a female to breed." "So a male guanaco's life is filled with conflict." "Supremacy is the objective, physical violence the method, females the prize." "So if you're a male guanaco, tough isn't enough." "You also have to be spitting mad." "Born of volcanic fire, carved by ice and wind, the famous granite towers of Paine are the crowning glory of the world's longest mountain chain-the Andes." "This is Southern Chile's Torres del Paine National Park only a thousand miles from the ice-cap of Antarctica." "And just over the mountains is the Pacific Ocean a birthplace of storms." "So this land is battered by some of the fiercest winds on earth." "To survive here, you need to be a very special animal one that is adaptable, well-organized, alert, and above all tough the guanaco." "And they certainly are well adapted having thick, soft coats for protection against the cold." "Wild ancestors of the domesticated llama, their fleece was much admired by the Inca civilization, providing warmth and wealth." "But a warm coat is not enough." "A male guanaco starts adult life homeless and alone, and to by successful, he has to win a territory and breed." "So he must communicate with potential mates-and rivals." "A raised tail and lowered ears mean aggression." "And the elaborate language makes intentions clear." "The ear flagging, the spitting, the raucous screams means a battle for territory is in the making." "The war dance confirms they will fight." "And the final exchange of insults starts the conflict." "With battle lines drawn, they try to intimidate each other with a show of strength." "If that doesn't work, it's grid - iron mayhem." "These fierce fights are dangerous and could lead to broken bones - even death." "But in the world of the guanaco, territory is everything." "The rival must be driven right out of the territory." "The males are fighting for this prime real estate, a lush area with ample food and water." "And by winning this territory, the victor is able to attract females an absolute necessity if he's to breed successfully." "His aggressive defense means the females of his family group can feed without hassle from other males." "Guanacos graze carefully, and their soft, cloven hooves minimize damage to the delicate turf." "These is safety in numbers, too" " many pairs of eyes and ears provide protection from predators, and in this landscape, predators can hide almost anywhere." "The male deeps a sharp lookout for danger" " especially pumas, the guanacos worst nightmare." "Pumas are a serious threat to survival and often stalk lake edges for thirsty guanacos." "They are powerful predators, six feet of lethal muscle, capable of pulling down prey eight times their weight." "But a fully grown guanaco is a difficult sharp-eyed target." "If they're seen, pumas won't waste energy with further hunting." "And guanacos sound the alarm with a far-reaching cry." "These powerful cats spend most of their days grooming and resting in preparation for nights of hunting and she'll need plenty of rest." "For spring is the busy season in the southern Andes, a time of movement and great migrations." "And she hunts an inspiring wilderness, the Torres del Paine National Park, home to the Andean condor." "One of the world's largest birds, the condor's ten-foot wing span looks big even in this mighty landscape, as they cruise the wild skies in search of carrion." "Spring is the time when guanacos give birth." "So still-born calves or after-births will be a welcome source of food." "Young guanacos called chulengos are vulnerable." "And because there is safety in numbers, females synchronize births." "Over about two weeks, nearly 500 chulengos will be born." "So when one mother does it, they must all do it." "It is no wonder that spring is considered the high season in these wild mountains, and the young guanacos are eager to become part of the celebration." "The most precocious chulengos are walking and nursing within half an hour." "And they must all become mobile as soon as their young legs will carry them-and quickly" " for the danger of puma attack is never far away, the cats watching from some lofty crag with hungry eyes." "But even big cats don't have it easy." "Guanaco family groups gather in areas where there is less cover for pumas on the prowl." "And even chulengos are deceptively quick on their feet." "Fast or not, they are in mortal danger, for they are the pumas favorite prey." "Even where there is little cover, pumas are masters of invisibility, stalking their intended victims by using hollows in the ground." "Many chulengos die in their first year, but now is the most dangerous time of their lives, especially if they leave the relative safety of their mother's side." "Life is a constant battle between the puma's stealth and the guanaco's sharp eyes." "In this case, the eyes win." "Guanaco numbers can be seriously reduced by pumas." "But to truly understand the way guanacos live and die requires knowledge." "And to get it, you have to catch the chulengos." "Dr. Bill Franklin and his helpers have been studying guanacos since 1976, and with so many years experience behind him, he knows this mother is being difficult-and dangerous." "This angry female has made it clear that her chulengo is not going to become a part of Bill's scientific data." "But Bill also notices something else about the female." "Not only is she very aggressive, she is also rather fat." "So he leaves her to regain her composure in peace, but instructs one of his students to watch her from a distance." "It soon becomes obvious that this." "Particular guanaco is a very special mother." "She is about to give birth again, though she already has a chulengo barely three hours old." "Only once in 20 years has Bill observed guanaco twins." "But now he has another opportunity to study this extraordinary event again." "The first born chulengo seems a bit confused by this staggering addition to the family." "During the coming months, scientists will closely observe the twins as they face the dual threats of bad weather and puma attack." "But for the study to have meaning, single chulengos must be collared and tagged as well." "The fleet-footed youngsters must be brought to ground." "But sometimes, the only contact is the ground." "When they're just a few hours old, chulengos are easier to catch and can be handled with a minimum of stress to both mother and chulengo." "Wild though they are, guanacos see scientists almost every day and are at ease in their presence." "For two decades, Bill Franklin has given dozens of students the privilege of studying one of the most interesting animals on earth, and he is the world's leading authority on these-toughest of survivors." "Tagging the chulengos allows their habits and movements to be observed and recorded." "And while its mother looks on anxiously, her chulengo is weighed and examined." "Much can be learned, for the health of this chulengo may be a reflection of the health of the region in which it lives." "The chulengos are fitted with radio transmitters so their life-and-death struggles can be followed." "In this way," "Bill has discovered that guanacos may live as long as 12 years, but only if they survive the first year." "The chulengos will be closely guarded by its mother for the whole year." "But despite this protection, up to 80 percent of the year's offspring might be taken by pumas." "Separated from its mother, a chulengo is confused and in danger, so Bill is anxious to return it quickly." "In fact, chulengos will readily become attached to humans when they're very young." "And only when they see and smell their mother again will the bond be retied." "And Bill watches to ensure this takes place." "To see the two together again is a heartening moment, and mother and chulengo soon rejoin their family group." "Once all are together again, the dedicated scientific work of following each collared chulengo's struggles can begin." "Summer and winter," "Bill's students take to the hilltops to check on the whereabouts of the chulengos." "The receiver distinguishes between each collared youngster and also register if there is lively movement or not." "So a scientist is able to tell if a chulengo is alive or dead." "If a mortality signal is received, the body must be found and the cause of death determined." "This chulengo was killed by a puma, for the big cats cover their kills to hide them from scavengers." "The puma will return to eat its meal under the cover of darkness." "The cats hunt mostly at night, so evening is the time to wake up." "And with pumas on the prowl, night is the guanacos' time of greatest danger." "Do they have a strategy for staying alive they move house." "Night's aren't entirely friendly to pumas either." "A mother with cubs may be ambushed by a male puma from a neighboring territory, so she delays leading her cubs out of the den until the light is fading, and will be careful as she guides them to the kill." "As night falls, guanacos climb to the tops of bare hills, and the strategy makes sense:" "There's less cover up here, which means that even in darkness, pumas will have difficulty approaching without being seen." "The mothers will ensure that their chulengos are close by and the male will keep watch from the edge of the family group." "Staying alive at night is far more perilous than daylight, for guanacos need moonlight to see, while pumas have sharp vision, even on the darkest nights." "But they still take the precaution of dragging their meal into thick cover." "This is a tough task, for the guanaco carcass may outweigh her by as much as 200 pounds." "But she must struggle on, for thick cover provides a safer place for her cubs to feed." "The family shares the food amicably, with the youngsters getting first bite." "And once they fill their bellies, the cubs can indulge in some late night revelry." "No doubt this play helps develop muscles and hunting skills, but they also seem to be just enjoying themselves." "Their mother must recover the carcass, for it will feed them all for at least two more nights." "At the first hint of dawn, the female leads her cubs back to the den, barking instructions to hurry them along." "It's important they are back in a safe place by daylight, and the sun is rising fast." "Once the pumas are back at their dens, the guanacos come back downhill to the food-rich meadows they abandon at night." "Joining them is a wealth of wildlife that floods into the park during the spring and summer." "Many wildfowl breed here, including graceful black-necked swans and the chest-patting ruddy duck." "There is food for all, especially guanacos." "And though summer is a time for plenty, the park lies in the wildest extremity of South America." "And the weather cannot be taken for granted." "Guanacos must take good care of their soft woolen coats." "So dust bathing is a daily ritual." "Keeping them in tip-top condition could mean the difference between life and death." "For even in summer, icy winds and snow can blast down from the mountains." "Winds of 100 miles an hour have been recorded here." "And driven by these raging winds, freezing snow showers can be a killer." "When the weather has been particularly brutal, the undertakers of the air are never far away." "Most chulengos are born around midday." "For those that are born late have little chance during hostile summer storms." "And once hypothermia sets in, death follows quickly." "There is nothing the distressed mother can do." "The condors will hang on the wind until a chulengo is still." "But its mother is hesitant about defend it." "Perhaps she's intimidated by the condor's impressive bulk." "Only when the condors begin eating her dead offspring does she muster enough courage to chase them away." "Her defense is in vain." "Gray foxes scavenge dead meat, too, and their hunger makes them aggressive." "Though some of the meat will be eaten now, it is vital to store some of the scraps for use in harder times." "So these caches of meat are hidden underground." "In the dead of winter, they'll return for their long-buried meal" "if they can find it." "Summer can be an easy time for foxes." "And like most predators, their cubs are raised on the misfortune of others not just dead chulengos and the remains of puma kills, but eggs, birds, and lots of beetles." "Foxes can raise up to five cubs each summer." "And though puma-killed guanacos are an important source of food, pumas also kill foxes." "So it's best to keep out of sight." "Killing isn't always a big cat's priority." "Eating a guanaco on a hot summer's day is thirsty work." "So she had to abandon the carcass to find much needed water." "The killer cat is watched by many eyes." "The crested caracara is another scavenger that looks to the puma for leftovers, and it already has the chulengo carcass in its sights." "With the foxes frightened off by the puma, it too can benefit from the chulengo's death." "Nothing is wasted in this hungry land." "As with all birds of prey, the caracara's hooked beak and sharp claws enable it to rip meat off the tough carcass." "The caracara also has a family to feed, so scraps are taken back to its nest." "Two chicks are the norm, but conditions are so harsh in these wind-swept mountains that food is difficult to find." "So in most nests, only one chick will survive." "Life is tough in the mountains." "And the short summer is a vital time in the lives of local animals." "Guanacos are no exception." "It's breeding time, a male guanaco's most challenging time of year." "The females in his family group are now in breeding condition, and the territory-holding male has a job to do." "He must not only sniff out those females that are ready to mate he must also ensure that other males are kept out." "With aggressively lowered head, he dashes around, marking his territory by adding to dung piles scattered around the real estate he calls his own." "Each pellet contains his scent and announces ownership to other nosy males." "Only he is allowed to use these territorial markers, so if another male has the nerve to drop dung on one of his piles, it is a serious insult." "This intruding male must be driven out of the territory before it can get access to the females." "But, as he's determined to stay, the manure really hits the fan." "These battles for females can be exhausting, the combatants galloping for miles across the hills." "With the landlord away at war other males may try to mate with his females.]" "And while the cat's away..." "But it's important that everyone does mate during the same few days." "And every male wants a slice of the action." "But some young guys never get the footwork right." "When the territory owner returns, the young guy could be beaten to death, but only if he gets caught." "The landlord means business, so the cheating youngster is literally running for his life." "The outcome of such a battle is often worse than broken bones." "If a puma spots his injury, he could make an easy meal." "If the young guy is to stand a chance of surviving, he needs a place to hide." "And fortunately for him, guanaco society provides just such a sanctuary a sort of bachelor's club between the family territories where dispossessed males can gather." "And if he finds one of these areas before a puma gets him, he will be allowed to join without having to fight for his place." "He is still not safe from puma attack." "But many pairs of eyes give greater security while his wounds heal." "The other members are males who've lost territories or young males evicted from family groups." "And apart from eating, the most important activity is play." "It is here that young males learn the language and ritual of combat." "They engage in playful bouts of sparring to win status in the hierarchy." "But as they get older, they develop the strength and skills for serious fights." "Most members will go through two or three years of cheerful neck chewing before fights become serious." "And by then, the mature males are ready to leave the group and try to win a territory of their own." "But they may have to wander the hills alone and homeless for months on end." "And other big changes are in the air, too." "Nights are growing colder." "Autumn mists fill the valleys." "Life is getting harder." "Tougher conditions mean family groups join together to wander in search of food much to the annoyance of the territorial males whose backyards they invade." "With autumn's glorious colors in full bloom, the herds move around even more, forcing the pumas to track them during the day so they can hunt hem during the night." "Like the guanacos, pumas also hold territories as much as 60 square miles for a female like this, but often larger for a male." "Guanaco real estate is divided into much smaller areas." "So the national park feeds about 2,500 guanacos, and they in turn feed about 25 pumas." "But all this is about to change." "Real hardship is about to strike." "Winter is sweeping down from the mountains." "Death travels with the wind." "Blizzards and deep snow make survival increasingly difficult." "Most of the birds have fled." "Almost everything else has to move, too." "Guanacos, foxes, pumas - all search desperately for food." "And in their search, the guanacos' hooves leave a scent trail, making it easy for the pumas to follow." "In the guanaco's mass exodus from their summer range, the migrating family groups coalesce into large herds and the pumas must stay close, both mother and cubs." "Survival hangs in the balance for both predator and prey." "But the guanacos are forced to migrate through unfamiliar terrain, so the pumas have the advantage." "And, if they are skillful, they can maneuver into a position of ambush." "To add to their problems, the guanacos have to migrate into areas where conditions seem particularly bad." "But this is one of nature's classic contradictions:" "it is here that fierce mountain winds below some of the snow off grass and shrubs, making it easier for guanacos to feed." "But starvation is always a threat." "If severe weather persists," "It can take a heavy toll, to the benefit of the little gray foxes." "If they have already exhausted their buried supplies of meat, they are relegated to digging for frozen insects." "But they don't ignore the threat from pumas, it's quite the opposite." "The foxes actually trail the cats," "Waiting for them to provide a larger meal." "And they may be lucky." "Condors also monitor the guanaco herds." "For this is an easy time for scavengers as well as killer cats." "Weakened by hunger, guanacos can be easy prey." "And the puma has killed one on the cliff and dragged it down into the valley below." "She has partially covered it with snow, but with the threat of thieves from above, she must cover the carcass more carefully." "Huge front paws shovel snow effectively, but an even better deterrent against the condors and foxes is her presence, and that of her waiting cubs." "The cats can be seen easily in the snow, so the hungry cubs will have to wait until nightfall to enjoy their meal." "For they're still at risk from other hungry cats" "That could be hiding nearby." "So once the female has covered the carcass," "They will all gather nearby to stand guard." "But deep snow makes traveling difficult, even with the benefit of outsized paws." "With meat stored in the freezer, the puma family's immediate future is assured... the guanacos' future, too." "For winter's last full moon is waning." "As the sun releases winter's icy grip on the land, the guanacos hurry back to their summer territories." "The males reestablish their ownership of prime real estate, and once again they turn their attention to females to their lust meadows." "And with spring at hand, the park becomes a mecca for wildlife." "The year has come full circle." "Large flocks of upland geese and their fluffy chicks join the guanacos." "And within a few weeks, females will drop the next generation of chulengos into a glorious carpet of flowers." "Burgeoning vegetation means there should be plenty to eat, but last year's chulengos eat more as they grow larger, and each family group has a limited feeding territory." "Over-population can lead to hardship and starvation, but guanacos have a solution to this problem, too." "The adult males drive off all of last year's offspring." "This is a dramatic turn of events for the yearlings." "And they're reluctant to leave home, signaling appeasement to the male with a forward-curved tail." "But even if the male gets the message, he must press home the attack." "The future of his whole family group depends on his ruthless aggression." "In a desperate attempt to stay in the family group, the yearling circles back around." "But the more he tries to stay, the more determined the male becomes." "And this could have disastrous consequences." "An injured yearling is in serious danger." "If he's unable to find his way to the security of a male group, its fate is all but sealed." "The puma cubs are now nearly grown now, and have formidable appetites." "So their mother must increase her hunting." "There is little chance for an injured yearling." "For the cubs are bolder now," "Investigating their territory with enthusiasm and no longer waiting for nightfall to eat." "The cub's mother tries to encourage them away from the kill, but one hungry youngster is reluctant to obey." "Future generations of guanacos will have to remain alert when these cubs become experienced hunters." "With the big cats at a safe distance, condors and caracaras can once again take advantage of the guanacos' presence here-foxes, too." "In fact, the guanacos life and death" "Is the essential pivot upon which all life is poised." "For their competitive social system has evolved because it makes maximum use of the land with minimal damage." "Guanacos are now protected in Chile and are holding their own." "But in many ways, they protect themselves." "With so many lone males waiting for a chance to win a territory, it's almost certain that only the strongest males will get to breed." "Their future and that of all guanacos depends on the survival of the fittest." "Their battles are a crucial part of the never-ending cycle of life in the southern Andes." "So the fights for territory must continue, however dangerous and exhausting." "For the land to sustain life, there have to be winners and losers." "And it is essential that the winners are so tough." "For even in this windy, unforgiving land, their vitality helps all guanacos to survive, to thrive and prosper." "For years Susan Middleton photographed objects." ""I took pictures of rare artifacts in museums ...none of if was alive." "But the I began to want to show living things."" ""There, that's beautiful, great."" "At the same time," "David Littschwager worked as a commercial photographer." ""Smile with your eyes."" ""It was, you know, a glamorous life- a New York City fashion photographer." "But, I always wanted to make pictures that the world had use for."" ""Chin up just a little bit."" ""Chin up, chin up."" "One day, in 1986," "Susan and David took a photograph of an endangered creature." "It was the beginning of an obsession." ""Excuse me."" "Ever since, the two photographers have taken portraits of animals and plants on the brink of extinction." ""These creatures are known as statistics by most people." "But we're treating them as individuals, trying to capture their personalities."" ""We want to see them face-to-face, eye-to-eye-make them unavoidable."" ""Oooh!" "Ah!"" "This series now their mission in life their calling, and their passion." ""Oh, beautiful!"" ""We fall in love with these creatures." "What 2042X we're trying to show is some of that wonder that we experience."" ""That's pretty funny..."" ""I don't want him down here."" "David and Susan's portraits have gazed at us from books, magazine covers, museum exhibits." "But does the popularity of their work mean that these creatures will survive?" "For the two photographers, it's an endless odyssey across America:" "to show the faces of creatures we may never see again." ""These creatures are in danger." "They're slipping away, but if people can see them, maybe we can make the effort to keep them with us here on earth."" ""Okay, beak here."" ""Great, great."" "The first Europeans on this continent had a common enemy to conquer;" "it was called... nature." "America seemed to be an endless expanse of hostile wilderness." "Bison wandered along the Potomac, grizzly bears strolled the beaches of California." "Human beings did not even know it was possible for a species to go extinct... but we learned." "Hundreds of creatures slipped into extinction." "Even our National symbol was disappearing before our eyes." "But then America did something no other country had ever done." "In 1973, we passed a law to save our wild creatures." "The Endangered Species Act protects the lives and habitats of plants and animals in immediate danger of extinction." "Today, there are over a thousand species on the list." "David and Susan's quest to photograph the endangered species of America has taken them over hundreds of thousands of miles" " through all 50 states and every conceivable American landscape." ""We drive because we have thousands of pounds of equipment to take with us and we can't plan too far ahead because we have to adapt ourselves to nature's timing, so we have to be in Texas when a plant blossoms or in California" "when a butterfly emerges from its chrysalis and that means we drive."" "This time, they're driving toward Laramie, Wyoming and the prairies of the West." "Once the great plains were a song about freedom." "Buffalo roamed, prairie dogs ranged everywhere, but they had a dangerous habit, they ate grass - and so did a new animal the prairie." "cattle ranchers went to war - in the end, the ranchers w" "But it was another creature that suffered most." "The black-footed ferret has a monotonous diet-prairie dogs, and little else." ""It was an accident." "People weren't trying to harm the ferret, but when you kill off one creature, you turn around and something else is gone."" "The ferret disappeared from the prairie." "We thought it was extinct, until a tiny group suddenly turned up." "In 1987, all the black-footed ferrets in the world, just 18 animals, were brought to live in a single building." "Most biologists thought the animal was doomed:" "ferrets are highly susceptible to infectious diseases." ""Everything that goes in that possible will come in contact with an animal or even in close proximity to the animals' cages has to be wiped down." "Um, so we could get you showered through and, uh, then take a look at the equipment."" ""We've never been in a situation where an animal was so tightly quarantined and, of course, that's why we had to go through the showering process and putting on the scrubs and then all of our equipment had to be sterilized before we went in."" ""It feels like we're in some kind of intensive care unit devoted only to ferrets."" ""We'll just need to rinse the bottoms of our shoes with a virucide." "Okay, now we can get you guys some surgical masks, where anytime you're in contact or in a room that has a black-footed ferret in it." "You can just close that first set of doors there."" ""It's not unlike the way you feel when you go into a hospital and see a loved one all hooked up to life-support system."" ""This is the young of the year."" ""Their very survival is so precarious - hanging on by a thread."" ""She's pretty inquisitive."" ""If it weren't for a very rigorous captive breeding program, there would no longer be any black-footed ferrets in the world." "You know it's a ferret "factory"." "The point is production- make more ferrets."" ""This is the perfect time during the breeding season because we have almost every possible thing going on." "We have animals that have just been paired." "There's the male grabbing the female into the breeding box."" ""Oh, yeah." "Oh my God."" ""If she's not interested she'll fight back, they'll start hissing and chattering."" ""What does the sound like"?" ""It sound like a..." "And the then we know, like, they're fightin' and stuff... yeah."" ""So it feels kinds of voyeuristic."" ""It's little voyeuristic."" "In the past ten years, over a thousand ferrets have been born here." ""You'd think that an animal that slept for 20 hours a day might be easy to photograph, but they never stop moving."" ""You really need everything to be just right for about two minutes, but two minutes is a long time to ask a ferret to stand still."" ""Wow." "So, there's no such thing as like calming down after a while."" ""No."" ""Yeah, Ah!" "Ah..."" ""He's okay, Can you just take it on the floor."" ""Do you want to try another older animal."" ""Yeah, we'll start Gypsy."" ""Let's try gypsy."" ""Come out, Gypsy."" ""Um, beautiful."" ""Yeah." "When she has her head up like that," "I think that's her best look."" "In 1991, the first captive-bread ferret was released;" "the black-footed ferret was a wild animal again." "But many of the released ferrets have died and there is no way of knowing whether the animals born in the factory for ferrets will ultimately die out - or live on to play in the freedom of the wild." ""When you're driving across America, you understand why so many plants and animals are endangered." "They're losing their homes." "We're building a human world and losing a wild one."" "From Wyoming the road goes East..." "to Cambridge, Massachusetts." "But they're not going to find an endangered creature, they're meeting one of the greatest experts on why species go extinct- distinguished scientist, Edward O. Wilson." ""It's a sobering fact there is an extinction crisis." "They're have always been species going extinct, from time to time... but now human activity's pushing it up a hundred to a thousand times, we're in the midst of a biological catastrophe that's the greatest since the end of the age of dinosaurs," "65 million years ago." ""What I hope you'll succeed in doing is to make endangered species a vivid presence in the lives of people." "Make it clear to them that every endangered species has a name, has a billion year history, has a place in the world." "Bring us face to face with each one of those species." "Make us know that they're our companions in the biosphere." "They're not just something out there you look at once in a while, but they're part of our existence, they're part of us." "Fifty million years ago an animal, related to the elephant, crawled back into the sea." "It was huge and gentle." "It had no enemies, so it had no fear." "Now, after eons of tranquility, the manatees of Florida should fear one creature." "Every year speedboats kill scores of manatees." "Over 90% of all manatees bear scars from propellers." ""What we're looking at right here is actually a, a huge wound from a propeller that just gashed the whole side of Synco, here."" "Biologist Ed Gerstein is working to find out why the collisions happen." ""And after they've been hit once or twice or three times, why don't they learn to get out of the way?"" ""Why don't they... yeah..." the subjects of Ed's research are two captive-born manatees- Stormy and Dundee." ""The common perception was that these animals are dumb and they're slow, but actually we've proven that the animals are very intelligent."" ""Hand signal given."" ""Okay, this is run number six, series 99."" "Ed's coworker is his wife, Laura." ""Run number six is a tone at negative..."" ""Each animal has an individual personality and, with Stormy, he's so crafty, he just is interested in entertaining himself and then when he decides to work, he'll work when he's ready."" ""Stormy had been trained to leave the hoop after he sees the strobe light and go make a selection." "If he doesn't hear a sound he'll go over and push the solid white panel." "If he hears it, he'll push the striped panel."" ""Touch." "That's correct."" ""These animals have very good high frequency hearing." "The problem is boats put out low frequencies." "So, we hope, from our research, to come up with a device to put on a boat to make boats audible to manatees so that they can get out of the way."" "Stormy and Dundee - quiet in their quiet world - just do what they've always done, graze peacefully and almost constantly." ""They eat 30, or I forget how many heads of romaine lettuce a day, and how can these animals get so big like that eating a completely fat" " free diet - lettuce?" "I mean, I can't imagine it."" ""Stormy likes to play tricks." "If he were a human he'd be a juvenile delinquent."" ""There's no feeling quite like being gummed by a manatee."" ""Here we go."" ""Great."" ""Wow!" "A little too close."" ""They're very curious animals and whenever anything enters the water they come over to inspect."" ""Stormy come back." "Oh, beautiful!"" ""There's so much feeling behind what they do." "You can just see it and the playfulness that they have."" ""Oh, no." "Way too close." "Ah!"" ""The more you're around them, eh, it's almost like you can hear them think."" ""Somebody get it."" ""You can get it."" ""Looks like a big smile."" ""Go for it."" "All told, 415 manatees died in 1996." "Today, some 24 hundred remain." ""When you look at the world, eh, you know, the manatee's just a speck." "It's just one other thing that's going- and so many things are going and the, the beauty of a manatee, you know, it'll be a shame."" "Three thousand miles later, they're going to the Sacramento River Delta to photograph an endangered insect." "But the Delta green ground beetle is almost invisible." ""Four times before we've gone out looking for this beetle, never finding this thing."" ""They have big eyes, they're sensitive to movement, they're day active, so this is the time they would be active."" ""Well, this time we are meeting five of the leading experts and, uh, it's like bringing in the big guns." ""The best way to spot them is to sit in one place and become very quiet and them just gaze."" ""You look straight at it, you can't see it, she, it's like it blends in so perfectly."" ""I could see if David and I weren't able to find it, but when you go out with experts and they can't find it, then you begin to wonder."" ""Eureka."" ""Wow."" ""You can see it?"" ""It's at four o'clock from... eh, see it?"" ""Even when she was pointing it out, I still couldn't see it."" ""How do you know it's real?"" ""Fifth try is a charm."" ""Uh, toward his legs." "Yep."" ""Every color of the rainbow is in this beetle, but you have to have a microscope to see it." "And you stop and ask yourself," ""Why did nature do that?"" ""It's very easy to dismiss the bugs and the weeds of the world, but science is revealing, every year, just how important are these little things on which we and other larger organisms depend." "They cleanse the water, they create the soil, they generate the very air we breathe."" "Ten thousand years ago, the last glacier raked over the mountains of California." "When it receded it left one kind of gold in splendid isolation high in the Sierras." "For over 30 years, this gold has been the object of one man's dreams." "David and Susan are headed for the Little Kern River Valley" " the only place on earth where the gold can be found." ""Dan Christensen, here, pleased to meet you."" "Dan Christensen is the man who saved a species." ""It was 1949." "I was still in high school." "My brother and I would go up to the mountains and go fishing." "It was an incredible experience." "We just feel in love with the place... and with those beautiful fish- the golden trout of the High Sierra." "Fifteen years later I started working for the Department of Fish and Game and I came across old reports buried in the files." "They said the golden trout in the Little Kern River might be extinct - so I had to go out and find 'em - if there were any left alive."" "Fishermen caused the problem." "They introduced other species of trout to improve the fishing." "Golden trout were soon overwhelmed by the aggressive newcomers." ""It was only a matter of five or six years before the golden trout were gone-the just wiped 'em out."" ""So what did it actually feel like when you discovered a Little Kern golden trout still alive?" ""Well, it, it felt like finding gold..." ""Pretty exciting?"" ""actually." "Yeah, it was very exciting."" "Dan spent many years removing all the non-native fish from the streams." "Only then, could he restore the golden trout to their ancient habitat." ""We're almost to the creek so you want to be lookin' for a spot that you can work." "We'll go ahead and start collecting while you guys set up."" ""And then we'll set up our aquarium."" ""Great."" ""David has to build an aquarium, it has to be custom built." "We have to worry about reflections, we have to worry about bubbles, we have to worry about keeping the fish happy." "So it's really a kind of stage."" "To find trout Dan goes electrofishing." "Any fish in the area will be stunned by electricity." ""there we go, oh, there he is, there he is, here it comes." "Oop." "Got him." "There you go." "Okay." ""Ready for fish, huh?"" ""Yeah, I guess I could just put this down in there." "Okay."" ""Perfect, he looks really nice."" ""Okay, stir 'em up and then I'll get out of your way."" ""For me, the thrill of seeing these golden trout has never faded."" ""Come on now, come on guys."" ""These fish are special." "This is the only place in the world that they exist."" "Dan's labors have brought success." "The Little Kern Golden Trout is about to be taken off the endangered species list." ""I'm happy I could bring these fish back-back to their past in the Little Kern River and they've brought my past back to me."" ""Okay, here we go." "Brand new home, all to yourselves." ""The golden trout is going to be with us." ""There you go fella." ""Maybe some high school kid'll go up there to the Sierras and find these beautiful golden fish and they'll never forget if for the rest of his life."" ""Ah!" "Road burn." "You know, to motels, least expensive motel we can find." "Sometimes we just get really tired and then we go home." "It's a grind... and you never know what the good restaurant is."" ""The special today is chili." ""But, uh, I have done a lot of other things to make a living and this is worth continuing."" ""I want to stop."" ""We're not going to get there on time."" ""I know, but why drive all night long."" ""What is the situation from Flagstaff north to you?"" ""Dave, ask them about the weather, if it's safe to get there."" ""Ah, eh, he's not going to know that."" ""Yes, he is."" ""Ah, we're already... heh..."" ""Let me ask him."" ""Let's find out from here."" ""This is a big country and, eh, you know, some days you don't notice that it's beautiful." "You just get to the next place."" "The next place is costal North Carolina." "In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf." "In a second, we were pumping lead into the pack." "The old wolf was down." "We reached the wolf in time to watch a fierce, green fire dying in her eyes." " Aldo Leopold." "The fire nearly died." "Only 17 true red wolves stood between the species and extinction." "But then, it was the first animal we attempted to save with a recovery program." "Jennifer Gilbreath has worked with red wolves at the" "Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge for six years." ""We don't really see the wolves ...all that terribly often, but, we know where most of the wolves are because of their radio collars." ""We can learn a lot by tracking the wolves and, as long as the wolves have a place to live and are left alone, they can be fine."" "When landowners allow it, wolves are often released onto private property, but wolves don't know about boundaries- where they're supposed to be ...and where they're not." ""It's just as much, if not more, about people than it is about wolves."" ""The wolf was actually stalking our, our rams that were out in this pasture because we keep the ewes tied up in the building."" ""Our neighbor took a shot at him and he was moving on down the field right that, at that time."" ""But he was thinking about lamb chops this morning, that's what he was thinking of." "This would be a good little appetizer for him." ""It really would."" ""And we've got nine of these on the ground right now and I don't want them being hurt."" ""Most people feel very strongly about the creature." "A lot of people don't pay any attention really to the facts."" ""Well, I heard that you'd seen some wolves in the area."" ""Yeah." "See 'em, hear tell of 'em, and, uh, so far, they're not bothering me, but they get off of their land and they come on my land, and they start damaging my property, then I ain't got but one resort" "now you know what that is..."" ""That's right."" ""...we talked about that earlier." "I don't like 'em." "I ain't never liked them." "I ain't gonna lie about it."" ""The wolf embodies the concept of wild nature." "All of us grew up with stories like "Little Red Riding Hood" and" ""Three Little Pigs" and it goes back into literally ancient times when wolves represented Satan or the devil, so, because of the myths, some people are afraid."" ""The wolf is more frightened than I am, which is not what I expected at all."" ""And you can feel their fear."" ""I'm just going to roll it out."" ""Two frames."" ""Is there a chance that the wolf could freak out and attack us?"" ""We've never had that happen." "We have never had it happen."" ""The big bad wolf, just terrified, cowering in the corner."" "For the wolves the news has been good." ""They've survived, they've bred, in the wild, and reared young" " two or three generations."" ""Come around this way."" ""It's very near the breeding season so we hope that they'll stay together and form a pair bond and do, do the right thing."" ""Ready?"" ""You wonder: why are we doing this?" "Why make problems for ourselves by putting wolves back in the world?" "The answer is that we don't want our world to be just malls with trees in neat little rows." ""We want wildness out there because it puts the wonder of the world in you."" ""We're going to be late to meet these guys."" ""I, think, you know, I think we must have past it or something." "It's not just..." ""It's not fitting with what they were describing at all."" ""Excuse me, can you tell me which way is to the Natches Trace?"" ""Go back to the end of this road to the four-way stop, turn left and it'd be about seven miles, the three-way stop will be right..."" ""Get the, they call it the "Yellow Store" but it's not yellow anymore, it used to be really yellow years ago, but it's gray now, I think..."" ""And you make a left... no, you make a right."" ""Go to the stoplight."" ""Huh, huh."" ""And take your first left."" ""But we want to be right there."" ""And we turned off here and we missed it."" ""Well, maybe you took the wrong, the wrong, left." "If you took the first left the first time, try the second left this time."" ""You turn at the 'Yellow Store' if you don't see a store that's yellow, just turn left at the Fat Woman, you'll find it, it won't be any problem."" "Eventually, Susan and David reach Central Florida and 5,000 acres of deep sand and scrub, called Archbold Biological Station." ""It doesn't look like much at first because the predominant plants is kind of shrubby-looking oak, but it was a, a kind of magic garden we had no idea we were entering." ""Great, great"" ""We've never been in a place that had so many endangered species." "All these unique creatures tangled together in web of life."" ""There you go."" "Eastern indigo snake." "Florida mouse" "Tequesta grasshopper" "Scrub mint" "Blue-tailed mole skink" "Florida scrub jay" "Gopher tortoise" ""Somebody tell me where to stop."" "But of all the unusual creatures in the scrub, David and Susan soon discover one of the most intriguing." ""Two takes - 20,000;" "third take 30,000."" "When off his bike, Tom Eisner is a distinguished scientist." "The pioneer of a technique he calls chemical prospecting" "He searches for chemicals in wild plants and animals." "He's found nerve drugs in millipedes, insect repellents in a tiny mint plant, compounds for the human heart in fireflies." ""There's hidden value to nature." "Nearly half the medicines that we take are derived from nature." "They're chemicals that are used by plants, animals and microorganisms for their own survival." "This is unbelievably important." "To lose that information is as if it were burning every book on our library shelves." ""What you want to be alert to is shining things in the dark."" "Often, Tom finds chemicals in nature by using the life... and death of animals as his tool." ""Right there." "That's at about 20 feet, there's a tiny little spider there which I could spot just from the eye shine." "There it is." "It's hungry." "And I'm going to feed it a moth." "Okay, typical strike and rejection." "You notice she backed away." "I mean, you can literally enlist the help of these spiders in helping you do research." "You can ask these spiders a simple question - what do you like?" "What don't you like?" "And now let's see if she's ready to take something edible." ""Oh, wow."" ""Action."" ""It eats some, it rejects others and the question is why does it reject some?" "And the answer is because the defensive chemicals in those items that are rejected, those chemicals that protect an insect, could be chemicals that have medical uses." "So the spider becomes your partner and it does this free of charge." ""Tom, I'm just completely amazed at what we've seen here." "I mean," "David and I have just been traveling around photographing endangered species isolated from each other and here is the first place where we've been in a habitat that's still intact." ""Well, in nature itself everything is connected, every species is in some way dependent on others." "So you have this fabric of life and, to me, an endangered species is like a critical stitch in that fabric." ""The longer you study any one area, the more you realize that if any one item becomes extinct, the whole fabric falls apart." "Everything depends on everything else."" "Sixty years earlier, another scientist went in search of an endangered species." "Deep into the Louisiana swamps, trying to find one of the rarest birds in America." "He found it and he filmed it." "It was the first time anyone had ever filmed the ivory-billed woodpecker... and the last." ""The ivory billed has always had a special mystique." "You hear rumors that it's still alive, that it's been heard in some deep dark part of the swamp."" ""We're finally getting to photograph the ivory-billed woodpecker" " but it's not the way we had hoped."" "The birds' habitat was decimated by development." "In 1996, the ivory-billed woodpecker was finally declared extinct." ""It was rare and then it slipped away." "The preserved specimen is all that's left."" ""Species do not die of old age, species are killed off and when a species dies, with it dies this genetic history that can never be recreated." "Scientists even begun to think of how they might be able to reassemble a species and the loss is permanent."" "There's only one place in the wild where a certain endangered species can live." "A windy, foggy microclimate in the middle of San Francisco." ""There's endangered species in our backyard and just a few blocks from where we work is this plant, the Presidio Manzanita."" ""The Manzanita so rare that its exact location has to be kept a secret, for its own protection."" ""Good morning."" ""Good morning."" ""Hi."" ""Hi."" ""I'm, David."" ""Mark."" "Biologist Mark Albert will take them to the plant's hiding place." ""Because it is the last wild individual of this species, it's very, very important that we use extreme caution when we're walking around the plant." "So I'd like to ask you if you could very carefully watch where I walk and even how I walk, just so that we're not disturbing anything that shouldn't be disturbed." "Just follow my footsteps very carefully here." "So you want to walk right along the edge of this plant here."" ""The pressure of our feet and our equipment really endangers the actual plant itself."" ""So there's some rocks here that we should step on when we're near the plant because there are no roots growing under..."" ""Is this one okay?"" ""Yep."" ""I mean, is this like the only place we can stand?"" ""Uh, for any length of time, yes."" ""There it is right there."" ""So this whole green expanse that we're seeing is it."" ""This is it."" ""Oh, my God."" ""This is the only wild individual that we know exists at this point."" ""I'd like to get a, eh, a good look at it." "Can I just walk in, or..."" ""If you have to step off the rock a little bit just don't, you know, try to keep your foot planted in one spot."" ""I mean, it's just not, you know, initially, that spectacular."" ""It looks like ground cover, it just doesn't look like anything you could make of photograph of that anyone would want to look at."" ""I don't know how we're going to pull this off."" ""Be careful with your left hand, David, on the foliage."" ""But we're not choosing our subjects based on what they look like, we're choosing them because they're threatened with extinction."" ""Do you think we could do this with one leaf?"" ""Sure." "In the small scale, it's actually really extraordinary."" ""All living things are amazingly complex and beautiful if you can figure out a way to reveal it."" "This plant can't reproduce by itself, but it's the last one left in the wild, so the Manzanita is what some call the "living dead."" ""Plants get ignored." "Almost two thirds of the species on the endangered list are plants." "They're not big and flashy like the giant panda or the rhino, but they're equally as important in how life works." "Without plants the animals wouldn't be here;" "we wouldn't be here."" ""Americans are increasingly absorbed with the artificial, the plastic, with the world of virtual reality." "But we're going to come to realize that the real eagle and the rest of nature are vastly more interesting and satisfying than the artificial replicas-that there's a sense of the touch and smell and sight and hearing and experience that" "the real world of nature can never be duplicated." ""As nature slips away we will have created a world in which we will be deprived and lonely."" "Arthur Bonner is from South Central Los Angeles." ""We don't have trees, we don't have flowers, we don't have insects, butterflies, spiders." "The only thing we have growing is buildings."" "What did thrive in South Central was gangs." ""It was full of violence." "We would beat people with bats, hit 'em in the head with bottles."" "When he was 18 Arthur shot a man in the face." "He spent over seven years in juvenile detention and jail." ""Good morning."" ""Good morning."" ""My name is, uh, Arthur and, uh, you guys are out here to help us out to save an endangered species." "It's called the Palos Verdes blue..."" "When Arthur got out of jail, he joined the L.A. Conservation Corps" " his life was soon turned around by a tiny six-legged companion, called the Palos Verdes blue butterfly." ""It's only, little small, 300 acres lift for these butterflies."" ""Go ahead."" ""So we all needs to help maintain it." "Nature deserves to be everywhere."" ""It's a caterpillar." "It won't bite you, it won't even hard you, you could hold it with your bare hand, it wouldn't do anything to you."" ""Does it turn into a butterfly or a moth."" ""A moth."" ""Oh, a moth."" ""Yeah."" ""When they come out here and they see the stuff, they find the insects, the butterflies, the lizards, you know, all of it, it's something that they put in their head and they take it back to the city and" "they tell their friends, 'Well, home, we was at a habitat today."'" ""Take him out gently."" "Arthur is one of just three people who are permitted to gather the butterflies." ""I'm very dedicated to coming down here." "I love to do what I'm doing." "I love my work." "He uses all his powers of persuasion to help his captives reproduce." ""Okay girls, which one of you laid some eggs for me today?"" ""The, uh, five females that's actually collected out in the wild, you know, I bring them in, I have to watch 'em lay their eggs."" ""There you go, you gave me one."" ""The butterfly only has a five-day life span and it's up to me to keep her baby alive."" ""You're not hungry right now, huh?"" ""But they don't have to go up and get their food, they have somebody to bring it to 'em, I bring it to 'em, you know, they get their food in bed, you know everybody loves to get breakfast in bed."" ""Doesn't want to eat it." "That's okay, you're going to eat it before the day is over with."" "Like all creatures, the butterfly needs a place to live." "If its habitat goes, it goes and the Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly has a precarious home-a postage stamp habitat surrounded by oil refineries." ""So that's the one that you think is probably going to go first?"" ""And this is going to be the one that's gonna actually hatch due to the fact that it has a, a better wing formation than any of the, uh, other pupas that you actually see on the, um, format here."" ""It's been an egg, it's been a caterpillar, and it's been a pupa for a whole year."" ""It emerges in this one-inch butterfly; this bright jewel comes out of a little tiny brown package."" ""It comes out; it exists in the world as a butterfly for five days, it finds another of its kind;" "they made, the female lays the eggs and the whole process starts over again."" ""Now, do you think she's going to open her wings soon?"" ""Yes, she will." "She's gonna open 'em up."" ""Oop, look at that."" ""Yeah, see, their wings are dried now." "The wings are actually dried now."" ""Look at that." "It's taking a little walk."" ""If you'd been in pupation for over a year, it's going to take a little time for you to actually, um, get out and fly away."" ""Oh, there we go, there we go."" ""Ah see, what it is, she knows, everybody's watching."" "For ten years, the Palos Verdes blue butterfly was thought to be extinct." "It is still considered one of the rarest butterflies in the world." ""Come here, come here."" ""Those are my girls." "I love 'em all." "They actually kept me from being extinct just as much I'm, I'm saving them from being extinct." "They're saving me and I'm saving them."" "Less than 30 miles away from Arthur's quiet butterflies, a more prominent air borne creature is at risk." "Catalina Island, just west of Los Angeles, is home to 12 bald eagles." "But the eagles have an unseen enemy" " DDT." "The pesticide, long outlawed, still lingers in the surrounding water, drastically weakening the eagles' eggs." "Dave Garcelon has come to Catalina to fool eagles." "The eggs in his box are dummies." "Dave's mission is to switch the contaminated eggs with the fake ones." "Human beings are now the indispensable caretakers for our national symbol." "The creature that is supposed to stand for strength and independence." "The egg's new home is the San Francisco Zoo, where John Aiken runs the Avian Conservation Center." ""These eggs that come from Catalina Island are in bad shape." "We've got to help them every step of the way." "We check them for cracks and repair those and then put them in very humid incubators." "Unfortunately, most of the eggs die."" ""And, you, you are actually going to make it out of there, look at this."" ""All right." "Gotta get ya out of there."" ""This is the first egg in five years from Catalina that's hatched."" ""Yes, look at that, you are a healthy little chick."" "Twelve days later, the eaglet is on her way home." "In a few hours, she'll be placed in her nest again." "The question is:" "will her parents except her ...or leave her to die." ""I'm really happy we've gotten this far." "The eaglet's odds were not good." "She was a contaminated egg." "She definitely would have died if we'd left her in the nest," "But she survived and she seems like a survivor and we just hope she's going to make it from here."" ""You look great."" ""Is that your mark."" ""Oh, very nice."" ""Beautiful, wonderful!"" ""That's great."" ""Oh, that's ideal."" ""We don't know if this is the beginning or the end for this little eaglet." "We don't know if her parents will come and feed her and take care of her."" ""Beak up."" ""Hey, you."" ""It's tough to, to watch 'em go." "You know, it's like sending your kids away to college or something, you know." ""People ask, 'Why do you take your precious babies back to a contaminated environment?" the answer, to me, is simple." "The eagles belong here and maybe in 20 years they'll be able to breed without us, but, for now, they can't do it unless we help them."" ""We've led to the decline and extinction of a lot of species and now we know better." ""We're the only ones that can make a difference because all these animals and plants can't do it on their own."" "The biologists end the last leg of the human part of the effort." "Now, it's up to the eagles." ""Seeing that little eagle on that giant cliff face, it seemed so fragile, eh, and our hope is that this eagle and all endangered species" " that they survive and we carry them with us into the future."" "An hour after the climbers have left, the mother accepts the chick." ""It's really a symbol of hope to see this little eaglet put back into the nest and the parents coming back to nurture it."" ""It's a gesture of hope for not only the eagle, but for the human species, too."" ""Human beings are the masters of this world now." "We can take these animals and plants with us as we travel into the future" " or we can say goodbye and send them into the night." "But whether we realize it or not, we depend utterly on other creatures for our very survival." "They are part of our existence they are part of us."" "Africa's Kalahari is 100,000 square miles of dust and blowing sand." "But in this place where dry winds vibrate with the sounds of life, one creature lives by the faintest whispers and cries." "These are bat-eared foxes, and they survive here because of their enormous, oval ears." "From their first days as pups, they enter an unforgiving world where their survival will depend on detecting sounds whether it's a meal hiding in the dirt, or danger approaching on silent at feet." "And at night, when vision dims, they truly come into their own... hunting their prey... dodging those that stalk them." "This is the story of one family's struggle to survive- a year in the realm of the desert fox." "In an isolated corner of Botswana, along the dried-out bed of the Nossob River, a fox we call Selene keeps her small eyes and big ears wide open." "Together, she and her mate, Ajax, have found a home in this inhospitable land." "They've borrowed a den from their closest neighbors, the meerkats." "Selene and Ajax need the underground shelter." "It's November, early summer in the Kalahari, and the foxes are raising a family." "As afternoon draws to a close, Selene heads off in search of food, leaving Ajax behind to baby-sit." "Only three weeks old, the pups are just beginning to emerge from the den, and Ajax is a protective father." "But these four little bundles of fur will prove enough to challenge even the most watchful parent." "There's Ajax's daughter, Flash, and her three brothers." "Adventure is the explorer, always first out of the den." "Kinky has a bent tail and, as his father can see, a feisty little disposition... unlike the runt of the litter, Little Joe." "The young pups are growing up in a dangerous world, but in this part of the Kalahari, there's a neighborhood watch... a meerkat sentry keeping an eye peeled for predators." "Ever vigilant in a precarious realm, the meerkats are extremely protective of their young." "And what these animals lack in ears, they make up for with their eyes." "A guard is always ready to raise the alarm." "They spot the neighborhood menace, a black-backed jackal on the prowl." "From a distance, he may look like another fox, but he's a definite threat to their young." "Ajax senses the coming danger, rising to meet the threat." "The jackal is bigger, but when it comes to defending his pups, the little fox is ready to fight..." "...unlike his adversary." "The end of the dry season brings many animals to the Nossob riverbed in search of water and a place to graze." "The bat-eared foxes' home range can extend up to two square miles of this scrubland." "An area they constantly forage for food." "In daylight, Selene often hunts by scent or sight." "Termites are a dietary staple and it's no problem finding them as they scamper in the dirt." "As night falls, her hunt does not stop." "Instead, it begins in earnest." "The dark hours are a dangerous time to be alone in the Kalahari." "But Selene is now in her element." "And all night she will rely on her ears." "She uses those unmistakable ears like radar and they guide her to meals burrowed underground." "By comparison, a scorpion is loud..." "and dangerous." "But bat-eared foxes will eat them, stinging tail and all." "The jackal also stalks at night... and Selene's determined to send him on his way." "Arching her back and bristling her hair, she confronts the intruder and defends her ground." "But the jackal isn't up for a fight tonight." "A cautious victor, Selene sees him off... then settles down to the more productive business of listening." "This time her search is interrupted by an unfamiliar sound." "It's another bat-eared fox, crippled, and on the run." "This little one was most likely injured by a predator." "Now it will be lucky to last the night." "Selene recognizes her own species, but she can't afford to stay." "His injury is a magnet for danger... and in the night, danger comes in the form of lions." "The crippled little fox never had a chance." "The Kalahari is home to many predators... and bat-eared foxes are always at risk." "Next morning, Ajax is still keeping watch over the pups, waiting for his turn to feed." "Adventure is already up and about, investigating." "Flash, on the other hand, never misses a chance to get in a little extra grooming... and a snuggle with her father." "Little Joe and Kinky stick close to the burrow." "There's relative safety by the den... especially when a meerkat sentry sounds the local alarm." "It seems some new neighbors moved in during the night." "And the meerkats aren't at all happy about it." "They're cape foxes and they're not welcome." "They may be relatives of the bat-ears, but these are full-blooded omnivores." "They'll eat anything, even a meerkat baby." "One cape fox youngster has been left at the den while its parents are off on a hunt." "He's just a pup no a real threat but the meerkats want to bully him out." "They inch their way closer, testing the wind, just in case his parents return." "Then they set out to give him a good scare." "The young cape fox is frightened, but no more than those who torment him." "The truth is, even half a dozen meerkats don't amount to much of a threat." "And now it may be too late." "The mother cape fox is on the horizon." "Cape fox parents may spend more time away from home than the bat ears, but they do eventually return... which could mean trouble for the meerkats." "As the mother heads back to her youngster, the meerkat guards are clearly agitated." "But there's nothing they can do except stand by and watch." "With the father returning to the burrow as well, there's no question they're outgunned." "The mother tends to her offspring, but it's the meerkats that need consoling." "They built this neighborhood." "But now it's been taken over." "They gather the troops and leave." "Safe neighborhoods are hard to find on the open Kalahari." "They stop often to check their surroundings." "For Ajax's family, this departure could be a problem." "Their early warning system has just fled across the desert." "In a dry riverbed not far away, the meerkats arrive at a new home one they excavated earlier." "Still, it has to be inspected." "Sure enough, there are other occupants... another family of bat-eared foxes." "The meerkats decide to stay." "The bat-eared foxes will chase away any jackals that could come near." "While protecting their young, they'll be guarding the meerkats as well." "For the second fox family, the meerkat alarm system is extremely useful." "There's always at least one meerkat on guard." "The only other animals around are a harmless group of ground squirrels." "The new place seems safe enough, but the meerkats are always curious, always cautious." "With new neighbors, everyone's a little on edge." "Soon the guard announces a real threat:" "the menacing jackal's back on the scene." "The male fox races out, urging the jackal to move on." "At the other den, Ajax, Selene, and the pups don't realize the jackal is circling back toward them." "With no meerkat sentry, the foxes are more vulnerable than ever." "Slipping through the shrubs, the jackal gets very close..." "...before he's spotted." "The jackal has been out-foxed yet again, but he'll never stop trying." "For all the animals here, this is a lean and hungry time... a time of long hunts and little food." "At midday, Ajax returns to the den to rest." "Daytime foraging can be rough under the summer sun, when temperatures of over 100 degrees take their toll." "It's December, the end of the hot dry season, and the Kalahari bakes like an open-air furnace." "Some of the animals here are well-adapted to the heat, but almost all seek out whatever shade they can find to conserve their energy." "Only the hungriest are out on the prowl, like this gaunt mother cheetah." "Ajax must shepherd the pups back into the burrow to wait out the threat as the cheetah stalks nearby." "Little Adventure does not know enough to hide." "The cheetah calls to her three offspring." "Luckily for little Adventure, the cheetahs have another meal in mind." "With the danger past, Selene calls the other pups from the den." "Only Adventure shows little interest in nursing." "He's well on his way to being weaned." "Now almost 2 months old, it won't be long before the other pups follow suit." "But they still haven't lost their interest in having fun." "There's always time for a good romp." "These rough and tumble games may be practice for more dangerous encounters to come." "In the cool of the early evening, games give way to more serious matters." "The cheetahs have focused on a herd of springbok." "The hunters eye their prey, waiting for the right moment to strike." "The springbok are unaware of the predators... but these young cats are still learning the rules of the hunt." "They launch their attack." "But it's too late." "The inexperienced cheetah has let the prey escape." "Over the next few hours, the cheetahs will test their skills again." "By night, the cheetahs would make the kill that eluded them by day." "Of course, the jackal is never far off." "If he's hoping to find a meal here, he'll have to settle for scraps." "All he can do is wait." "But other hungry eyes watch from the darkness." "And the jackal decides to move in." "The cheetahs won't stand for it." "The scavenger continues to lurk in the shadows." "Finally, the jackal can stand it no longer, and grabs at the only thing it can the discarded entrails." "And then the brown hyena launches its assault." "Powerfully built, with bone-crushing jaws, the hyena is a dangerous rival." "The cheetahs won't risk injury just to keep a few bones." "They've had their fill." "But as the carcass disappears into the night... the loss is harder on the jackal." "With their stomachs full, the cheetahs settle in to groom and lounge." "With all this action so close to home," "Ajax and Selene set off in search of another den." "But moving at night can be risky." "The jackal is already on their trail." "And this time... he's brought his mate." "Out in the open, the foxes have nowhere to shelter their pups if trouble begins." "Suddenly, Selene senses danger." "Ajax repels the first assault." "But this time, the jackals aren't running away." "Selene looks for her pups one's missing." "Little Joe has wandered off." "Ajax goes on the offensive." "But as he fights off the first jackal, in the confusion... the other goes for the prize." "In a matter of seconds... little Joe is taken." "There's nothing Ajax can do." "The Kalahari has claimed another victim." "As a new day breaks, it's an unsettling time for our fox family." "They've moved to a new home, but paid a terrible price." "And there are more hard times to come." "In this part of the Kalahari, the rains are late this year." "The land has turned to dust." "The sun wrings... every drop of moisture out of the land." "The wildebeest are skittish in the heat and with good reason." "As herds gather at the riverbed, predators follow." "In these difficult times, the lionesses are reluctant to share even with their own cubs." "The winds that blow now bring only trouble." "Sand storms are on the way." "Great clouds of dust swirl across the land." "The animals wander in a choking haze." "But the parching winds will soon bring relief as well." "Finally, the drought breaks." "The lions luxuriate in the shower..." "and the foxes get a new lease on life." "The deluge may continue off and on for months." "In February, the rains temporarily subside, and a new world is revealed." "The Kalahari has been transformed." "The Nossob is once again a river, and it will draw life from miles around." "Storks arrive in search of the hordes of insects that appear after the rains." "Many animals are getting their first drink of water in months." "Springbok find a great green pasture spread out before them." "For the foxes too, things are changing." "These are fat times for everyone." "Even nervous meerkats will take advantage of this season of abundance." "The fox pups are growing up." "The family no longer needs to stay close to the den." "For Kinky, Adventure and Flash, there's a new world to explore." "The small animals that endured the dry season now find themselves surrounded by the grazing herds that follow the summer rains." "Gemsbok, springbok, hartebeest all return to the riverbed in this time of plenty." "For grazers like this wildebeest, there's a banquet at their feet." "The bat-ears, like all the animals in this part of the Kalahari, take advantage of the bounty." "Ajax has had a successful day of foraging." "He's got a gecko a tiny lizard." "And he's bringing home the treat." "For the pups, this wiggly snack will present a new challenge." "Flash is still angling for easier meals, but her brothers go for the gecko." "Selene is only reluctantly willing to nurse." "The pups are getting too big." "With a full set of teeth, they are now well equipped to chew up a lizard." "A neighboring family of cape foxes makes its presence known." "The bat-ears aren't glad to see them." "For the first time," "Kinky and Adventure show a Cape Fox who's in charge." "Selene gives her feisty youngsters a grooming reward." "While Ajax always pugnacious adds a bit of bravado to the display." "Of course, intimidating the youngsters is easy." "It may be a different story when the Cape Fox mother returns." "But the belligerent Ajax won't stand for any trouble." "The Cape Fox mother will keep her distance for a while leaving her youngster to defend for himself." "As long as Ajax is around, the pup will have to wait for his next meal." "As it turns out, there are big events afoot for the bat-eared foxes." "As the sun begins to set, the pups are heading out to forage for themselves." "The whole family sets off together." "For Selene and Ajax, this marks a turning point." "It's been hard work caring for the pups, but they're on the way to taking care of themselves." "No longer tied to the den, the pups can explore the landscape." "The pups... and the family itself are quickly coming of age." "In the Kalahari, night is the time of the hunter." "And now the bat-eared fox family can make the most of it." "They'll hunt like this for hours and there'll be some surprises along the way." "For the pups, this gecko will offer another chance to test their skills." "Flash already knows insects, but lizards still present a challenge." "Of course, Ajax knows exactly what to do." "Flash begs for a bite, but she must learn to catch her own." "It's time for Ajax to give her a lesson, he stuns the gecko, then waits as his daughter draws near." "She's happy to try a morsel..." "now that it's stopped running around." "Not far away the cape fox mother is also out foraging." "For these accomplished omnivores, catching a gecko is second nature." "The young cape foxes know just how to handle fresh meat." "Even as pups, they have the killer instinct." "A night-jar chose the wrong place to rest." "These ferocious youngsters will go after anything from a bird to a baby meerkat." "But on the other side of the river, the young bat-eared foxes are still learning." "For Kinky, a scorpion is definitely a mouthful." "Which end should he grab?" "Instinctively, he seems to know it's not entirely harmless." "But subdued, a scorpion is a crunchy treat." "Meanwhile, Adventure's inquisitive streak... leads him off into the night." "But he's not alone." "The lion is closer than the foxes realize." "And in an instant, it's too late." "Selene searches for her youngster, but he's gone." "For a moment," "Ajax seems to consider a run at the lion." "But for all his posturing, there's nothing he can do." "Another young member of his family has been taken." "The family regroups at their old den, seeking safety on familiar ground." "For the bat-eared fox family, times are tough." "They've lost half the litter only two pups remain." "The rains have passed and winter comes to the Kalahari." "It's June, and Kinky and Flash are nearly grown." "The land is dry again." "And food is dwindling." "But there are more than enough termites around." "Their mounds are everywhere in this part of the Kalahari." "With the cooler temperatures, the bat-ears can forage all day." "Now that Flash and Kinky are grown, the jackal is no longer a threat, and he actually forages alongside the family." "There's plenty here for everyone." "By now, the grazing animals have all gone." "But an exotic visitor drops by a kori bustard." "One of the heaviest of the flying birds, it's also come to partake in the termite feast." "The youngsters have seen a lot of things by now, but nothing quite like this." "Flash stays out of the way." "By August, the foxes are nine months old and their lives take another turn." "A newly mature Flash is leaving scent markings letting males know she'll soon be ready to mate." "But Ajax, the protective father, covers her markings with his own." "Still, Flash's instincts won't be denied." "While the family forages, Flash is on her own persistent mission." "She's done her advertising, and it's been noticed." "A young male fox has caught her scent." "Flash welcomes him, and the courtship begins." "Over the next few days, the two foxes will bond." "Flash isn't ready to mate, but she's interested." "And her suitor, even more." "None of this sits well with Ajax." "Flash and her suitor take their first tentative steps together." "He seems a little pushy." "She seems inclined to go along." "Ajax has seen enough." "Heads down the youngsters beg for forbearance" "Flash interceding as her beau cowers behind." "But Ajax wants him gone." "His parental work done, Ajax settles down with the family." "Flash rejoins them." "Her first flirtation has been a failure." "Or has it?" "Her would-be mate hasn't gone far." "He's just a quarter-of-a-mile away." "Foraging to keep us his strength, he intends to stick around for awhile." "Ajax seems to be feeling complacent." "He's managed to keep his family intact at least for now." "But Kinky, too, has reached sexual maturity and now he's in the market for a mate." "He leaves the family in search of his future." "Soon Flash's persistent... suitor tries another approach." "This time, he advances with deference a young suitor seeking approval." "This approach goes over much better with Ajax, who allows the young suitor to leave with Flash." "The young couple set off to begin their new life." "Meanwhile, Kinky has discovered the scent of an available female, and in passing, leaves his own." "As night falls, the female's family discovers his markings." "Kinky's potential mate appears receptive, adding her own scent to his." "She is, in fact, the fox next door from the riverbed family." "Kinky tries his luck." "They seem a little touchy, so he takes a low-key approach." "And it appears to be working." "Ears back, crouching low, he's a study in submission." "The new couple leave the family behind and, in time, their courtship will begin in earnest." "Meanwhile, Flash and her mate have moved to her family's first burrow." "But she's still not ready to mate." "When the time finally comes, he's still not sure which end is up." "At last, he gets it right." "To help insure the success of their union, the mating will go on for days." "In just over two months, the couple will know if they've accomplished their goal." "With luck, there will soon be new additions to the neighborhood." "By November, Flash has pups of her own a healthy litter of three." "Despite the hardships of life in this unforgiving land," "Ajax and Selene's bloodline now has a chance of living on." "A feisty new generation of pups has arrived... desert foxes... with an ear to the winds that blow across the great Kalahari." "On Mexico's Sea of Cortez a marine biologist prepares to encounter an animal local fisherman fear more than sharks." "He is exploring a nether-world between fantasy and fact, pursuing a legendary monster of the deep that does, in fact, exits..." "Around the world, strange carcasses drift ashore, and fishermen catch huge creatures they have never seen before." "Bit by bit, the secret life of this strange animal is becoming known." "We can study its anatomy and the behavior of its smaller relatives - the bizarre and wonderful creatures called cephalopods." "If they did live anywhere where a man lived, they would make mince-meat of him in no time." "Fiction has always branded the giant squid a ferocious enemy of man, and some of its close relations can be terrifying indeed." "Master of the deep ocean, the sperm whale knows what we cannot, but recently scientists have found a way to learn its secrets." ""Whales were known to feed on squids, so it made sense to me try to use the sperm whale as our "hound dog" to lead us to the giant squid." ""We really don't know very much about what happens to whales once they leave the surface." "So we're working with a mystery that is hunting a mystery."" "Descend with us now into the dark and mysterious world of the sperm whale and its fearsome quarry, Architeuthis, the giant squid." "For most of human history the ocean has seemed a terrifying place." "Superstitious sailors reported many strange sightings at sea." "Their stories summoned up a fantastic variety of monsters that threatened them." "These ominous creatures were often blamed when disaster struck- as it frequently did." "Perhaps the most feared of all was called "the Kraken"" "a many-armed beast of incredible size and strength." "But most sea monsters proved to be harmless or non-existent." "All but "the Kraken" - known today as the giant squid." "The national Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C." "houses over a hundred thousand squid specimens - one of the largest collections in the world." "In this working laboratory," "Smithsonian zoologist Dr. Clyde Roper is engrossed in the study of cephalopods, such as octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid - and he welcomes the notoriety of the giant squid." ""People have to have their monsters, for some reason, and, uh, of course squid make a perfect monster because I really think that, um, especially for many young people today that the giant squid has become the new dinosaur."" "It's called Architeuthis, Greek for "the ruling squid"." "It is the perfect sea monster in fantasy, and a formidable predator in fact." "It dwarfs most other life in the sea." "It deploys a writhing mass of suckered arms and tentacles which ensnare its prey and jam it into a parrot-like beak." "It glares upon the world with the largest eyes in the animal kingdom." "Clyde Roper has a life-long passion for the giant squid, and is determined to see one alive in its natural habitat." "It all began when he was a teenager, working as a lobster fisherman in New Hampshire." ""It doesn't take very long, when you're working on, on cephalopods..." ""squids especially, uh, become aware that giant squids actually exist." ""and, as a idealistic young fellow," "I was pretty, um, incensed that so many..." ""mis-truths could be told about these magnificent animals." "And, as I got deeper and deeper into it," "I understood why there were so many misunderstandings and that is because there were so few specimens that had ever been found, no giant squid had ever been seen alive and, until this day, has never been seen alive and photographed." "So, I became interested in trying to learn about these animals just so I could tell the truth about them and try to dispel the myths."" "The aura of terrifying mystery is not easily dispelled." "A report, by a French warship, of an encounter with a giant squid fired the imagination of novelist Jules Verne." "His classic 20,000 leagues Under the Sea was published in 1870." "Verne's fictional squid updated the ship-eating legend of the Kraken." "This squid did not hesitate to attack the Nautilus," "Captain Nemo's electric submarine." ""Giant squid astern, sir!"" "The terror of the giant squid may be fictional, but its mystery is very real." "Once in a while, a giant squid carcass will be washed ashore." "Often, these are juvenile squid - more bizarre and pathetic than threatening." "Only an expert can tell its species, and that it could have grown to may times this size." "In modern times, more and more giant squid have been caught by fishermen as they work in deeper water." "They are almost always dead, or nearly so, when brought aboard." "Rarely does a scientist get to examine a newly caught specimen, and never a live one." "Most have turned up in the waters around New Zealand," "Norway, and Newfoundland." "This one, measuring more than 30 feet, was caught off Tasmania." "From such fragmentary evidence, scientists conclude that giant squid live in deep water and that they are predators." "They are believed to live only a few years and to grow very rapidly - no one knows how large." "The biggest actually measured was almost 60 feet and weighed about a ton." "It is the world's largest and most powerful invertebrate, portrayed as a villain in many tales of the sea." ""Giant squid have a reputation for being vindictive and vicious and fierce."" ""They have no reason t be, uh, vindictive and fierce." "They normally don't interact with human beings." "Uh, in fact, I wish they would act a little more, react with human beings so that we could find them." "At any rate, I think the reputation is certainly not deserved at all." ""Because they're so interesting, on their own account, that we don't need to make things up about them." ""Squids are really exciting to me because they have wonderful adaptations for the, for their life in the sea, and these include things like:" "like photophores or light organs, where they can flash and glow, uh, different colors;" "they are fast animals; they're powerful; some like cat's claws to, to collect their prey; uh, some of really are fascinating animals."" "Squid are weird and wonderful - they, and their close relatives, have been called "aliens from inner space."" "Indeed, they ride the underwater currents with a serenity that seems almost supernatural." "Squid are remarkably intelligent, and their primary nerve fibers are the largest in the animal kingdom - a hundred times the diameter of humans." "Thousands of multi-celled organs, called chromatophores, are scattered across their skin." "Each, receives signals directly from the brain." "This allows cuttlefish and squid to transform their appearance - in less than a second." "These changes in appearance provide camouflage and a dramatic means of communication." "From seductive yearnings to aggressive warnings, all can be conveyed by resplendent displays of light and color." "The advanced nervous system gives them lightning reflexes and a deadly attack." "Off the California coast, near Monterey, a submersible robot is lowered into the deep." ""sonar is..."" "Below, is Monterey Canyon, the deepest submarine fissure along the continental United States and probably the most carefully observed deep water in the world." "Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have been studying life in canyon on a regular basis for more than a decade." ""Yeah... what's up here to the right."" ""Look at this guy, right up..."" "Any day, they could discover a living Architeuthis and they have observed many remarkable squid." "They have also observed species of squid never before seen alive in their natural element." "Moroteuthis, a slender and very large squid, which grows up to 15 feet;" "Like the giant squid, almost nothing is known about its behavior." "Perhaps the strangest is Vampyroteuthis." "It's been called a "living fossil"" "and is completely covered with what seem to be light organs," "But whose exact function is unknown." "It's a remarkable contortionist, presenting to its enemies a ball of spikes." "The spikes are soft however and probably are used only for detection." "As varied and mysterious as they are, squid are short-lived, fast-growing and very prolific." "Shallow water species gather in huge numbers to breed." "These tentacled couplings are anything but random - as males compete savagely for females." "Many die naturally soon after mating... if they don't fall victim to the countless predators that pursue them." "Squid are among the most numerous free-swimming creatures in the sea, and a crucial part of the oceanic food chain." "Today, they support a massive fishery." "Some two million metric tons of squid are consumed annually, much of it in Japan and the Far East." "Small squid are the most popular sushi." "But everyone has heard about the giant squid - and it's gotten to be like the "Jolly Green Giant"" "for Japanese consumers." ""Hungry?" " Nissin Seafood Noodle."" "Mexico's Sea of Cortez:" "Every few years, squid of unusual size and ferocity are reported here." "Clyde Roper has come to investigate." "The squid live in dark underwater canyons." "They rise close to the surface at night to feed." "They're called Dosidicus gigas - or the Humboldt squid." "For safety, Roper will deploy a protective shelter where he can find refuge if he needs to." "This time of year, Dosidicus still have a few feet to grow." "But already, some are six feet long and, at times, they feed like starving piranhas." "Roper has never seen Dosidicus this big before, but he's eager to have the experience." ""They have, a, a, an incredible reputation and, uh, many of the fishermen say they would rather fall into a uh, into the water with, uh, sharks in a feeding frenzy rather than in a, a feeding frenzy of Humboldt squid" "because they have been known to kill people when they fall into the water with them." ""There, here he comes." ""In fact, they are so aggressive that they become, uh, they become cannibalistic."" "A hungry squid immediately begins to feed on the one that is hooked and defenseless." "Dosidicus often prey on one another - one thing that could account for the rapid growth of those survive." "Some might consider this an experience to be avoided;" "but big squid like the Humboldt don't survive in captivity." "For Roper, the chance to see them in the wild is a priceless opportunity." "Like smaller squid, Dosidicus shows vivid flashes of color when aroused or threatened." "Roper wants a close-up look- not easy when the object of study can deploy two tentacles, eight arms lined with powerful suckers, and a razor sharp beak." "And all this is concealed at times by clouds of dense ink, deployed by squid to confuse their enemies." "Having a squid inside the shelter was not part of the plan." "Roper tries to give it room to escape but gets a sharp nip from the departing squid anyway." ""Ech!"" "Later, Roper feels bold enough to venture out and observe Dosidicus in open water." "It is as close as he has ever come to seeing what Architeuthis might be like when feeding." ""At first, I was quite apprehensive." "Uh, it was a little scary." "But we were dealing with mostly individuals." "They were not in a feeding frenzy, so it, uh, it felt more comfortable." ""Oh, what a great animal." "I was impressed at how incredibly powerful it is and how it swims..." "Clyde Roper is not the first scientist to be caught up in the thrill of the hunt for big squid." ""and to see the funnel so expanded and, and moving out so fast, it was great."" "In the nineteen sixties, in fishing villages throughout Newfoundland, curious posters appeared." "The reward for a giant squid was the brainchild of the late Frederick Aldrich." "An expert on mollusks, Dr. Aldrich found himself in a region where giant squid are a proud part of local history." "Back in October 1873, Newfoundland fishermen came upon a giant squid" "The squid wrapped a tentacle around their boat." "But one fisherman, a 12-year-old boy, quickly hacked the tentacle off, and the monster retreated." "Only a month later," "Newfoundland fishermen hauled up a giant squid 32 feet long." "This was the first complete specimen ever examined by scientists." "And it was the first of many giant squid stranded or caught by Newfoundland fishermen." "But examining the dead was not enough for Frederick Aldrich - he went after a live one." ""Fred was really one of the first people to actually want to go out and try to find giant squid." ""I think Fred liked the mythology and he liked the, the, the giantness, the bigness of it all." "In 1989, Aldrich managed to mount a deep sea expedition to look for the giant squid." "It was an enterprise that has been compared to parachuting at night into an area of the United States picked at random - and hoping to see a grizzly bear." "But Aldrich was determined." "The sub descended a thousand feet in an area where giant squid have often washed ashore." "It was literally a shot in the dark." "Bait attracted an array of bottom fish." "For ten hours Aldrich watched and waited, but Architeuthis ignored his invitation." "I am not disappointed." "The fact that I didn't see one does not effect my understanding of these animals whatsoever." "I never really held out much hope that I would see one, because, oh, Lord, the ocean is so big and my ship so small." "The brief expedition ended and Aldrich died a few years later." "As deep water technology has improved, there have been more and more expeditions that could encounter a giant squid." "Many new species have been observed." "And some have been seen that could indeed be called monstrous." "This is the biggest shark ever seen in the deep sea." "A pacific sleeper shark that turned up in Japan's Suruga Bay." "Well over 23 feet in length, it loomed so large the camera couldn't see it all." "After investigating the sub for five suspenseful minutes, the giant went way, leaving observing scientists excited - and a bit relieved." "Once dismissed as mere sensationalism, the search for the giant squid continues to gain impressive proponents today." "One is Dr. Malcolm Clarke, a specialist in sperm whales and oceanic squid." ""I think the good has always got to have a balance of evil." "You, you see the beauty in, in the sea." "Many of, uh, the fish are very beautiful to look at, uh, and, uh, have wonderful silvery sides, they make pretty lights." "Uh, that's the beauty - you need a few big-teethed, big stomached monsters to go along with it." "As a young graduate student," "Malcolm Clarke conducted research aboard a factory ship that hunted sperm whales - once considered sea monsters, in their own right." "Little was known about sperm whale biology despite centuries of killing them." "Only dwindling populations put scientists aboard whaling boats to study the huge animals." "Clarke inspected hundreds of sperm whale stomachs." "One thing he found were the beaks of deep-sea squid, too tough to be digested." "This proved that squid are the sperm whale's primary source of food." "And Clarke amassed a huge collection of beaks - as many as eighteen thousand from a single whale." "Among them, are many beaks of the giant squid." ""This came from a giant squid that was taken from the stomach of a sperm whale caught in the Azores." "Uh, so that, uh, it wasn't a tremendously large one." "It was probably, uh, thirty, in excess of thirty feet in length." "So it was quite a big squid, but, um, not one of the biggest." "Uh, but certainly, it's got very, very powerful jaws." "So that this is very, very formidable." "And, uh, of course, if they did live anywhere where a man lived, eh, they would make mincemeat of him in no time." "On a remote shore in New Zealand, sperm whales have stranded." "What causes whales to strand is still a mystery." "Clyde Roper and Malcolm Clarke undertake the grim task of examining the carcasses and discover evidence of their common passion, the giant squid." "The skins of sperm whales are like weathered maps of ancient battles." "The circular scars were left by sharp-toothed suckers of giant squid, marking their last desperate struggles in the jaws of the Leviathan." ""They have fifty teeth." "These are in a, uh, form two rows in the lower jaw." "They don't have any upper teeth usually." "Uh, but the jaw is very, very narrow." "It can be about fifteen feet long and, uh, be a foot across." "So, it's very, very long and narrow." "Uh, and it's a snapping jaw, it's rather like some of the crocodiles." "It can probably, uh, snap shut very rapidly and they snap this jaw against the upper jaw." "Bang!" "And, in that movement, they squeeze the squid and it doesn't matter that the teeth don't damage them much;" "the squid will virtually go paralyzed." "They, they don't like being squeezed, squids don't " "It's one of their features - not like humans." "And, uh, if they're squeezed by the jaws, with these teeth, and there's a big, very powerful tongue right at back of the jaws to, to push it down the throat." "Experts on both whale and squid, Clarke and Roper are uniquely to execute a new strategy in the search of Arthieuthis." ""Whales were known to feed on squid right from the very beginning, in the earliest days of, uh, of the whale hunting expeditions, and some of those were actually giant squid." "So it made sense to me to try to use the sperm whale as our 'hound dog' to, to lead us to, to the giant squid and that quest has brought on this current expedition."" "Off the Azores," "Roper and Clarke help to deploy a hydrophone to listen for sperm whales." "They, and the other scientists on this expedition, are combining their search for the giant squid with research on the squid's most formidable enemy." "Hydrophones can detect the sounds of sperm whales from several miles away" " long before they can be spotted visually." "But the whales themselves have excellent hearing and often keep their distance from boats." "Today, the scientists are in luck." "The whales are feeling sociable." "A group of sperm whales is playing nearby." "Female and their young come to feed here in the warm waters of the mid-Atlantic and announce their presence with an excited chorus of sounds." ""Good grief!" "It is an audience clapping." "And they're clapping at us." "When sperm whales gather, this is anything but 'a silent world'." "A distinct series of clicks is called a "coda" used for communication." "Deciphering the sounds is a challenge for behavioral experts like Cornell University's Kurt Fristrup." ""Now that's one of the unknowns." "That could very well be used for echo-raging, sonar."" "Sometimes divers can get very close to sperm whales." "It's a tremendous thrill to be kindly received by the most powerful predators on earth." "Up close, a different sound is sometimes heard." "This loud and singular noise could be a warming or even a weapon - loud enough to stun a whale's prey." "The sperm whale's head is fully one third of its total weight and most of it is nose - the largest in the animal kingdom." "This is where the sounds are created." "They're generated in the front of the nose, then redirected as they resound powerful off the whale's skull." "No one knows exactly how." "This remarkable organ also holds tons of spermaceti oil." "By regulating its temperature, the whale may be able to control their buoyancy." "This would allow them to conserve energy on their long dives to hunt for squid." "In any case, the whales seem in perfect control when they sleep" " suspended virtually just below the waves and swells." "This remarkable behavior has only recently been reported and filmed." "Mother sperm whales are doting parents." "Their calves are slow to mature." "They stay in close contact with their mothers, but their ability to dive is limited." "A mature female needs more than half a ton of food a day... and her food source - large oceanic squid- may be thousands of feet below." "So she must leave her calf at the surface" " sometimes for almost an hour." "The calves are incredibly trusting and playful and will often approach and even nuzzle a diver." "This one offers its mouth for inspection." "The mother can go down more than half a mile" " a plunge deep into the unknown." ""We really don't know how sperm whales locate their prey, how they hunt, how they locate their prey and how they actually consume their prey." "There are several hypotheses:" "one is that they use echolocation and get the signals back that way..." "Somehow sperm whales "see" the world around them through a panorama of reflected sounds." "This certainly helps them navigate underwater, but can they detect and catch soft-bodied squids?" "The scientists seek another explanation." ""They can use the, their eyes to see the bioluminescence that might be created either by the squids themselves or by the squids swimming through the water and creating a swirl of bioluminescence." ""When they swim through the water they disturb all the little organisms that are in the water, and these little organisms, because they're disturbed, set off a glowing or flashing." ""Perhaps the whales then key on these strips of bioluminescence or streaks of bioluminescence and will be able to home in on the squid in that way." ""So, it's a little difficult to know exactly what it is and that's just one more thing we could see if we could get down into the sea with these giant whales."" "To follow whales into the deep has long been a favorite theme of poets and a dream of engineers." "Now, with support from the National Geographic Society, one man has managed to do it." "He's Greg Marshall, inventor of a system called crittercam." "It's a simple concept that has proven very difficult to execute." ""I had the idea for the crittercam 11 years ago." "Since then, basically, every waking moment," "I've spent thinking about, developing, working on making this thing happen."" "In early experiment, cameras were strapped to the backs of sea turtles before being risked in the wild." ""What motivates me is the, the possibility of discovering totally new phenomena of nature, seeing things we've never seem before."" "The spirited fur seal provided a greatest challenge." "A smaller, more rugged camera needed to enter its frenetic world." "With sperm whales, every step from deployment to retrieval has been fraught with difficulty." ""It's only through, you know, really carefully engineering and then some trial and error and experience the field that we've, that we've finally been able to succeed in the way that we have."" "After years of experimentation, crittercam is finally ready for serious field work in the Azores." "The scientists are hopeful that the camera can survive a deep water dive, and be located and recovered afterwards." ""Um, underwater it weights nothing, of course, so that, uh, it just floats right back after it's released from the animal." "Floats back at about this orientation and, uh, will stick out of the water about this far."" "The system must be able to endure extreme pressure and record picture in almost total darkness." "The compact unit includes lights;" "instruments to record depth, temperature and sound;" "acoustic and radio homing transmitters;" "and a video camera able to amplify light over 50,000 times." ""Greg!" "Come over!"" "The first task is often the hardest - getting close to the whales." ""You guys, can direct us to where it is, okay?"" "Scientists have used these techniques to attach instruments to whales, but no one has tried to attach a camera before." "They are breaking new ground." ""It was a challenge to get close to these whales, an emotional challenge." "Uh." "Clearly, we'd heard all the stories of, of the, the havoc that the sperm whales had wreaked on ships in the past and so forth and, you know, I, I didn't know," "what, uh, reaction of a, of the whales might be to us." "So, when we first started approaching the whales," "I was a bit nervous, there's no question about it."" "The camera can be attached by a tag the size of a paper clip" " or with a large suction cup." "A successful deployment depends entirely on the whims of the whales." "At the moment, they appear to want a little time to themselves." ""We spend a lot of time on the water trying to get close to the whales, a lot of time on the water, and you have to do that because the whales are only at the surface of a few minutes every hour." "Uh, so we have to be perfectly in position, anticipating where the whales are coming up, uh, in order to place ourselves close enough so that we can get to them during and opportunity deploy."" ""You've got whales, uh, right ahead of you." "They'll be off you, uh, starboard bow, about a hundred and fifty meters." "Uh, there's a whole gaggle of them, they're a social group." "Three or four small ones and a couple of large ones." ""What we've found, for the most part, is that the whales tend to be quite curious about us." "If we're quiet in their environment, we've found that, as often as not, they tend to actually come over and investigate us." "The system is launch- and we are riding in a pod of whales." "The clicking noises are made by the whales, and for the first time we can see exactly how their sounds relate to their behavior." "It's a revelation how close the whale are- in their constant calling and with their bodies touching one another." "Then, as dolphins join the array, it's like an undersea dance." "They sometimes ride the subsurface waves generated by the forward thrust of the whales" " these mountains of movement." "Crittercam is working well near the surface." "Now comes the real test as whales descend into the deep." "They will disappear for more than 20 minutes." "The scientist are left alone with their hopes and their fears." ""If we don't retrieve the system, we get none of the data, we get none of the images, none of the audio, we learn nothing." "Unless we recover it, it's a bust."" "A messenger form another world, crittercam returns from the deep." "It has detached before it should have, but its homing signal is loud and clear." "After eleven year of trial and error and months on the high seas, a moment of truth has arrived." ""Look at that, look at that, what is that?" "That's the... the blowhole ...look, puffs up there..." "The camera is tethered about six feet behind the blowhole and face forward" " we are with several whales diving together." "On the right, a juvenile." "This could be a training dive." "Calves only gradually learn to dive as deep as their mothers." "The clicking sounds appear to be coming from more than one whale." "Some scientists believe that each whale has its own signature coda." "Tapes like this one could help support the theory." "It's darker and deeper now and another whale comes into view at the upper left." "Strange new sounds are heard - growls, grunts-even squeals." "No one has conclusively identified these sounds with sperm whales before." "Now the whales are over nine hundred feet deep and a strange thing happens." "They almost stop and one moves back as if inspecting crittercam... it's head and eye are just to the right off camera." "There is a long moment of consideration and then, apparently satisfied, the whales speed up again, going deeper still." "There's two, there's two of them there." "This is the calf." "1200 feet-at this depth the pressure is enormous- over five hundred pounds per square inch." "Until the 1960's, no conventional submarine could descend this deep without being crushed like an eggshell." "How sperm whales survive these depths is still not understood." "But they've been doing it for million of year" " lured here by vast bounty of large oceanic squid." "They will not find Architeuthis this time, but each moment is a revelation for Roper and his colleagues." ""The interesting thing here, you can, you can hear that these different coda that we're hearing, um, each one is slightly different and, and every once in a while we hear a buzz." ""Now the whales have stopped." "The, the camera is pointing right down, uh, right down into the skin of the, of the whale that's, uh, that's carrying the crittercam." ""There see, now I'm hearing that, hearing that buzz which is..." "That's fantastic, that's so..." "Yeah, that's a fantastic sound, that long, long buzzing sound and, uh, this is, uh, what, we believe is the sonar that they're using for, when they're actually hunting," "or have actually picked up a prey organism and they're zeroing-in on the prey and getting closer and closer to it." ""Now they're starting to move again and, uh, have turned and turned back towards the surface because now we can see, uh, the lighted, uh, the background that's lighted." "So they're heading back up to the surface." ""Whoa!" "There comes a, a, a whale right across, another one, right across in front of the camera."" ""There's two more." "Look at that!"" ""And there's a, there's a third one over on that side on the right." "So, that makes four whales..." "The, the crittercam has been knocked off, that's how closely, uh, the whales were to each other, really rubbing along, uh, side-by-side."" "No giant squid was found." "But this and other crittercam dives make the expedition a stunning success." ""We were able, for the very, very first time, to enter into the deep-sea domain of the sperm whale." "By playing these instrument on the whale, um, we were able to get down to many hundreds of meters deep and how the animal actually behaves down in those depths."" "But the sperm whales seem blissfully unaware of our efforts to enter and understand their world." "They have appointments to keep far below, which we can still see only our imagination." "One day, in the not too distance future, a whale may bring us a living portrait of Architeuthis" "and one of the last great challenges in natural science and photography will be met." "But for the moment, we must contemplate these great whales as we always have, fascinated by their physical powers, tantalized by the secrets they hold in their great brains." "Two-thirds of our planet lies in the deep ocean, and that mysterious realm is their home." "In search of the giant squid," "Clyde Roper and his colleagues seem undaunted by the obstacles they face" " happily engrossed in the hunt for the creature that fascinates them." "Perhaps there is much truth in John Steinbeck's observation, that men need sea monsters in their personal oceans- that an ocean with its nameless creatures would be like sleep without dreams." "Paradise, for some, is simply an empty beach on a Caribbean island." "But for wild creatures this is not a destination, but a dividing line." "Here the tranquil inland world comes to an end and a far more complex and surprising one begins." "Vast coral reefs and sandy plains shimmer beneath the crystal Caribbean Sea." "And the tropical sun illuminates an array of living jewels." "Here are creatures rare and fantastic." "Here are figments of our nightmares and flights of wonderful fancy from our dreams." "In waters famed for hidden treasure, another kind of wealth is stunningly abundant." "Here, immersed in beauty and subtle mystery, we now discover the JEWELS OF THE CARIBBEAN SEA." "The largest living structures on planet Earth are controlled from outer space." "Every year, with uncanny precision, the orbiting moon somehow sets in motion the process of spawning in coral reefs throughout the world." "The same response occurs at different times in great coral reef systems from the Red Sea to the Pacific and greater Caribbean." "Tiny bundles of brain coral eggs and sperm rise like miniature moons." "Millions of them flood the sea." "Different species of coral respond in different ways." "Some corals are hermaphroditic and release packages that contain both eggs and sperm." "Other types release them separately." "It is all unbelievably subtle and complex." "The great blooming mass of eggs and sperm floats to the surface where the eggs will be fertilized and become larvae." "The larvae will drift, sometimes for many weeks," "Before setting to be bottom and perhaps beginning a new reef a hundred miles away." "The result of a few minute coral larvae given thousands of years to grow and reproduce can be this a city in the sea the glory of the Caribbean." "It is home to creatures as tiny as a single bacteria as huge as the manta ray." "Coral reefs may be hundreds of feet thick, many miles in length." "They are by far the largest structures created by living creatures." "Yet they are made almost entirely from the skeletons of tiny coral polyps, some the size of a single pearl." "The living coral grows about half an inch a year." "It lies upon the skeletons of dead coral, layer upon layer." "Along the edge of the reef we are seeing growth that took thousands of years." "Twenty feet down we are on the reef that Columbus might have seen." "At 85 feet we are in the time of Christ." "At 180 feet we have reached the time of the pyramids." "Around the reef great predators roam." "A Caribbean reef shark snaps up the weak and the unwary." "These swift killers don't always prevail." "In slow motion a small snapper makes a quick turn, tumbles down the shark's back, and slips off its tail." "Those that escape a shark may fall victim to a black grouper." "But the coral city is a community of strange alliances where the threat of sudden death can be mysteriously suspended." "This coral head is a special place." "It's called a cleaning station." "Tiny cleaner gobies cluster near the base of the coral head." "The tiger grouper often visits here." "Trusting in an ancient and mysterious relationship, the gobies do not hesitate at the tiger's mouth." "The gobies are allowed to crawl all over, feeding on parasites and dead tissue." "In return, every inch of the grouper is sanitized and groomed." "Other cleaners have other clients." "This Pederson shrimp, waving its white antennae, is issuing an invitation and is accepted by a Nassau grouper." "Cleaning is a striking example of symbiotic behavior." "As a result of its service, the cleaner is fed." "And the fish that is cleaned is healthier as a result." "But researchers suspect that the simple pleasure it provides is also important a sensuous interval in the struggle to survive." "The shrimp is allowed astonishing liberties." "It crawls through the delicate gills in search of tiny parasites that irritate the host." "On the reef many creatures may not travel more than a few inches in their entire lives." "But others are visitors creatures who have come here on journeys of thousands of miles." "During these winter months, parts of the Caribbean fill with the music of humpback whales." "The whales come here from far to the north." "Little or no feeding takes place during the several months they stay here." "Males give themselves to fighting for the right to escort a females, and females are giving birth and caring for their calves." "In early spring they'll head back north as far as Greenland and Barffin Island one of the greatest migrations in the ocean." "In a winter storm a hundred years ago, a steel sailing ship carrying molasses from Caribbean plantations sank here on Little Bahama bank." "Drifting coral larvae have settled on the wreck, and a new reef city is being born." "Coral polyps absorb calcium from seawater, which they use to create the hard structures that make up a reef home for a new community of jewel-like inhabitants." "From its den beneath the collapsed bow of the wreck, a loggerhead turtle emerges to greet a new day." "Turtles, like whales, are tied to the surface by their need for air." "The loggerhead must breathe every 30 minutes or so." "Then he continues this leisurely but unrelenting search for food." "The slipper lobster has sacrificed speed for the protection of camouflage." "Not exactly lightning fast himself, the loggerhead relies on persistence and his powerful jaws." "Above the wreck, swifter predators are waiting." "The barracuda hovers around the reef most of the day." "Smaller fish tend to ignore it." "But everything can change in an instant if it gets hungry." "The highly maneuverable yellowtail snapper can sometimes avoid becoming a meal." "These waters also swarm with ballyhoo often not as fortunate." "This is one of the most intelligent creatures on the reef the Caribbean reef squid." "It is a creature from another world." "Their skins are alive with signals of great sophistication." "Not only can they warm that a predator is near, but they can even distinguish one predator from another." "Males competing for the affections of a female engage in a kind of visual combat, displaying spectacular colors and patterns." "No damage is done, the contest is highly ritualized." "Squid  courtship is also very visual a synchronized and extravagant display." "The actual mating however, is so brief, it's almost invisible." "The male lunges at the female with a special arm, attaching to her a packet of sperm." "The female can take her time deciding if she will accept the packet for self-fertilization or later get rid of it, rejecting it in favor of another." "In spring many reef creatures are breeding." "Excited schools of mating fish dance frenetically and animate the placid Caribbean." "After mating, the male yellowhead jawfish is left by himself with the fertilized eggs." "He has them in his mouth, spitting them out from time to time to aerate them." "For five days he'll continue his tender vigil until the baby jawfish finally hatch." "Hundreds of Cerole wrasse school in long columns as they migrate every day across the reef." "They are deadly marauders, attacking new generations of other fish." "Parrotfish are spawning, and the arriving Creole wrasse rush in to gorge themselves." "They eat the eggs the moment they are released by the female parrotfish." "Thousands of eggs vanish in a few seconds, but inevitably some escape and a few tiny parrotfish survivors will inherit the reef." "The Creole wrasse stop by a cleaning station." "A juvenile Spanish hogfish fearlessly takes them on." "It dashes from wrasse to wrasse checking for parasites." "Requesting to be cleaned, the Creole wrasse stand on their head." "Then, as the hogfish moves on, the next wrasse dashes eagerly to the head of the line" "The smoke rising from this barrel sponge is a dense cloud of sperm." "When a sponge starts to spawn, it triggers a chain reaction along the reef as others of the same species hurry to mix their spawn." "The sea is as warm with their fertility." "High over the teeming city, clouds are gathering." "This is a springtime swarm of thimble jellies." "Ninety-five percent water, without brains or complex nervous systems, they are little more than fragments of the sea itself." "Each is the size of a thumbnail." "Thimble jellyfish are armed with stinging cells that carry a mild venom." "But this doesn't seem to discourage many inhabitants of the reef." "The clouds of thimble jellies drift out into the open sea and into the haunt of giants." "Sperm whales spend most of their days diving far underwater where they hunt for squid." "They surface every 45 minutes or so to breathe and bask in the Caribbean sun." "But not all sperm whales plunge into the deep." "Newborn calves lack the endurance to make these epic dives and must wait near the surface for their mothers to return to them." "This calf lools in a gentle sea as his mother descends a quarter of a mile." "As she soars through the darkness and searches undersea canyons far below him in pursuit of squid, he can still hear her familiar sonar clicks." "Fearless and playful, the lone baby whale turns and spins, exploring the dexterity of his great body in the weightless freedom of oceanic space." "He is covered with remoras, harmless companions who cling to him for a spectacular free ride." "When he learns to dive, they will probably leave him, unable to stand the cold and pressure of the abyss." "The baby whale hears his mother returning and joins her to explore their favorite waters deep channels off volcanic islands in the Caribbean." "They swim by islands packed with more and more hotels and holiday homes." "Seemingly lush and abundant, Caribbean ecosystems are very vulnerable to the tourists who come here." "To make room for them, native vegetations is stripped away." "Over the years ecosystems disappear and so do the creatures that inhabit them on land and in the sea." "The dark patches behinds the shelter of the reef are prairies of turtle grass." "They cover hundreds of square miles of the shallow banks." "This is home to a manatee." "Once great numbers of these gentle undersea mammals grazed here." "How the sight of one is like encountering a lone buffalo on the midwestern prairie." "Remoras cling to the manatee." "They get food from its waste." "The lone manatee probably gains nothing but companionship." "The gentle stately manatee faces many dangers." "Today, its greatest enemy is probably pollution." "Easy targets for a harpoon, manatees once were hunted almost to extinction, and poachers still take them when they can." "Only the tip of the snout is exposed while breathing." "Manatees are highly vulnerable to being hit by motor boats and jet skis." "Many bear propeller scars and many die of their wounds." "When manatees are not feeding, they are often sleeping." "Despite the camera, this one is just dropping off." "There he's fast asleep, oblivious to the tide of change sweeping away his world." "The manatee's fate, and that of dozens of other species, depends largely on strangers who pass this way briefly and travel in splendid isolation." "Few of these travelers are aware of their fatal impact on the wonders all about them, great and small." "The reef at night." "Many fish sleep." "This redtail parrotfish slumbers with eyes open, lying on her side on the coral." "As a prelude to mating, a spiny lobster male gently caresses the carapace of a female." "Lobster larvae, when they are born, look like spun glass." "The spiny lobster female helps her tiny larvae into the world." "She agitates her tail to help move them out into the current." "By the thousands the tiny larvae drift past their mother's eye, never to be seen by her again." "Larvae, eggs, plankton, and tiny fish all drift out from the reef, a dazzling assortment of creatures cast with seeming carelessness onto the sea wind." "This is a venomous sea wasp." "Its stinging tentacles find larval fish, which are quickly anesthetized and consumed." "Reef squid lie in wait for passing fish and crustaceans." "And out of the darkness a giant manta ray joins the feast." "The manta loops to stay in the area most dense with plankton." "It's maneuver as graceful as it is efficient." "The arms on either side of her face are cephalic lobes that channel plankton into a foot-wide mouth." "Her wings span six feet and she weights several hundred pounds." "All night the eerie feast of plankton will go on." "Out on the prairie a pearlfish stands on its head, mimicking the surrounding turtle grass." "Camouflage makes it almost invisible." "This unappealing animal is a sea cucumber." "It consumes sediments, which are filtered internally for digestible bits of organic matter." "It is also home for the pearlfish." "when in danger, the pearlfish" "Locates the rear end of the sea cucumber with its nose." "Then it inserts its sharply tapered tail and slips back into the cucumber's anus to reach a safe hiding place in the intestine." "The pearlfish obviously benefits." "But what's in it for the sea cucumber, if anything, is not known." "Comes a sultry Caribbean dawn, and the placid sea gives no hint" "Of the night's events." "A baby loggerhead turtle emerges from the sand to greet its first day." "It begins a life that could last more than 60 years, or just a few minutes." "Turtles produce abundant young, but only a few will survive to carry on their species." "The baby heads instinctively for its ocean home." "If a female, she may return to this very beach to lay her own eggs in 25 years or so." "If a male, he will never again leave the water." "Now the baby turtle must cross the reef and make its way to the open ocean." "It's a dangerous crossing." "Predators gather quickly when the sea is full of hatching turtles." "But this turtle is lucky." "After 36 hours of nonstop swimming, the hatchling finds shelter." "It will spend its first year near the sargassum fronds, later head north, then eastward across the Atlantic to the Azores and the Canary Islands." "The flotsam of the sea accumulates where ocean currents converge." "Sargassum weed and other drifting plant and animal life also gather here, along with an increasing mass of human rubbish." "Jellyfish congregate here too, and one is the first meal for the newly hatched loggerhead." "These waters often teem with jellyfish and some of them are voracious predators." "This large stinging cauliflower has captured several moon jellies." "They are helpless in its deadly tentacles." "The medusa fish may be resistant to the cauliflower's stinging cells or just incredibly nimble." "It feeds on scraps and leftovers from the cauliflower's meals and uses the broad bell as a personal magic carpet." "Convergent currents drive moon jellyfish together by the tens of thousands." "Their translucent bodies form a gently pulsing cathedral in the sea." "The sargassum weed is a safe nursery for many Caribbean reef fish." "Spawned on the reef, schools of baby fish hide here in the open sea until they are old enough to return to their more hazardous home." "A loggerhead turtle is hunting for lobster." "The lobster uses its spiny antennae." "They are covered with sharp barbs and the lobster aims them at the turtle's eyes with uncanny accuracy." "Eventually the loggerhead discouraged and returns to his home in the wreck." "In a long, slow-paced life, one lobster more or less makes little difference." "Adult loggerheads lead settled lives." "They hunt by day and at night usually hole up to sleep in a favorite crevice." "Another turtle, a hawksbill, is on the prowl." "She eats sponges." "She spends her days searching out the varieties she likes best." "When she finds one, she contents herself with just a few bites and then moves on." "The sponge will survive." "Its tissue will heal and later the turtle will be back for more." "For the French angelfish the sponge is now an easy meal, because the turtle has torn through its outer layer." "But this sponge has a defender." "Some damselfish are farmers." "They cultivate patches of algae on sponges that they rely on for food." "Although the queen angelfish is many times the size of a damsel, the little fish is unrelenting." "It will attack almost anything to protect the algae farm." "Other kinds of algae have changed the face of the Caribbean." "As they grow, several species concentrate calcium in their tissues." "When they die, the calcified skeletons of these plants decompose and become find sand." "It's known for its delicate grain and brilliant whiteness." "After thousands of years this sand has created sand banks that can stretch for miles between and shore." "Plains of this and other types of sand are scattered throughout the Caribbean." "Seemingly barren deserts, they are home for many creatures that specialize in concealment and camouflage." "A male peacock flounder has excellent eyesight." "He watches from a high sand mound, trying to spot a mate." "At last, a female." "He confronts her and displays his long pectoral fin." "Seducing her will not be easy." "The female is not sufficiently impressed." "He must try again." "He displays all the signals proper for his species, but still she is unresponsive." "A cold fish indeed." "A curious mutton snapper butts in just as the reluctant female begins to show some interest." "Finally she responds." "It all ends with a single exquisite shiver and a tiny puff of spawn." "During the long summer day the voices of dolphins can often be heard across the sandy plains." "These are Atlantic spotted dolphin." "Like other mammals, dolphin babies are nourished by mother's milk, which is squirted into their mouths under pressure." "Baby spotted dolphins don't develop their spots for a few years." "Dolphins are social and very intelligent animals, and their private lives are highly visible here in the open." "These dolphins relax here after a night of vigorous hunting." "During the day the look for flounder and razorfish that lie concealed on the bottom." "The dolphin's sensitive sonar can locate prey partially buried in the sand." "Once discovered, a small fish has little chance to escape." "Dolphin's are extremely efficient hunters." "They are very playful and have plenty of time to fool around." "Like chimpanzees and other intelligent mammals, they often reinforce their social bonds with sexual behavior." "What starts as gentle foreplay soon turns to mating." "Dolphins mate belly to belly." "The large gray dolphins here are male bottlenose dolphins a completely different species." "Female spotted dolphins pet the bottlenoses and coax them to play." "Soon this becomes a sensual frenzy." "The two species will mate, an event only recently recorded in the wild." "As a result there may be hybrid young, but they will probably be sterile and have no offspring of their own." "Dolphins show hyper-sexuality in captivity and this is often attributed to boredom." "But films like this confirm that they are also highly sexual in the wild." "It has never been demonstrate that dolphins have language as we know it." "But these dolphin vocalizations, slowed down six times, show just how much information could be conveyed by their intricate sounds." "The dolphin language, if any, remains an unsolved riddle to science." "Whatever their meaning, dolphin sounds are rich and varied, an essential part of their social lives and an expression of their soaring spirit." "For weeks in summer the dolphins' playground is mirror-still, a warm and crystal sea seemingly frozen in time." "Then, finally, the long summer ends when the first winter storm clouds start to gather over the reef." "The jewels of the Caribbean take shelter." "As winter arrives among the creatures that seek safety and security on the reef is the spiny lobster." "Lobsters group together and dash for the safety of deep water at the edge of the reef." "They are in the open here, vulnerable to predators, so speed equals survival." "One lobster takes the lead, seeking the shortest course to the protection of the reef." "Each following lobster uses its antennae to engage the one ahead." "Like racing cars, they take advantage of the draft." "The train of lobsters makes the trip faster than one could traveling alone." "Their trek ends at the reef." "Here they find calm water protected from storms." "Spreading out over the reef, each will find a sheltering hole or crevice that will serve as its winter home." "Another winter visitor has only just arrived." "Returning to this city in the sea, humpback whales have come back from the north." "A mother humpback whale is sleeping." "Her newborn calf snuggles under her chin." "Calves spend their days playing, nursing, and just basking in an ocean filled with the songs of whales." "The Caribbean is an ideal nursery for the baby humpbacks." "They're 12 to 14 feet long at birth and grow very quickly." "They'll each take up to 50 gallons of milk a day and soon be strong enough to make the long journey north." "The round trip is over 8,000 miles." "Once these humpback whales were hunted almost to extinction." "Only a hundred or so wintered in the Caribbean." "Now they have made a modest comeback." "But all is not well in their environment." "Each time they return, these waters are increasingly unfamiliar." "This area once included thousands of manatees, reef sharks, and grouper." "Now many of them are gone." "The reef itself has declined." "Many of its jewels are missing." "In just a few years there has been dramatic change." "One reason is a new predator, ever more common, that strikes from above." "Fisherman of the Caribbean cast their nets." "Their hunt for food from waters around the reef is more and more intense." "Their methods are increasingly sophisticated and life is strained from the sea." "Longlines are set for groupers and sharks, and lures are trawled through the waters by game fishermen." "In some places the remaining jewels look to a future shadowed by change." "Their homes are not what they used to be." "New reefs grow on structures that are artificial and for the residents are fraught with danger." "Oil rigs provide shelter on one hand, the threat of spills and pollution on the other." "And these new reefs may not endure for thousands of years." "They are here today by man's whim and could easily be gone tomorrow." "In these devastating times a new creature has come to the reef the sport diver." "Because of divers, sea life is increasingly valuable alive and free." "This single shark brings millions of tourist dollars to the Bahamas every year." "This grouper attracts thousands to resorts in the Cayman islands." "These dolphins play with thousands of divers, bringing wealth to the struggling nations of the West Indies." "So there is a new form of symbiotic behavior in the undersea world." "Marine creatures bring joy to creatures of the land and we, in turn, must provide protection against the ravages of overfishing and pollution." "Above all, now there are human witnesses to the damage humans are doing here." "There is still a wealth of precious jewels strewn about the Caribbean, and there is still time to save them." "In the heart of southern Africa stands the remains of a once mighty city," "Great Zimbabwe." "For hundreds of years a mysterious civilization reigned supreme here in the Zimbabwe plateau." "Then suddenly in the 16th century it crumbled, leaving behind only a riddle:" "who had built these massive walls?" "Obsessed with legends of a lost white civilization, a German explorer stumbled upon the ruins." "Was this the legendary city of Sheba, he thought, whose queen captured the heart of King Solomon?" "Fifty years later, an archeologist in her quest for the truth unearthed an even more remarkable past." "Had Great Zimbabwe been the center of a powerful black culture, one of the greatest cities of its time?" "This idea sparked furious debate and threatened to overturn centuries of bias about Africans and their history." "1871." "The German explorer Karl Mauch searches for a legendary city he's convinced lies hidden in wildest Africa." "Mauch has spent six years in Africa overcoming poverty, sickness and numerous scrapes with death in pursuit of his obsession." "Against all odds," "Mauch discovers immense stone walls that cover hundreds of acres." "He is over awed." "What he has found are the ruins of an ancient civilization, the only one of its kind in sub Saharan Africa." "Mauch believes this discovery will be his crowning achievement." "Mauch's obsession with Africa began as a child." "At that time, Africa was a land of mystery." "Fantastic stories hinted at wondrous landscapes, populated by exotic animals and wild natives." "At age 10, while gazing at a map of Africa," "Mauch vowed to one day explore its uncharted lands." "Like many Europeans," "Mauch's understanding of Africa was based on legends that grew out of the Bible." ""And she gave the King 120 talents of gold." "Never again gave such an abundance as these that the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon."" "Solomon, the wisest and richest Hebrew king from the Bible inspired many later legends." "One told of Solomon's gold mines at a place in Africa called 'Ophir'." "Others spoke of the enigmatic Queen of Sheba." "She was a beautiful seductress who appeared in Jerusalem, paid homage to King Solomon, became his lover, and just as suddenly disappeared back to her mysterious land which lay hidden somewhere in Africa." "Arab traders pried the east African coast in search of the lands of Sheba and Ophir." "The Africans who traded with these Arabs came to believe that Solomon's mines and Sheba's lost city were somewhere in the interior." "Mauch burned to be the man who would discover these legendary lands." "But Mauch was poor, his options limited." "Living in very modest circumstances." "I was bound by my parents to become a teacher; and I was, unfortunately, denied the opportunity for further studies at a university." "I've endeavored to obtain knowledge of medicine by talking to doctors and reading medical journals." "I have studied the practice collecting insects, birds and minerals." "Karl Mauch did not come from a privileged background whatsoever." "Karl Mauch was a self made man." "What he did was he taught himself cartography, geology, all the sciences that were needed for him to be a great explorer in Africa like Livingston, Burton, Speak." "That's what Karl March came from, that's what he wanted to be." "The dream of African exploration consumed Mauch." "By practicing gymnastics and walking six miles a day in every season, over any ground, often without food or drink," "I've tried to steel my body." "Mauch wrote to the German Geographical Institute in hope of gaining their support for an expedition to unexplored Africa." "The response was harshly negative." "It warned that African exploration should be left to the professionals." "It went without saying this meant people of higher social standing." "He carried this letter with him for years." "Karl Much was not accepted by the German Geographical Institute because really he wasn't a member of the club." "He was self taught, he had never been to university, he had no titles, he had not connections." "He had no hope, really." "The German Geographic Institute had good reason to reject Mauch." "African exploration was a dangerous and expensive affair." "By the time Mauch dreamed of Africa, hundreds of European adventurers and missionaries had already died there." "Most explorers were independently wealthy or well connected." "In Africa, they could afford to hire scores of natives who became their laborers, porters, guides and translators." "Mauch, however, had nothing." "Not even ship fare to Africa." "Determined to explore wildest Africa, Mauch, age 27, enlisted as a crew member on a ship sailing for Durban," "South Africa in 1864." "At last the ship reached Africa." "How I wished for the time when, for the first occasion," "I would be able to set foot on this strange soil." "But the reality of Durban and the many other European settlements in South Africa clashed with Mauch's dream of an untamed land." "South Africa, in 1865, was inhabited by, of course, a great number of tribes:" "the Xhosa, the Zulu, the Sotho." "By this time, quite a few white, about a quarter million whites, had come settled, immigrated, whatever you like." "And, in fact, conquered a bit." "Mauch wanted to be at the frontier, at the edge of the excitement, the adventure." "But even in a small forest near civilized Durban, he felt lost in an alien world." "It struck him all at once" "That Africa might pose a greater challenge than he could handle." "I got into denser bush." "The high trees were somber crowns growing close to one another." "Even the small sound could be heard." "In all honesty, a feeling of fear got hold of me." "I felt so terribly deserted amid the surrounding strange nature." "He overcame this panic and struck out on foot for the frontier in what is now northern South Africa." "Mauch walked for three weeks doing odd jobs at farms in exchange for food and shelter." "He joined one of the wagon trains hat carried supplies to frontier settlements." "In his spare time, he took notes, sketched and collected specimens." "He fell in love with the country, but not the settlers, most especially the Boar, the Dutch colonists." "He thought they were uncivilized, and their treatment of blacks a disgrace." "A 'kafir' or native colored is in the opinion of the Boar, not a man." "Mauch's trip to the frontier took months, but it carried him to the threshold of his goal:" "uncharted Africa." "Scattered African villages and European farming towns dotted the vast tracks of open land along the frontier." "You have now, I could tell myself, passed the prepatory class and entered the high school of traveling." "You have become the top of the fall." "Over the next year," "Mauch tentatively ventured from the frontier towns and villages to explore what lay beyond." "Many of the Africans he encountered were unfriendly." "White settlers were pushing from the south, and the Africans resisted further intrusions." "They were especially suspicious of anyone making maps or surveying the land." "To disguise his intentions, Mauch developed a novel plan." "He feigned a sort of madness." "It succeeded." "The Africans pronounced him insane and left him free to do as he pleased." "With just a simple compass and a pen and ink set," "Mauch created the first maps and sketches of the South African interior." "He sent his journals to the Geographical Institute in Germany, the same group that had rejected him." "They began to publish Mauch's accounts." "And, to his great satisfaction, portrayed him as a model German explorer." "German sponsors even began to send small sums to support his efforts." "Mauch's status grew even further when he made the first gold discovery in southern Africa." "Word quickly spread." "Prospectors filtered into the area, but Mauch never staked a claim to the field." "I have before me a choice between my gold discoveries and my explorations." "Without hesitation he chose exploration, and so gave up the chance to make a fortune." "Adventure and respect were what Mauch had desperately sought and was finally achieving." "He wanted more." "In 1968, at the age of 31," "Karl Mauch set off on an expedition into unexplored Africa." "I may, without exaggeration, call this journey a long fight against hunger." "Game were scarce." "Bands of hostile warriors stalked Mauch." "He lived in constant fear." "While mapping swampy coastlines, Mauch contracted malaria." "He went without food for 8 days and fell into a coma." "Fevers and ill health would torment him for the rest of his life." "Mauch revived when local Africans told him of an abandoned stone city past the Lompopo River." "Though still weak," "Mauch resolved to find the fabled city and in January of 1871 six years after arriving in Africa he set forth on the adventure he believed was his destiny." "When Mauch crossed the Lompopo River, he entered a land unknown to Europeans." "It was also an alien world in which Mauch offered an easy target for chiefs who demanded gifts." "His trade goods quickly dwindled." "In these circumstances one has to exert patience." "One has to assume the right expression on one's face when handing out presents." "As Mauch pushed into the interior, villagers who did not own firearms demanded he hunt for them." "At one point he was feeding 40 people a day who did no work in return." "While other explorers bullied and slashed their way across Africa," "Mauch tried negotiation and generosity with his porters." "A cold wind blew during the night between the mountains." "I took pity on their naked skinny figures shivering in the cold, and gave them my own woolen blankets." "His efforts to win their good will failed." "Eight months into the trip, they disappeared." "They had sliced open his bags and stolen much of his goods." "He felt trapped." "I could not flee." "As the second night followed the first, my position was desperate and it was, therefore, not surprising that the thought occurred to me to take my own life before I succumb to slow torture." "But Mauch must have known that his goal was near." "The next day he snapped out of his despair and headed to a local village." "There he hired guides who led him to a distant mountaintop." "Mauch beheld ancient walls in the valley below." "God be praised!" "That is what I have been seeking." "Only a few days before I was occupied with great thoughts of death, and today I stand before the most brilliant success of my travels." "After six hard years of exploration," "Karl Mauch discovered Great Zimbabwe." "He was amazed by what he saw." "Stone walls spread over a square mile of the valley floor, bounded on one end by ruins on a hill." "At the center of its all stood an enormous enclosure 30 feet high and hundreds of feet around." "Mauch realized he stood within the remains of a sprawling city." "It had been a culture unique in sub Saharan Africa." "Thousands had lived in the city, and remarkably they built in stone." "Mauch dismissed the possibility of local Africans having created it." "Mauch was not immune to European prejudices about Africa, and they guided his thinking." "In Mauch's mind Africans built grass huts and lived off the land." "It was inconceivable to him that they could construct such a magnificent city." "The local Africans seemed to share Mauch's views." "All are absolutely convinced that white people once inhabited the region." "Overlooking clear signs of African occupation and ignorant of archeology," "Mauch turned to the Bible and legend for his answers." "The whole fantastic site, Mauch believed, was the Queen of Sheba's palaces and temples." "The center of the legendary 'Golden Realm' of Ophir." "Mauch searched for evidence to support his theory." "He cut splinters from a wooden beam." "The smell which it exudes is of great similarity to that of cedar wood used in pencils." "The color too is the same." "Mauch believed Sheba had imported the cedar from Lebanon, a land to the north of ancient Israel." "The local Africans tribes provided further evidence for Mauch." "He thought their customs of circumcision and ritual butchering had been learned from Sheba generations before, and passed down through the years." "Mauch was ecstatic." "He believed he had just made one of the greatest discoveries of all time, a legendary lost city rescued from oblivion in Africa." "Mauch's frenzy of excitement crashed when he again fell sick." "Desperate and alone, he knew that to stay alive he would have to return home." "After seven years of adventure and hardship," "Mauch dragged himself to the coast and left Africa forever." "Germany had changed radically during Mauch's time in Africa." "War and politics preoccupied his countrymen." "And Mauch's earlier exploits had largely been forgotten." "But the greatest blow fell when the people Mauch most admired, scientists and historians, dismissed his theories about Sheba." "A chemist determined that the wood Mauch had cut from the Zimbabwe ruins was indigenous to Africa it wasn't cedar brought there from Lebanon." "Others pointed out that" "Mauch's sketches of Great Zimbabwe's walls looked nothing like the buildings of ancient Jerusalem." "And they ridiculed the idea of black Africans practicing Jewish rituals." "In his furious attempts to make sense of Great Zimbabwe," "Mauch became more disoriented than he had ever been in the wilds of Africa." "Racked by fevers, he grew increasingly irrational and unpredictable." "In early 1875," "Mauch fell to his death from the window of his garret." "The circumstances surrounding his death are still unclear." "Karl Mauch died at the age of 38." "Despite all that Mauch accomplished and all that he overcome to reach Great Zimbabwe, the only memorial to him stands in Germany at a teacher's training college." "His theories about a lost white settlement did, however, find an eager audience, especially in the British colonies of Rhodesia and South Africa." "The imperial mission in Africa was really one of racial superiority." "To have it thought that Africans had constructed such enormous buildings as these on such a vast scale was really unthinkable." "No one could have imagined it no one could have believed it." "Therefore, for imperialism it was very important that these building were thought to be built, by outsiders, people other than Africans." "Almost anyone would do." "South African and Rhodesian settlers would fight to the last for their vision of a white Great Zimbabwe." "They countered any challenge to the myth of white superiority with a storm of vitriol and ridicule." "Only a formidable character would withstand this onslaught." "Fifty years later in 1929 one of the worlds foremost archeologists," "Gertrude Caton Thompson, scoured the ruins of Great Zimbabwe for clues to its origins." "Years of hard work and struggle had won Gertrude grudging respect in a male dominated field, but Great Zimbabwe posed her greatest challenge yet." "All evidence of the identity of the city's builders appeared to have been erased." "But failure was not an option for Gertrude." "Tireless in her pursuit of the truth," "Gertrude would search until she found what she needed:" "the key to unlock the mystery of Great Zimbabwe's origins." "Few would have predicted such a life for Gertrude." "She was born in 1888 into a privileged English family." "But it was also unstable." "Her father died when she was young;" "her mother was sickly." "From an early age, Gertrude learned to rely only on herself." "Travel was one of the few constants in her life." "Something of value had been gained from the travels of my early childhood." "Pompeii and Rome stand out in memory because I felt the first stirrings of interest in past civilizations." "But it would take time for these stirrings to become passion." "In her twenties, Gertrude's existence was a nameless one." "Life at home was pleasant for a well to do family during that pampered pre war period." "Visits to relatives and friends were leisurely things, constant amusement at games, parties, dances and theaters followed each other endlessly." "She became attracted to a young solider, Carlion McFarland." "In 1914, just after the outbreak of the first world war," "Carlion received a short leave from the fighting in France." "He visited Gertrude." "Time flew." "And apart from the war we talked nostalgically of the carefree past." "I faced the fact that I loved him with my whole being." "For the next two years as Carlion fought in the trenches," "Gertrude threw herself into the war effort." "In 1916, news arrived that turned Gertrude's life upside down." "On September 16th Carlion was killed in an ambush." "Gertrude never recovered from his death." "Almost 25 years later, she visited McFarland's mother." "When I left to say good bye she was in bed." "After a parting embrace," "I noticed for the first time Carlion's swords and medals." "She said in a tone of assertion, not of query, "You loved him."" "I replied, "He was loved by everyone who knew him."" "For Gertrude the option of marriage and a family of her own died with Carlion McFarland." "And it wasn't a subject that she talked about much, or hardly at all." "But it must have had a huge influence on her career." "If she had become being married, probably been an ambitious soldier's wife, she might never have gone in for the things she did." "Gertrude withdrew from almost all personal relationships." "In the later years, one of the few deep friendships she formed was with the de Navarro family." "Gertrude helped raise their son Michael." "His memories are of a woman whose strong character intimidated others." "But to him she was warm and devoted." "She was a formidable person." "Somebody of the type that you don't have now, I think." "Very much somebody of her age." "Passionate in support of the things she believed in." "Obstinate." "No lover of fools, and certainly no patience with them." "Yet very loving and affectionate to those very close to her, to those lucky enough to have been." "In 1920, Gertrude sought to escape the easy trappings of her earlier life." "She volunteered at an archeological dig in the South of France." "During the visit I made a new interest: pre history." "With the determination that marked the rest of her life," "Gertrude, now 32, pursued her new passion: archeology." "Archeology was still a new and rapidly expanding field." "Demand for specialists created opportunities for professionals." "The discipline and precision of modern archeology suited Gertrude's exacting perfectionist nature." "Her dedication brought her to the dedication of one of the world's top Egyptologists, Sir Flinders Petrie." "He asked her to assist him on a dig in Egypt." "Sir Fliders Petrie was a demanding and often difficult teacher, but Gertrude excelled." "In 1924," "Sir Fliders Petrie helped her obtain a small grant for her own dig in Egypt." "It was a great success." "Her conclusions pushed back the date for the origin of Egyptian civilization 5,000 years." "Although they have since proved correct, they contradicted Sir Petrie's own theories." "He severed all support." "Gertrude raised the funds herself and continued." "She would never relent to threats or bullying." "An Anglo Rhodesian foundation approached Gertrude about conducting a dig at Great Zimbabwe." "The hoped to uncover clues about the mysterious civilization that once flourished there." "Gertrude Caton Thompson was a formidable woman." "She had worked under the most impossible conditions and under the most impossible archeologists in Egypt, and in the end running large scale excavations of her own." "She was carefully chosen to undertake the work at Great Zimbabwe." "She was ideally suited to it." "The Foundation set one condition that Gertrude present her conclusion about Great Zimbabwe's origins to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in only eight months time." "This was a tight deadline under the best of circumstances." "Undaunted, Gertrude accepted." "Gertrude arrived in Bera just ahead of a raging cyclone." "The noise of the collapsing town, the many ships in harbor dragging their chains and crashing into each other hooting wildly was dramatic." "Mercifully, I am not easily alarmed." "She rode out the storm with typical calm, but found that the cyclone had destroyed the rail lines." "Gertrude drove towards Rhodesia, but the rain season turned the roads to mud and the rivers to churning torrents." "After weeks of delay, she finally reached Salisbury, the capital of Rhodesia." "Rhodesia was named for the great industrialist and imperialist, Cecil Rhodes." "Rhodes master minded British expansion throughout southern Africa, personally controlling thousands of square miles of land as he created one of the world's greatest fortunes." "In the capital of Salisbury, Gertrude paused to gather supplies." "In just 40 years white settlers had created a bustling farm community in Salisbury, but it had been built at the expense of black Africans." "Whites lived well, overseeing farms and mines, while blacks were relegated to menial jobs with subsistence wages, poor housing and no education." "The white mindset of racial superiority was pervasive, poisoning every aspect of life." "When one prominent white woman asked if her sons might help with the upcoming excavation," "Gertrude said they could if they would dig alongside the native workers." "Just as Gertrude expected, the request was promptly withdraw." "At dinner one night the governor promoted the idea that Great Zimbabwe's ruins were of ancient and thereby white origin." "Gertrude countered that her job required objectivity." "I replied that I had no idea one way or the other, and only hoped I might get an answer." "The team Gertrude brought to Great Zimbabwe reflected her willingness to flaunt convention." "It was an all women team." "I think very deliberately she always worked with women and was one of the first feminists in archeology." "It was one of the first all female archeological teams in all history." "Gertrude and the others examined miles of ruins in their first days there." "Normally, a site this size offers numerous options for an archeologist, but many others have been there before Gertrude." "She was stunned by what they had done." "Generations of treasure hunters and previous archeologists had laid bare practically all that had remained." "In brief, fulfillment of my task seemed dubious." "For Gertrude Caton Thompson the site at Great Zimbabwe had changed enormously since Mauch's time." "What had happened in fact was a whole bunch of people had decided they could would find gold here at Great Zimbabwe, and they had literally pillaged, plundered, pulled the walls down, done everything." "Prospectors formed the Rhodesian Ancient Ruins Company to extract gold." "They dug numerous trenches and undermined walls, but found little gold." "What they did loot was of great archeological value." "They'd melted it down and sold it as bullion." "Priceless artifacts were lost forever." "Early treasure seekers also uncovered stone birds." "Cecil Rhodes bought two to mark the entrance to his estate, and hired men to search Great Zimbabwe for evidence that it had been built by a white civilization." "In their rush to prove that Zimbabwe was of white origin, excavators moved tons of topsoil, destroying artifacts of African origin." "The damage was irreparable." "As for evidence of white occupation or construction, nothing was ever unearthed." "The devastated condition of the ruins left Gertrude at an apparent dead end." "She and her team dug at several sites, and she paid the laborers bonuses for their hard work." "Still, she found nothing conclusive." "Time was running out." "The British Association meeting loomed." "Gertrude arranged for a plane so that she could inspect the ruins from a new perspective." "She became one of the first archeologists to use aerial observation." "As she swept past the hill ruins," "Gertrude spotted a path that from the ground was obscured by vegetation." "It led to terraces beneath the hill walls, and had clearly not been used in hundreds of years." "Treasure seekers had overlooked the seemingly inaccessible terraces." "The next day, Gertrude moved her team onto the hill terraces." "There they uncovered a wealth of objects untouched by anyone but the original inhabitants." "Everything that Gertrude Caton Thompson found was clearly African." "There were changes in the pottery and the pottery designs, but always African." "The only foreign material she found were glass beads and Far Eastern ceramics," "Near Eastern ceramics, but these were firmly dated to about the 13th century." "So they, in fact, reinforced the African material that this was a 13th century local culture that had trade connections overseas." "Gertrude determined that Great Zimbabwe had been a black African city from the 9th to the 14th centuries, a major hub in a huge sophisticated trade system." "Great Zimbabwe had straddled the trade route Africans followed as they carried ivory and gold from the interior to the coast." "Their trade partners were Arab merchants, who were the great middlemen, dealing in goods from as far away as India and China." "Gertrude compiled her findings just in time for the British Association meeting." "She expected a hostile reaction to the idea of a black Great Zimbabwe, but headed into the controversy with her usual poise." "Gertrude presented her findings to an overflow crowd in Johannesburg on August 2nd, 1923." "Her presentation was meticulous." "Her conclusions, crystal clear." "Instead of a degenerate offshoot of another civilization, you have here a native civilization showing national organization of a high kind originality and amazing industry." "She portrayed a living, vibrant, black African city" "in which the walls formed a series of interlocking courtyards where women cooked, children played, men worked." "In one extraordinary paper," "Gertrude killed the myth of a lost white civilization." "In its place, she described a thriving black metropolis." "It was estimated to house ten to fifteen thousand people, a city as large as many in Europe at the time." "Many were scandalized." "They remained convinced that" "Africans were simply incapable of creating such a civilization." "Several stormed from the room." "Even the normally calm Gertrude was shaken by the fury her conclusions triggered." "Gertrude Caton Thompson's work gave her the highest reputation among the academics and scientists." "It did nothing to persuade the settler to overcome his prejudices." "And nothing that anyone could do either Caton Thompson or in the fifty years subsequent to her were going to convince people with such strong racial prejudices that Great Zimbabwe was not exotic." "She bade farewell to her African work." "Her sense of irony surfaced when she recalled how the foreman asked to come with her." "I explained that he would not be happy in our cold country with no one to talk to in his Bantu language." "'Are there no black men in England?" "' he asked." "I replied, 'No, we are all white." "'After a puzzled reflection he said, 'No blacks?" "Then who does the work?" "'" "Gertrude left for England in late 1929, but the controversy surrounding Great Zimbabwe followed her." "In 1930, Gertrude's findings from Great Zimbabwe were exhibited at the British Museum in London." "I undertook to be present three days a week to answer questions and be long suffering to the many who continued to believe in the Queen of Sheba." "In the exhibit's wake came letters in the press and lively correspondence from strangers." "I refrained from being drawn into these." "But she kept a special file." "Caton Thompson was a very professional scientist." "She could be quite cold and quite clinical in the things she did." "She put the quality of her work above all else, and she could not tolerate fools." "And to her, many of those who speculated on Great Zimbabwe were nothing but fools." "Gertrude's combative nature worked against her in 1938 on her last major dig." "She traveled to South Arabia with another all female team, but she fought constantly with an associate over everything from the food to the expedition's purpose." "Gertrude hoped to find connections between South Arabia and Great Zimbabwe." "Perhaps the Arab traders who had brought goods to the African coast from India and China had influenced Great Zimbabwe's builders." "Gertrude looked for common architecture, art, stone masonry, anything that might link the two place." "She encountered Arab's who still practiced traditional stone building techniques, but their ties to Great Zimbabwe were unclear." "Towards the end of the expedition, she became gravely ill." "Sick and exhausted, she returned to England." "She began to suffer from spells of lightheadedness that plagued her for the rest of her life." "A doctor diagnosed a distended heart." "Now 50 years old, Gertrude settled into a quiet life with her friends the deNavarros and their young son, Michael." "They became the stable family she'd never had." "But in the end she moved in with us, and that was a very happy arrangement." "It was like having an extra and honorary aunt living as part of the family." "Gertrude's greatest legacy was to reveal that high civilization arose in sub Saharan Africa." "White settlers could no longer claim Great Zimbabwe as their own." "When the black majority in Rhodesia gained control in 1979, they renamed their country 'Zimbabwe' to identify themselves with Africa's glorious past." "The ruins which once illustrated the folly of prejudice and bias not stand for an independent, dynamic Africa." "As Gertrude Caton Thompson said," ""Great Zimbabwe lies in the still pulsating heart of Africa."" "In westernmost China lie 100,000 square miles of desert and misery." "Once cities thrived here, oases enriched by China's fabled Silk Road, until war and the desert did them in." "It's a wasteland so cruel its name itself is a warning" "'Taklimakan' means those who go in don't come out." "Two courageous men entered the Taklimakan one in search of truth, the other, treasure." "Both battled for their lives against the haunted desert and in the grip of death found treasures that would change the world." "Budapest, Hungary, 1872." "A studious 10 year old explores a map of Central Asia." "Fascinated by the exotic East, young Aurel Stein follows the path of his hero," "Alexander the Great." "The first world's conqueror marched his armies from the Mediterranean all the way to India." "The land where Alexander's conquest ended captivated the boy." "Much of the region where east meets west was so wild and remote it had never been mapped." "Here treasures from a secret past surely lay hidden in sands." "The shy young scholar's obsession surprised no one." "So lost in ideas was the boy that his own family considered him boring." "What no one could guess how firmly this region and habit of solitude would shape Aurel Stein's life." "And how alone, for years at a time, he would take on some of the most daring archeological explorations of the 20th century." "His favorite place was this place called Mohan Marg, which was a field up in Kashmir in the mountains that was only free from snow in the summer." "And he would go up there with some texts and sit and write all day long." "I think at one point he wrote 200 pages in 20 days, so he didn't see to need to be with people, but he needed letters." "25 August 1891." "The tribal people who pasture their flocks in the high valleys gave me a real serenade." "Some of the songs were very melodic and reminded me of Hungarian songs." "You have to be solitary because the thing is about exploration is you've got to be at peace with yourself." "You've got to be content with your own company in order to do something like that." "You couldn't sit doing what Aurel Stein did sitting in the middle of a vast windswept desert for months on end, with nobody to speak to in the English language except for your dog, but you're not going to get an answer from a dog." "Stein's boyhood obsession with Central Asia flowered at universities in Austria and England." "He studied ancient languages to understand the ruins he'd one day explore and translate documents pulled from the ground." "A Ph.D. in oriental languages was Stein's ticket to Asia." "He landed a position with the British government in Pakistan, which was then part of British India." "His home base for the rest of his life would be Lahore in India's Punjab, the farthest point reached by Alexander the Great in his bid to conquer the world." "At the Lahore Museum," "Stein discovered the artistic legacy of Alexander's conquests." "Images of the Buddha with a decidedly Grecian look." "How far east, he wondered, did his legacy reach?" "It was a question Stein would pursue all the way to China's Taklimakan desert." "Aurel Stein was interested in the connection between civilizations." "He was fascinated by the remnants of Greek influence in Pakistan, and that he felt there was a connection between that and the art in the Taklimakan desert." "Before Stein came here, he was well prepared." "He had very special training in ancient languages, such as Sanskrit." "At the time, Sanskrit is an incredibly hot field." "I mean, people are so excited by the idea that" "Sanskrit and Latin and Greek, they're all in the European languages." "So, today, I think, when people study Sanskrit it seems so archaic, but for Stein it was computer science it was the computer science of the 19th century." "Armed with Sanskrit, Stein got practical field experience around colonial India with the British Army." "Stein accompanied army maneuvers as regimental map maker." "He had done a year of military service in Hungary and he learned how to survey, and that proved to be crucial to everything he did because when he went out into Inner Asia, he made maps." "In some cases his maps are still the most accurate maps we have of the region." "In India, Stein put his scholarship to work." "He began closely examining a book" "By a long dead Chinese monk called Xuanzang." "Around 630 A.D., on a quest for Buddhist scripture, the holy man had trekked some 10,000 miles from China to India and back." "His account of his travels called "Records of the Western Regions,"" "gave Stein an authoritative guide to temples in colonial India, temples that had been living centers of worship in Xuanzang's time." "When Aurel Stein was in Kashmir he tested out Xuanzang to see whether his topographical information was correct, and it was." "So for all three of his expeditions he had Xuanzang with him." "The monk proved to be an infallible guide in India." "But Xuanzang had also written about a thriving civilization in China's Taklimakan desert." "About this wasteland the modern world knew almost nothing." "Had Xuanzang given Stein a treasure map to a lost civilization?" "And he realizes that he can go into Chinese Turkestan and discover things, and discover a past, and that's what becomes his real intellectual passion." "And Stein makes a case to the British government in India that they should fund him to go out there and explore." "And I think Stein is saying let me go to this whole region and I will come back and tell you what the history of it is." "In 1900, financed by England," "Stein headed east to seek the lost world of his dreams." "His goal to track down the cities and civilizations written about by Xuanzang." "With a crew of translators and servants," "Stein crossed the Pamir Mountains and dropped down to Kashgar." "From there he followed the southern arm of the Silk Road, the ancient trade rout followed by Xuanzang on his return from India around 640 A.D." "The thousand mile journey was a brutal ordeal from man and beast alike, and it had barely begun." "The morning of the 7th December." "Starting the campaign in the desert." "My goal:" "Dandan uilk." "Most of the time Stein worked during the months of December to January, and that was always the driest and coldest season." "He had to carry a huge amount of ice with him as a source of water so he could leave it behind at certain stations to ensure there was enough on the return trip." "Also the cold and dryness are very much a threat." "One could easily get lost and die." "It was the most difficult terrain that anybody could go to at the time." "I think the best modern equivalent is going to the moon." "Now Stein's navigation skills kept his men alive," "for he had entered the Taklimakan, one of the most dangerous deserts on earth." "About this desert, the monk Xuanzang had warned:" "It is all the work of demons and evil spirits." "When the winds rise, both man and beast become confused and forgetful." "Sad and plaintive noise are heard, and piteous cries." "Combined with the site of this place where nothing lives, man often lose their lives." "Characteristically, Stein ignored these warnings and even the haunted desert's Dante-esque name." "The Chinese call it 'the Desert of Death'." "The name Taklimakan translates as 'you go in but you do not come out.'" "The temperature of the desert is formidable." "In the summer the temperature can reach up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit." "It is also a winter desert, when Aurel Stein was excavating sites like Niya, he did record snow in the desert in December." "The worst part about the desert is that the sand dunes are so high;" "in places they are 1,000 feet high." "So it is very difficult to walk through them because they are soft sand." "When you're walking through such a sea of sand it is very difficult to think that you might come out at the other end." "But it is also very inspiring to walk somewhere where you know it is virgin sand and nobody else has walked it before." "Yet Stein was convinced that people had walked there, some 1,000 years before." "Xuanzang had written about oasis cities that had been thriving centers of trade and religion now buried somewhere in the desert." "If Stein could find them he'd be the first to write the history of a vast unmapped region of Asia." "But at what cost?" "100 miles into the Taklimakan the temperature plunged to 10 degrees below zero." "Hobbled by the loose sand, men and animals grew exhausted." "Was the monk Xuanzang guiding them to a lost city or a dusty grave?" "Finally, on the 11th day hope." "Traces of a ruin natives called 'the Place of Ivory Houses.'" "It was the first in a series of sites where Stein would find evidence that stunned even him." "Stein excavates." "And he finds pictures of Westerners in the middle of the desert." "They saw pictures of angels in this region that is now a part of China." "He also finds some Chinese written on wooden slips." "And you could date the slips to the end of the 8th century." "And that it was going to be possible for him to write a history of the different Silk Road oases by careful excavation and by taking all the documents that he found and sending them to scholars who could decipher them for him." "For Stein the remarkable discoveries were deeply personal." "First, the civilization that he found showed signs of ancient Greece." "Alexander the Great's influence had penetrated China." "Second, he'd uncovered scrolls from the monastery library dating from the 5th and 6th centuries." "On his return trip from India," "Xuanzang would probably have visited the monastery now buried by the desert." "Perhaps he'd even poured over these scrolls." "Stein must have felt how his own monastic life mirrored that of the solitary holy man." "One year after he'd set out, Stein turned for home." "With him, cases of artifacts evidence of a lost civilization." "They would set the world of archeology on fire and make his name." "But they would also give him a reputation as an archeological looter that would haunt him for the rest of his life." "Stein had the approval of the Chinese government." "But on his travel papers it didn't say he was an archeologist and would carry on excavations in this area." "A British diplomat had told Stein," ""Never tell the Chinese you're doing excavation here."" "In time, Stein's disregard for Chinese authority would catch up with him, but now he had more pressing concerns." "Because of his discoveries the whole world knew what lay beneath the Taklimakan." "The race is on." "Stein goes digs in the ground, and then a kind of race starts to discover the lost languages and documents of this very remote region of the world." "And it becomes, kind of, a mark of a civilized country to have an expedition in Central Asia." "In 1907, a German archeologist had just returned from what was said to be a very profitable trip." "A French orientalist was scheduled to enter the desert any day." "Spurred by competition," "Stein set out on a course chartered by Xuanzang." "Once more his company traced the southern arm of the Silk Road." "But this time the grueling trip gave Stein a sense of foreboding." "He wrote to a friend:" "What a desolate wilderness, bearing everywhere the imprint of death." "On two expeditions the desert had taken a grim toll." "His crew had quarreled and come to blows." "One of his most trusted assistants had tried to kill himself." "Now, without warning, /Stein's devoted surveyor went blind." "Finally, Stein's own health gave out." "Malaria racked his exhausted body." "And worse, the French team of explorers were somewhere in the desert." "As he packed his new finds into crates," "Stein was anxious about his next destination, a cave complex called Dunhaung where he hoped to find ancient Buddhist scrolls." "It is an anxious thought, as you can imagine, whether I shall find the French there already." "Crossing the Taklimakan to the north," "Stein had the eerie experience of stumbling across his own footsteps." "I could quite distinctly recognize my own footprints of seven years before." "I could even make out those of my little fox terrier, Dash, the ever faithful companion of that journey." "More shocking, was evidence of German and French expeditions." "Where Stein carefully protected his digs by filling in them in afterwards, his competitors left theirs open to the elements." "Artifacts whose value they dismissed were recklessly tossed aside and broken." "Near Dunhaung, Stein recruited a new team of workers to explore the westernmost section of China's Great Wall." "Of this crew Stein remarked:" "They're the craziest crew I've had led to digging." "So turbulent and feeble by opium are they." "Yet the discovery of Great Wall remnants revived his spirits." "If his second expedition had ended there, it would have been enough to secure any archeologist's reputation." "I feel, as I ride along the wall, as if I were going to inspect posts still held by the living;" "2000 years seems so brief a time." "At the Wall, just days away from his greatest discovery, Stein felt at peace." "Perhaps he through that the monk Xuanzang was literally guiding his journey." "Perhaps he knew his competitors could never match his stamina or his scholarship." "In any case, his devotion to the haunted desert had rewarded him beyond his greatest expectations." "And still ahead, at a place called Dunhaung, he would find one of the astonishing ancient texts ever discovered." "Aurel Stein heard that there were some very valuable documents in the Dunhaung caves, and he went there and he met somebody called Abbot Wong, who was sort of a curious moody monk, who had sealed up the caves so that nobody could get in." "So when Stein finally met him, he said, you know," "I've been following in the footsteps of Xuanzang on all my journeys." "He's my patron saint." "So the moody abbot sort of softened and said, "Oh?"" "The priest proved, in fact, quite as ardent an admirer of Xuanzang as I am." "He proudly showed the series of painting representing scenes from the great pilgrim's marvelous adventures." "The fantastic legends there depicted were just those which had transformed Xuanzang throughout China as a sort of saintly Munchausen." "He negotiates four silver horseshoes for thousands and thousands of documents and scrolls, and Wong goes for it." "And Stein knows that it is a really low price." "He knows." "He writes a letter saying I've gotten an incredibly good price, because one of the Sanskrit manuscripts in and of itself would be worth that price." "But most of all was the apprehension that the timorous, shifty priest would be moved in a sudden fit of alarm or distrust to close down his shell before I had been able to extract any of the pearls." "Stein was a devoted scholar and explorer." "It was unthinkable to him not to be interested in the things he found in Dunhaung, and it is just natural for him to try any means to get what he wanted." "He and Abbot Wong were not on the same level." "Stein was very educated and knowledgeable, while Abbot Wong was relatively ignorant about what Stein was doing." "They were just piles of waste paper to Wong." "Like a chip of broken glass to me, to you is a diamond." "The ancient scrolls Stein took from Dunhaung included ballads, stories and correspondence a portrait of a civilization in letters." "One of the fragments has since been thought to belong to a Buddhist text, which Xuanzang himself is known to have translated between 645 and 664 AD." "I felt quite sure that my patron saint must have passed within a few years of the debris covered here." "Stein was able to get many of the documents, take them back to the British Museum, and one of them is the Diamond Sutra, which is the world's oldest printed book." "It sits in the British Museum opposite the Gutenberg Bible." "So Stein really this was the triumph of his career." "For misleading the abbot, Stein felt no regret." "He reasoned the scrolls he salvaged would have remained lost forever had he not intervened." "You know, the easy answer to "Is Stein a thief?"" "the very PC answer is, sure, he took away antiquities from China, and they were never returned." "But if you judge him by the standards of his day, he wasn't a thief;" "he was an explorer." "He published everything he found." "If we judge Stein or the fate of the manuscripts by the person who discovered them, if you were found by the Chinese, it's very hard for us to see you." "You were a lucky manuscript to be discovered by Stein because people today can see you, they can actually see you on the Web." "For his astounding discoveries," "Stein would receive a knighthood from his adopted homeland, England." "But the comforts and adulations of Europe paled against the call of the East." "Again and again he would return to this bleak part of the world to try and slake his thirst from knowledge in the deserts of China." "At 81, Stein would die as he lived in the saddle while exploring Afghanistan." "But he would never again match the solitary years long struggle that put him on the trail of Xuanzang and the lost treasures of the Taklimakan." "The Dunhaung Scrolls made archeologist Aurel Stein's reputation." "His Chinese translator speculated that finding the rare Buddhist text was no accident." "They were a gift from the monk Xuanzang sent across a sea of time." "Xuanzang, like Stein, had risked his life not once, but many times for the sake of these scrolls." "One of history's most remarkable journeys began in a world in crisis." "China, 620 A.D." "As the great Tang Dynasty begins, the nation convulses in violence." "Bandits beseech cities within, while neighboring kingdoms assail its waters." "China's golden age is born in blood." "In a remote trade depot, a figure in peasant's robes, takes advantage of the chaos to flee China." "He's a monk on a suicidal mission to aid Buddhism in China." "In the crisis, the Tang emperor has forbidden foreign travel, but the monk has ignored the ban." "He hopes his disguise will fool the emperor's henchman." "But there's no disguising this monk's size." "Xuanzang was supposed to be 7 feet tall." "There may be some difference in the way Chinese calculate things, but he was very tall and he had black bright eyes." "You know, the descriptions of him make him sound like some idyllic creature." "From boyhood, Xuanzang had always been larger than life." "By age 13 he had mastered the Buddhist texts." "By 20, he had humbled the faith's most renounced scholars in debate." "Xuanzang's virtuosity delighted the priests." "'The shining of the sun of wisdom,' they had told the young monk, 'will surely depend on you.'" "In fact, Xuanzang would light the way for generations of Buddhists and explorers of Central Asia." "There is no question about the historical judgments of Xuanzang's contribution." "By any standards he is a hero." "He is a hero in many ways." "He is a very inspiring figure not just for people in his age, but also for people born in the world." "At age 26, Xuanzang wasn't yet a hero, but a wanted man on a holy mission." "His study of Buddhist texts had revealed grave contradictions." "His solution to travel to India and obtain the original teachings." "He is frustrated that he had multiple versions of the same text that conflict, and that nobody in China could reconcile the differences." "His thirst for knowledge is so great, he decides the only way out of that dilemma is to go to India and find the original teachings." "The devout Buddhist had another reason for the trek." "He wanted to make the pilgrimage to India, the birthplace of his beloved Buddha." "600 years before Christ, an Indian prince renounced the world to search for a solution of death and human suffering." "After six years of spiritual discipline, he achieved supreme enlightenment while meditating at a place called Bodh Gaya." "For the rest of his life, the gifted teacher was known as Buddha, which means 'the enlightened one.'" "There are four places that every believing Buddhist should go to:" "where the Buddha was born, where he died, where he preached his first sermon, and where he achieved enlightenment." "So Xuanzang was a pilgrim." "He wanted to go to the Buddhist holy land, just as a Christian might want to go to Bethlehem." "Yet the trip came with unholy risks." "When the Chinese Emperor Taizong got wind of Xuanzang's plan, he ordered the monk's arrest." "Under this threat, the monks accompanying Xuanzang lost their taste for the journey." "Perhaps it was just as well." "According to caravan traders, the road to India was choked with murderous bandits and wild beasts." "And the worst threat lay just ahead the Taklimakan desert." "Somebody called it "the abomination of desolation."" "It is a place where you go in and you don't come out." "Even Aurel Stein talks about other deserts in Arabia as being tame deserts." "By day its temperatures can reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and by night plummet to 20 below." "According to legend, thriving cities, whose souls numbered in the thousands, had vanished in its black hurricanes, never to be seen again." "Caravan traders warned the unworldly Xuanzang about the dangers, but the pilgrim replied:" "I intend to visit the holy places and seek the law." "I will not regret if I should die on my way." "But years of monastic study hadn't prepared Xuanzang for the desert's special tortures." "Of this desolate badlands he wrote:" "There are no birds in the sky, no beasts on the ground, no water or vegetation anywhere." "So he's alone." "And he started across the desert, a couple of hundred miles it was, and his water bag fell down into the group." "The water spills." "And he travels for four and a half days with no water, and he is hopelessly lost." "Now Xuanzang considered turning back, but he no longer knew which direction that was." "According to his biographer, the monk was assailed by the desert's restless spirits." "By day, the wind whipped up terrible sandstorms." "By night, demons and goblins bearing torches are as many in number as the stars." "The monk prayed to Buddhist guardian spirits to protect his soul." "It was kind of what some Christian mystics call a dark night of the soul." "He ran out into the unknown, he experiences terrible things." "He has this dark night of the soul." "This is a typical's hero's journey in the Taklimakan desert." "In the dream a spirit called out," ""Why are you resting when you should be marching forward to India?"" "It was the horse that seemed to take offense." "He set off in his own direction, Xuanzang following behind." "After four miles, the horse broke into a trot as a green oasis came into view." "And this old and sickly horse, which has been recommended to him because it has done the trip 30 times, takes him to an oasis, and he falls into this pool of water and drinks and drinks." "He was able to survive." "He was able the find water and other food to eat." "This must have meant a lot to him." "I think in his mind this must be a kind of blessing from" "Buddha himself." "The stories about people finding water in the desert are recurrent, right?" "It happens to Xuanzang;" "it happens to Sven Hedin, it happens to Aurel Stein." "Anybody who goes into the desert runs out of water, and then the ones who live tells us the same story." "The ones who die, don't tell us anything." "Safely across the Taklimakan, Xuanzang entered the kingdom of Turfan." "Again, he was proceeded by his reputation but as a holy man, not an outlaw." "The king and queen of Turfan were overjoyed to have such a renowned scholar for company." ""From the first day I heard your name," said the king," ""I've been in a state of ecstasy." "I couldn't keep my hands and feet still from excitement." "But when Xuanzang told him of his mission, the king became stormy." "He demanded the monk cease his journey and remain in Turfan." "He wanted Xuanzang to be his resident guru." "He wanted him to stay there and not go to the West." "He got very angry at Xuanzang and shouted at him and said," "You've got to stay here." "I'm not going to let you go."" "Xuanzang objected." "I came here on my way to obtaining the Great Law." "You can imprison my flesh and bones, but you cannot rule my spirit." "So he decided to starve himself." "He fasted for four or five days." "He didn't take water or anything." "Each day the king brought him rich food, but Xuanzang wouldn't touch a morsel." "Again he almost died, and the king of Turfan was shamed and he gave in." "And then the king of Turfan gave him gold and silver and 24 letters of introduction to all the kings and khans all the way up to India." "So he had protection." "He was going to be taken care of for the rest of his journey." "The king provides servants and horses and clothes." "The most crucial thing the king gives him is contact with the Turks who control the region west of China with whom the king has allied." "So suddenly Xuanzang has gone from this solitary march through the desert to having a retinue with him and diplomatic credentials." "With India almost in sight," "Xuanzang approached the fulfillment of his mission and the greatest trials of his life." "By now, Xuanzang had trekked more than fifteen hundred miles." "He had become a skillful traveler, falling in step with the merchants and pilgrims whose precious goods enriched the trade depots of western China." "He grew into the roles of accidental diplomat and impromptu preacher." "And throughout, the always hearty giant endured the unexpected." "After he leaves Turfan, he doesn't have to worry about money, right?" "He's bankrolled and he has diplomatic credentials." "But then he has the problems that beset rich travelers, like robbers." "There are a bunch of robbers that are interested in clothes." "That is interesting." "He's robbed twice of his own clothes." "He was not just once robbed on his journey he was robbed many times." "Because of his inner strength sometimes even under great danger he was able to escape from those dangers." "Finally a year after plunging into the desert the pilgrim set foot on Indian soil." "He'd proved wrong all predictions of his imminent death and reached the country of his beloved Buddha." "Guided by priests, he visited sacred 'stupas' or shrines, examining the stories painted on the walls and committing them to memory." "Assisted by as many as 20 scribes, Xuanzang got down to business translating and copying Buddhist scripture." "The most significant contribution he made is to translate a large amount of Indian Buddhist scripture." "Scholars are amazed at how accurate his translations are." "His reputation seems, by this time, to have proceeded him, so that when he got to a new place monks seemed to know all about him." "It was customary for the kings, when he got to the border, they would come and meet him." "They would give him a big elephant to ride on." "Seven years passed like a dream." "Xuanzang's celebrated knowledge carried him and his scribes from one monastery to the next." "At each awaited new Buddhist texts and spirited debate." "It was customary in many of those countries in northern India to have a debate." "There are several kinds of Buddhism, and so an exponent of one kind would debate against another kind." "And he studied the other guys' beliefs so that he knew their arguments and his arguments." "And that may be one of the reasons that he was so good." "Xuanzang never loses a debate with anybody, even if he's debating in Sanskrit on arcane points of Buddhist document in India." "It's just not credible." "Every time that he meets somebody, he bests that person in the debate." "At last it came time for Xuanzang to fulfill his personal pilgrimage." "He and his followers traveled by boat down the sacred Ganges River their destination, Bodh Gaya, the place of the Buddha's spiritual transformation." "But on the river, according to his biographer, another calamity awaited." "A whole mess of pirates came in and took his party, and shoved them ashore." "They wanted a sacrifice for their god, Durga." "They said, oh, there's that handsome fellow, he'll be just fine." "They decided he's the perfect sacrifice." "They tell him this, and he has a very Buddhist response which is he doesn't wanted to be killed, but if he's going to be killed, that's fine he wants to be allowed to meditate." "If this cold body is suitable for sacrifice, then I dare not crush the offer." "But if you kills this body of mine, I fear it will bring you misfortune." "At that moment a tremendous gale came that scared the hell out of the pirates." "And so they said, who is this man?" "He was really not afraid of death." "He was prepared for death." "He is not just a courageous person;" "he was also a very calm person, an intelligent person." "Whenever he faced difficulty, he always showed this kind of calmness." "So, of course, according to the biographer they threw away their weapons, and they became good Buddhist, so to speak." "This is another story that follows a very fixed pattern, which is that a representative of the Buddha encounters the representatives of a given local deity, and the Buddha bests the local deity the Buddha proves that he's more powerful than the local deity." "So, did it happen?" "We don't know!" "These are just stories, I think, but they're good ones." "Finally, Xuanzang arrived at Bodh Gaya." "Here the Buddha had achieved enlightenment." "But for the wandering pilgrim, something very different was in store." "Xuanzang's trials and years of devotion did not yield even a taste of the sublime unity experienced by the Buddha." "Instead, under the sacred tree where the Buddha was transformed," "Xuanzang could only weep at the frailty of his own mortal spirit." "When Xuanzang finally got there, he knelt down and he asked himself:" ""In what cycle of life was I when the Buddha lived?"" "And then he wept." "And there were lots of other Buddhist monks around, and they were all very moved by this." "At a time when the Buddha perfected himself," "I know not in what condition I was in, but in the troublesome world of birth and death." "It's very rare for an enlightened Buddhist monk to do so, and he was crying almost, prostrating." "This kind of gesture was witnessed by any visitors at the time." "Where Xuanzang saw unworthiness, the witnesses saw breakthrough." "The most virtuous among them bent with humility." "This is somebody whose whole travel description is completely dry and factual." "He has, for him, a very emotional experience bursting into tears and saying that he can never be as good as the Buddha." "In a remarkable adventure, this was Xuanzang's moment of truth." "He was perfectly humble for a Buddhist, a perfect state." "At last he arose more determined than ever to pursue his destiny on the wheel of life, come what may." "On his return trip through western China," "Xuanzang anxiously awaited word from Emperor Taizong." "How would he receive the monk who flagrantly disobeyed him half a lifetime ago?" "At Dunhaung's 'Caves of a Thousand Buddhas' Xuanzang paused, probably to let monks copy the scriptures he brought back from India." "While he waited, the holy man studied three centuries of painting and sculpture in the cave's many rooms." "Little did he know that a record of his own epic journey would someday join these sacred images." "Eventually word would come to the pilgrim waiting on the lip of the Taklimakan Xuanzang was forgiven." "The Emperor Taizong said he wanted to talk to him." "And then, of course, he said to Xuanzang," ""Why did you go on this trip?"" "Emperor Taizong at the very beginning probably had a kind of utilitarian purpose in his mind as he realized that someone who has spent so much time and energy traveling through Central Asia to India had a great knowledge about these regions and the region" "that he always had a great political interest in." "Afterwards, they gradually developed this kind of very close personal friendship." "The emperor invited the prodigal monk to be his foreign minister." "But Taizong would settle instead for a book in which Xuanzang described each step of his remarkable journey." "There are plenty of bookworms in the world, and there are lots of great trekkers, and there are some good diplomats, and there are some devout Buddhists, but he was all of them." "And I think he was a real man for all seasons." "The monk's last bit of uncommon good fortune was the emperor's friendship." "It permitted Xuanzang to spend the rest of his life as he wished, translating the treasures he wagered his life to find." "India a land of seductive riches, land of the Kohinoor diamond" "a priceless gem which legend says was given by the god Krishna to test mankind's greed." "Possessed of such wealth and beauty, thought Krishna, would men behave like beasts?" "or would they think and achieve wisdom?" "This is the story of India and its conquerors." "One stormed south across the mountains, one came from across the seas, both were hungry for wealth and dominion." "Each would become his own answer to Krishna's question wise man or beast?" "For three hundred years the Mughal empire dominated India." "It was a Mughal emperor who created the radiant mountain of white marble called the Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the world." "The wealth and sophistication of the Mughal court were legendary." "Here, Mughal kings ruled from the famous peacock throne made of gold, rubies and sapphires." "All these treasures of the Mughal empire were the legacy of one remarkable man, a poet, a killer, a wild nomad who was not from India at all." "His name was Babur." "Babur's life began in 1483 in Fergana, a small kingdom in the highlands of central Asia." "Fergana was one square of a bloodstained checkerboard of competing dynasties, each struggling to expand its little empire." "But a little empire wasn't what Babur had in mind." "Babur's dynasty was part Turk and part Mongol" ""Mughals" as the Persians called them." "Babur was a direct descendant of the two greatest conquerors of Central Asian history," "Genghis Khan and Timur or Tamerlane." "He wanted something that would be worthy of their memory." "From the very beginning," "Babur tried to take inspiration from Genghis and Timur." "These were his two heroes." "And it was probably this reason which had, at times, goaded him to think of India as his final destination." "Born to nobility, at 11 Babur inherited Fergana." "Almost immediately other warlords tried to take it away from him." "Not surprisingly for one so young, the fortunes of war started to turn against him." "Before long, he had lost much of his kingdom and his men deserted in droves to hitch their fortunes to more promising leaders." "All seven or eight hundred of my lords and warriors deserted me." "It was a terrible blow." "I remember, I couldn't help crying." "He was only fifteen." "It was a harsh education which made young Babur's heart ache." "But his early failures toughened him." "If you desire to rule and conquer, you don't just fold your hands when things go wrong you act." "Action meant war." "And with whichever followers he could muster, he started to wage guerrilla warfare against his more powerful neighbors." "He and his men seesawed between victory and defeat." "Allies deserted him;" "enemies became allies." "One day in 1501, he laughed when he realized a sword he had given to an ally as a token of loyalty one year, was the same one that almost split his skull in battle the next." "My own soul is my most faithful friend." "My own heart, my truest confidant." "Always, Babur's ambition was to found a great dynasty like his ancestors." "He needed children who would be his heirs." "He admitted he was so shy as a young man, his mother and sisters had to bully him into sleeping with his first wife." "But before long he had more wives, and a son, Humayun, on whom the weight of Babur's dreams would fall." "With his succession assured, the question that now dogged him was:" "what would he leave his sons?" "He had lost his kingdom and was being shut out of Central Asia." "So where was the land in which his dynasty could flourish?" "Slowly, Babur's reputation as a warlord was growing and with it the perception that he might be a future ruler after all." "Lured by the promise of conquest and booty, warriors of other dynasties began to join him." "In 1504, Babur's fortunes took a decisive turn for the better." "He caught wind of tumult in the Afghan kingdom of Kabul to the south." "Here, he thought, was a chance." "At the age of 21, Babur rode out of the mountains with his small band of men and raced toward Kabul." "Warriors joined him as he approached and they swept into the city." "The battle for Kabul was short and Babur triumphed." "As he settled into his new home," "Babur immediately fell in love with Afghanistan, its cool climate, and the beautiful rivers of its fresh upland plateaus." "Kabul signified a new beginning, an end to the years of wandering but not, of course, an end to his dreams of empire." "Not far to the south lay the vast, teeming land of Hindustan, India." "He had heard many stories of its wealth." "He realized it was now within his grasp." "From the time I took Kabul, I set my heart on Hindustan." "In 1504, the Indian sub continent" "Was a disunited mass of independent kingdoms and sultanates" "Hindu in the south, largely Moslem in the north." "One of the largest and most powerful of these was Hindustan, controlled by the sultanate of Delhi." "Babur knew he stood no chance of directly confronting the armies of Hindustan." "But having taken Kabul, he lost no time in making an exploratory raid into the plains of northern India just to see." "With a small army he moved south in 1505." "He was amazed by what he found." "I had never experienced such heat or anything like Hindustan before different plants, different trees, different animals and birds, different tribes and people, different manners and customs." "It was astonishing, truly astonishing." "India exceeded his wildest expectations." "He discovered beautifully crafted textiles, refined sugar, perfumes and spices." "Here indeed was a rich land." "As he headed back to Kabul, his resolve to return was redoubled." "But he would have to bide his time." "For 20 years Babur made Kabul his home." "20 years in which he finally had time to taste the pleasures of life." "Until now he had been a clean living and sober young Moslem." "In Kabul all that started to change." "At that time I had not committed the sin of drinking to drunkenness and did not know the delight and leisure of being drunk as it should be known." "Here all the implements of pleasure and revelry were ready and present." "If I didn't drink now, when would I?" "He discovered a taste for fine wines, and the sweetmeats laced with hashish called Ma'jun." "In Kabul he drank often." "His memoirs filled with parties, drunkenness and head splitting hangovers." "We drank on the boat until late that night." "We got on our horses, reeling from side to side, then let them gallop free reined." "The next morning they told me I had galloped into camp holding a torch." "I swear I didn't remember a thing, except that when I got back to my tent I was extremely sick." "In Kabul, Babur learned how to let go, but he never forgot that if he was ever to take Hindustan his troops had to stay disciplined." "He had no qualms about extreme punishments." "I had one of the soldiers clubbed at the gate for stealing a pot of oil." "He died." "The others were successfully cowed by this punishment." "As he explored Afghanistan, this ruthless nomad who was perfectly capable of putting entire cities to the sword, became a keen student of flowers." "All sorts grow in these foothills;" "I once counted them and found 32 or 33 different kinds." "We named one the rose scented tulip because it smelt rather like a rose;" "it grows all by itself on the Sheikh's plain." "Joy was to sit peacefully in one of his beautiful highland gardens and write poetry." "He built no fewer than ten gardens in Kabul." "Before long, Babur's seven wives had produced him eighteen children." "He was devoted to all of them but it was his first born son," "Humayun, who he was determined would inherit a great kingdom." "Babur bided his time, watching and waiting for his opportunity in India." "Finally, in 1526, it arrived." "The Sultanate of Delhi was overtaken by internal strife." "Babur realized his moment had come." "It would be now or never." "Babur marched into Northern India with 12,000 men." "The sultan of Delhi marched to meet him with 100,000 men and 1,000 armored elephants." "They met on the plain of Panipat north of Delhi." "Babur's trump card was the discipline of his troops and his Turkish artillery." "The Indian elephants charged but were met with explosions of canons and mortar." "They panicked, spun, and stampeded." "The whole army fell into disarray." "Just a few hours after it began, the battle became a rout." "The Indians, including their leader, were massacred as they ran." "Babur had just pulled off an astonishing military feat." "Finally, Hindustan was his." "With Hindustan in his grasp, one of the first things Babur did was to send Hindustani dancing girls to entertain his wives in their harem in Kabul." "It was a gracious gesture." "His wives, covered and restrained, their faces painted stiffly white in the central Asian style, must have been astonished." "Out of meetings like this, of the stark world of central Asian Islam with the lush anarchy of India, would arise the glories of the Mughal style." "As Babur took stock of his new possession, even he well versed in plunder was stunned." "The astonishing treasuries of Hindustan contained the Kohinoor diamond." "Its name, he learned meant "mountain of light."" "He was told it was worth enough to feed the entire world for two and half days." "Offered it as a gift," "Babur refused and left it with his son Humayun." "Suddenly he was less interested in the riches than in how to govern this strange new land." "But as he surveyed Hindustan, his enthusiasm for it started to melt away." "There is no beauty in its people, no graceful social intercourse, no poetic talent or understanding, no etiquette, nobility or manliness." "The arts and crafts have no harmony or symmetry." "There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets." "The peasantry and common people parade around stark naked." "Hindustan is a place of little charm." "But Babur was determined he would build Hindustan into something worthy of his dynasty." "He would introduce Mughal order and symmetry into what seemed to him a chaotic and senseless land." "He made the princes of Hindustan, the Rajputs, submit to him and laid foundations for the future empire." "And it dawned on Babur that it was no longer enough to be a successful conqueror." "To fulfill his dreams for his heirs, he had to become a wise ruler as well." "A sacrifice to god was necessary." "In an extravagant public ceremony, Babur swore off drink." "He had his drinking vessels crushed and distributed the gold and silver to the poor." "At the age of 43, Babur had achieved his dream of empire." "He settled into Hindustan and continued work on his autobiography the first ever written in the Moslem world." "I have simply set down what happened." "I have reported every good and evil of father and brother, every fault and virtue of relative and stranger." "May the reader excuse me." "And everywhere Babur built the square, symmetrical gardens called 'charbagh' which were the perfect expression of Mughal beauty." "The radiance of nature bound by the rigid geometrical order of Islam." "And it was in his gardens that he reflected on his turbulent life and his successes in battles, both with enemies and himself." "The temptations of alcohol had been almost overwhelming." "Two years ago my craving for a wine party was such to bring me to the verge of tears." "This year, praise God, that desire has completely left my mind." "The one thing that never left his mind was his homeland, Fergana." "One day as he ate a melon he found himself crying as its flavor brought back memories of the fresh uplands of his childhood." "He confessed to his youngest daughter that he wanted to retire and turn the reins of power over to Humayun." "But In 1530, four years after the conquest of Hindustan," "Humayun fell sick." "His doctors gave him up for dead." "It was a catastrophe the death not only of a beloved son but the heir to Babur's dynasty and empire." "Babur had learned the wisdom of sacrifice." "But what on earth could he offer God to persuade him to spare his son?" "Priests and advisors came with suggestions:" "He could sacrifice the Kohinoor." "But Babur knew it was a worthless bauble compared to the life of his son." "He decided only one sacrifice could possibly compare." "For days, he prayed fervently to Allah to take his own life in exchange for Humayun's." "Soon after, Humayun recovered and sure enough, Babur fell sick." "He stayed true to his oath and refused all offers of treatment." "He'd made a deal with Allah a life for a life." "Who was he to renege?" "He turned his face to the wall." "Three months later he died, aged 47." "Babur had ruled India for only four years, but the dynasty he founded would rule it for almost 300." "Akbar, Babur's grandson, would for the first time unite the subcontinent." "Shah Jahan, Babur's great great grandson, would build the Taj Mahal." "The Mughals laid the foundations of the India we know today." "They were able to create a large empire within India;" "they were able to establish the great institutions of empire through their army, their especially important domestic and other alliance policies with the Rajputs." "It was a very creative fusion." "Over the generations, Mughal India would become synonymous with opulence, refinement, and wealth." "Before long it attracted the hungry gaze of yet other treasure seekers." "This time they would come from further west." "Just over three hundred years after Babur died," "India was swallowed by the British empire." "By the end of the 19th century, Britain dominated most of the world but India was its most valued possession." "Queen Victoria called it the jewel in her crown." "The man who gave all this to Britain was an unlikely conqueror a tormented soul who came from nowhere, driven only by an unwavering ambition." "His name was Robert Clive." "1772, The Houses of Parliament in London." "Robert Clive is fighting for his survival." "He has laid the foundations of the British empire in India and in the process made himself a vast fortune." "Now he stands accused of criminal greed and exploitation." "In the House of Commons he rises to his defense." "Gentlemen, a great prince was dependent on my pleasure, an opulent city lay at my mercy;" "its richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles;" "I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels!" "Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!" "Robert Clive will not be bowed." "His life is ending as it began in a furious and lonely struggle." "Born in 1725 in Shropshire in the West of England, he was given up by his mother as a child and raised by relatives." "It happened at the insistence of his father an ineffectual lawyer from the minor country gentry, who barely earned enough to keep the family afloat." "Rejected by his family and naturally unruly, young Robert was soon running wild in the little town of Market Drayton." "He pioneered the business methods, which would make him his later fortune as the head of a juvenile gang." "It was a protection racket if merchants agreed to pay a small fee, the boys would agree NOT to break their windows." "Robert was adventurous, brave and bad." "He was an average student and much more interested in mischief than in school." "He climbed the church tower of Market Drayton and hung over the side for the sheer thrill of it." "Robert grew up craving excitement, but wanted acceptance by his family even more." "When he was 17, a job as a clerk in the East India Company promised adventure, money and a chance to redeem his family." "Clive set his sights on India." "On the first of June 1744, a cutter deposited Robert in a rowboat just off the coast of Madras." "Splashing ashore, he got his first sight of India." "The Madras, Robert discovered, was an exotic melting pot of Indian, Southeast Asian and European influences." "Here British, French and Dutch traders had established themselves to take advantage of the astonishingly lucrative trade in cloth, spices and opium." "In those days the young men who became clerks in the East India Company were a little bit like the Eurobond dealers of our day." "If you wanted to make a pile..." "I mean there was a great risk attached to this because you could go out to India and promptly die of some dreadful disease." "But there was a chance also, 50/50 really, that you might make a whole sort of pile of money." "These early European colonialists merged with the Indian population much more completely than later ones would." "Many traders went native, and began to behave like local potentates." "So they lived as Indians, wore Indian clothes quite often, certainly adopted Indian manners and customs." "Many of them had harems." "As far as the Indian princes are concerned, they looked upon the company as another Indian presence, not as a foreigner necessarily invading." "This was global capitalism in its infancy." "Clive and his friends were pioneers of the system that would soon dominate the entire world." "But in 1745 Robert was discovering that the life of a clerk in India was not easy." "His salary was five pounds a year." "He soon felt desperately lonely and more cut adrift from home than ever." "His unhappiness came to a head when several ships appeared in the harbor." "Every European in Madras received a letter or package from home except Clive." "He was devastated." "Clive had a mercurial temperament." "This apparent humiliation at the hands of his family plunged him into the depths of depression." "Feeling utterly alone and cast off, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger." "Twice it failed to go off." ""Fate it seems must be reserving me for some other purpose,"" "he would later tell a friend." "In fact, fate had extraordinary things in store for Clive wild swings of fortune, dizzying heights but also the darkest depths." "Throughout his life periods of intense, feverish activity would alternate with bouts of deep despair." "He would probably be diagnosed today as a manic depressive." "Clive soon discovered that opium was the only cure and he would use it as a medicine for the rest of his life." "Clive got used to loneliness." "The British lived in Fort St. George." "You had the fort and then you had Blacktown outside." "They called it Blacktown, and that's where all the Indians lived." "The British seldom ventured into Blacktown except when they wanted to go and pick up hookers, basically." "And Clive, certainly it was known he had this sort of fondness for prostitutes." "Perhaps the one consolation for Clive and his fellow colonialists was that, being so far from home, they could do almost whatever they liked." "As a proverb of the time said:" ""there are no sins south of the equator."" "As Europeans woke up to the phenomenal profits to be made in India, the competition for trade intensified." "Finally in 1746, open war broke out between the British and French in India each side supported by their local allies and clients." "It was just the push Clive needed." "He was galvanized by new energy and enthusiasm." "For the next five years of Anglo French conflict in India," "Clive fought in the militia of the East India Company where his raw aggression and boundless energy won him promotions and success at the same furious pace." "In return for his victories against the French, culminating in the battle of Arcot, he was rewarded with an appointment as quartermaster of the company factory at Madras." "He would find a way to make a profit out of the soldiers' provisions." "Now, it doesn't sound very grand, but the great thing about quartermaster is" "You were given a great wad of money and told to go feed your troops." "And if you could feed your troops on half the amount of money you'd been given, then you were allowed to keep the rest." "By the time Clive was 27, he had made himself a small fortune 40,000 pounds" "Clive was also being credited with turning the tide against the French." "News of his success astonished the family back in England." "His father is said to have remarked:" ""Perhaps Robert is not such a booby after all"." "Finally Clive was getting the recognition he craved." "Now he hungered for it on a wider stage." "One event would set the seal not only on Clive's fortunes in India but that of the British as well." "In 1756, the Mughal Nawab, or 'prince of Bengal' Siraj, seized the British East India Company's fort in Calcutta." "The British in India were furious." "Their outrage soared when stories circulated about the Mughals' treatment of European prisoners." "When he seized the fort," "Siraj had ordered the imprisonment of all company employees." "The Indians locked their British captives in a cell designed by the British for Indian captives." "It was tiny 18 by 14 feet with only a couple of minuscule, barred windows." "The night of June 20th, 1756 was suffocatingly hot." "When the door opened the next morning, at least 40 British were dead." ""The Black Hole of Calcutta" they called it, and the incident sparked uproar." "It was just what Clive had been waiting for." "Here was a chance to really take control of India and make a name for himself." "He received command of a small British army." "Clive and his troops hit Bengal like a monsoon." "In 1757, he swept into Calcutta and forced the Nawab's troops to withdraw." "With promises of lucrative deals," "Clive then strong armed an Indian prince into joining him in a military alliance against Siraj." "With typical guile," "Clive secured the allegiance of his Indian allies with fraudulent treaties." "Finally, he marched into Bengal with 800 European troops and over 2,000 Indian sepoys." "It was an impressive force but nothing compared to what Siraj mustered against him." "50,000 well armed men backed up by the French and 50 pieces of state of the art heavy artillery." "The two armies met near a town called Plassey." "The Nawab's superiority may have seemed overwhelming but Clive knew that discipline, not numbers, was the key." "The Europeans had already gone through something like a bureaucratic military revolution in the organization of their armies." "Everyone is trained to act in unison and it is not heroic battle action which matters but the discipline of formation and quick succession to anybody who falls in the field of battle, exactly as one faceless bureaucrat is replaced by another." "Clive was outnumbered enormously, but he could use his resources much more effectively." "Faced by the disciplined phalanxes of the British trained troops, the Mughal army fell apart." "Clive's triumph at Plassey effectively gave India to the British." "Although the British empire in India would not be formally declared for another 100 years," "India now belonged to the British East India Company." "Clive became known as the Master of Bengal and lost no time in turning his position into an astonishingly lucrative business." "He had learned the technique years ago as a quartermaster in Madras." "Indian merchants were prepared to do anything to ensure their continued good relations with the East India Company." "On the same principle, the Prince of Bengal now paid Clive huge sums to ensure his favor." "On top of this Clive was collecting trade and land revenues." "Within the space of two years he had amassed a huge fortune." "But with the action over, it was not long before Clive slumped into another cycle of depression, accompanied now by agonizing pains in his stomach, gout and prostration." "In 1760 he returned to England as Clive of India a very rich, very famous and very sick man." "When Clive returned to London, one of the only things that could drag him from his gloom was the prospect of a spending spree." "He now had wealth, recognition, fame in India the only thing he didn't have was social position in England." "He decided he would buy his way into the English upper classes." "He hungrily set out to amass property and social status in equal measure." "He remodeled the family home at S0tyche, and bought four more a luxurious town house in London's Berkeley Square, two more estates in England and one in Ireland too." "He engineered himself a seat in Parliament and one for his father also." "The power and reach of Clive's money was huge but not limitless." "The one thing Robert Clive wanted more than anything else was to be accepted by the establishment and the aristocracy and for people to consider him a gentleman." "He did flash his money around." "And sadly, people considered him to be rather vulgar." "They didn't like this chap coming back from India out of nowhere and buying all these estates and big houses and, you know, sort of buying his own furniture if you like." "Clive soon found himself mired in the intricacies of the English class system." "Try as he might, spend as he might, the inner circles of the aristocracy would not let him in." "His rough manners only made things worse for him." "They called him a 'nabob'," "English slang based on the Hindi word 'Nawab' or ruler." "The nabob is a pejorative expression for an Englishman who has given up to bad stomach, bad digestion, bad temper as a result of overindulgence in India." "And usually plundered India and made a lot of money." "They're something like robber barons in fact." "And their idea was to make a fortune here and then establish themselves in England as respectable notables." "And try to make a political career there." "Now in England they were looked upon as adventurers who were slightly seedy, and Clive was a classic example of that." "The English aristocracy closed its doors in Clive's face." "But Clive was not to be put off." "Still intent on his social climb, Clive decided to try a different tack." "To enhance his reputation, he agreed to return to India in a different role." "No longer just the businessman, but now statesman as well." "In 1765, only five years after leaving, the 40 year old Clive returned to India as governor of the British East India Company." "He now cast himself as a high minded champion of British interests." "Clive's mission was to clean up the practices of the British in India." "They certainly needed it." "In the eight years since Clive's victory at Plassey, profiteering had run wild in Bengal." "The British had achieved an effective trade monopoly." "British merchants and soldiers strong armed and extorted money from Bengali traders just as Clive himself had once done." "Resentment was seething." "Clive countered the growing unrest with a tone of patrician contempt for all the practices that had made him rich." "The confusion we behold, what does it arise from?" "Rapacity and luxury;" "the unreasonable desire of many to acquire in an instant, what only a few can or ought to possess." "With almost biblical fervor," "Clive launched reforms outlawing the abuses he had instituted." "In a whirlwind 20 months" "Clive totally revamped the British East India Company." "By the end of it he was drained." "And it was now that disaster struck." "In 1769 the monsoon rains failed in Bengal." "And in 1770 famine set in." "Hundreds of thousands died as much as one third of the population." "Share prices for the East India Company's stock plummeted." "By 1772 the Company's credit had failed." "Meanwhile stories were circulating that" "English merchants were hoarding rice as Indians starved." "There was a public outcry against the company." "People looked for a scapegoat." "Fingers pointed at Clive." "It was a bitter irony." "Only as Clive was at last making a noble hearted effort to clear up the morass of greed in India, was he finally accused of being its cause." "A parliamentary committee was formed to investigate the company and Clive's role in it." "The accusation?" "Extortion and profiteering in India." "As usual, energized by the prospect of a fight," "Clive rose magnificently to his own defense in the house of commons." "And it was now he made his famous speech saying that given the opportunities for self enrichment in India he was astonished at his moderation." "Clive was cleared but there was no joy in it for him." "He had been stung by the accusations." "He had effectively given India to Britain." "Now he was furiously bitter at what he felt was his country's ingratitude." "He was once again being rejected." "Predictably, he plunged back into depression." "His agonizing stomach pains returned, this time complicated by gallstones." "Even opium did little to relieve the pain." "I have a disease which makes life insupportable, but which the doctors tell me won't shorten it an hour." "He drifted from one mansion to another, barely unpacking before setting off for the next." "Little did he know, many in the British government had in fact been deeply impressed with his reforms of the East India Company." "They were on the verge of giving him control of yet another colony that was in chaos and on the verge of revolt North America." "Unaware of the honor that was pending," "Clive was consumed by humiliation and despair." "On the 22nd of November, 1774, as his family prepared to leave the London house at Berkeley square for Bath they heard a crash in Clive's room." "When they rushed in, they found him dead." "Robert Clive, still only 49 years old, had cut his own throat." "Clive's death created a huge scandal, there was a sort of big hush up and a lot of sort of muted whispering going on in the corridors of power as to whether he had killed himself." "It sounds like he slit his throat with a penknife." "Suicide was a sin." "In grief and shame, Clive's family removed his body by night and buried him without a headstone in the little church of Moreton say, outside Market Drayton, the town where he had run wild as a child." "After Clive's death, the British grip on America loosened and tightened on India." "The profits to be earned there resumed their flow." "A hundred years later, the Kohinoor, the fabulous diamond Babur had dismissed as worthless compared to the life of his son, was in the British crown jewels." "Krishna's gift had been a test of mankind's greed." "What would they do with all that wealth?" "Would they behave like beasts or think and achieve Wisdom?" "Peru." "For centuries home of the high civilizations of the Andes." "Here the Sun Kings of the Inca ruled over a vast empire, which stretched for 2,000 miles along the mountain spine of South America." "In 1532, that empire was destroyed with tragic ease by the Spanish." "As their world crumbled around them," "Inca nobles retreated into the remote recesses of the mountains." "There they struggled to keep alive their culture in its final refuge." "The last city of the Incas Vilcabamba." "This is the story of two men lured by the silent call of that last Inca hiding place." "One to rediscover it the other to destroy it forever." "Machu Picchu." "For centuries, this spectacular Inca citadel lay forgotten, hidden by the plunging ravines and coiling mists of the mountain cloud forest." "The year is 1948." "Machu Picchu is visited by a retired American senator a man, who in his youth, revealed it to the world." "He has done many things in his remarkable life, but Hiram Bingham knows he will be remembered for one:" "this astonishing archeological discovery." "Hiram Bingham is a sort of accidental archeologist." "He's been scorned by better trained excavators, but he really doesn't care he's used to coping with bad press." "Back in Washington he'd been elected a Republican senator in the Roaring Twenties." "His flamboyant style was perfectly in tune with the times." "A bribery scandal, an affair with the wife of another Congressman, divorce, accusations that he'd embezzled his first wife's fortune had all left him unscathed." "In 1929, he landed a Zeppelin on Capitol Hill as a publicity stunt." "Hiram loved headlines." "He was a very, very colorful character a man of enormous energy, tremendous ambition." "He was capable of doing almost anything, and he had an attitude that led him to believe he could accomplish whatever he set out to do." "Perhaps Hiram's adventurous life was the perfect reaction to his upbringing." "Born to pioneering Christian missionaries in the Hawaiian Islands," "Hiram was raised for a life of Puritan austerity." "In the world of his childhood, any extravagance, lack of discipline, even dancing were strictly forbidden." "Not surprisingly, Hiram was eager to escape." "Resourceful and intelligent, he saved and studied to get into school on the mainland." "Before long, he was headed for Yale." "Hiram threw himself into Yale college life." "Gone were the puritanical days of his Hawaiian childhood." "Suddenly, a new world of temptations was beckoning." "Intellectual excitement, adventure, and girls." "Dear Mother, what can I do?" "I know it will hurt you to think that I dance, but people here in the East do not understand why anyone should not dance, unless one is sick or lame." "I can see nothing wrong with it unless carried to excess." "Although reserved, Hiram was determined to enjoy himself." "Thanks to his charm, he was soon moving freely in this atmosphere of wealth and privilege." "Before long, he met Alfreda Mitchell, heiress to the Tiffany fortune." "Alfreda was irresistible, wealthy, and from the high society" "Hiram was now determined to be a part of." "In 1900, two years after they first met," "Hiram and Freda were married at the Mitchell's grand estate in New London." "Hiram took to wealth like a duck to water but there was a down side." "There was obviously an economic asymmetry." "The wife brought with her a set of expectations about the style in which she should live, and her side of the family was apparently very active in making sure that those expectations were met." "He liked the money and status, but hadn't banked on the pressures from his in laws." "Used to his independence," "Hiram soon began to feel like a bird in a gilded cage." "He had every prospect of a professorship at Yale, but before long university life, too, started to feel suffocating." "Feeling hemmed in by academia, in laws, and the pressures of domesticity," "Hiram soon started looking for an escape." "He decided field research for a book about Simon Bolivar would be his ticket to some adventure." "In 1906, he said good bye to Alfreda and headed off for South America." "I feel the Bingham blood stirring in my veins as I start for little known regions, as nearly all my Bingham ancestors for ten generations have done before me." "Freda wasn't happy about the long separation imposed by his travels." "Hiram wrote soothing letters as if he wasn't either." "Dearly beloved, I love you with a love that increases from day to day." "Let us not complain about our long separation but rejoice in the opportunity to accomplish a good piece of work." "But thousands of miles away, Hiram was ecstatic." "He may have missed Alfreda, but at last he met his true calling adventurer." "It was through the actual process of travel that he began to realize that exploration rather than documentary research was what really drew him." "Bingham abandoned his academic research to write a book about his travels." "When he reached Peru," "Bingham came face to face with the Inca world for the first time." "He was entranced." "Here was the remains of a civilization as vast and sophisticated as ancient Egypt, and yet little was known about it." "Its descendants still populated the Andes." "The ancient sites which littered Peru spoke to him of a magnificent bygone world, but he had no idea how to interpret what they said." "He had to find a method on the spot." "Fortunately, I had with me that extremely useful handbook," ""Hints to the Travelers," published by the Royal Geographic Society." "In one of the chapters I found out what should be done when one is confronted by a prehistoric site:" "take careful measurements, plenty of photographs, and describe as accurately as possible all finds." "He was soon eagerly examining Inca sites all over Peru." "One episode of Inca history fascinated him above all others Vilcabamba, last stronghold of the Inca kings." "Sixteenth century chronicles recounted how a core group of Inca nobles and priests had escaped the carnage of conquest and fled into the impenetrable high jungles to the north of the Inca capital, Cuzco." "And there, at a place called Vilcabamba, they'd constructed an Inca court in exile." "A palace, a temple, a final refuge of their world." "They had taken their sacred relics of gold with them." "Many had been lured by the accounts of Vilcabamba and gone in search of it." "None had ever succeeded in finding it." "Perhaps the relics and the gold were still there, hidden in the jungle, waiting to be discovered." "Hiram was spellbound." "It was a treasure seeker's dream." "Suddenly, Hiram saw a fantastic adventure opening up before him:" "he would discover Vilcabamba, lost city of the Incas, and unearth its hidden treasures." "Hiram returned to the U.S." "and threw himself into fundraising and his researches on Vilcabamba." "He pored over maps and chronicles of the Conquest." "Based on these, Hiram made meticulous calculations of where Vilcabamba must be." "After months of research, he was certain the last refuge of the Incas had been in a remote place now called Espiritu Pampa." "Now all he had to do was raise the money for the expedition." "He was too proud to be totally bankrolled by his wife's family." "He went down to the Yale Club in New York City, and he gave a speech." "A number of the people came forward." "When they saw the pictures of his earlier travels, they became very excited." "Last night a classmate, of whom I have seen very little, came over and talked with me." "When I told him about my plans and how I needed $1800 to pay for a topographer he smiled and said," ""Eighteen hundred dollars?" "I'll give you that."" "I could have shouted with joy." "The New York harbor on June 8th, 1911," "Hiram Bingham stood on the deck of a steamer once again waving goodbye to his wife." "This time it was harder." "They had just had another son, Hiram IV." "I shall never forget how you looked as you stood on the wharf with Harry, so brave and courageous, and yet so little and so appealing." "It did seem too cruel for words that I should be leaving you all alone." "But soon he was back in Peru doing what he loved most." "In July 1911, he set off from Cuzco northwards on the long journey to Espiritu Pampa." "Back in his element, Hiram was overjoyed." "He was also extraordinarily lucky." "After less than three weeks easy trekking down a newly opened road, a local farmer told him about some old stone terraces on a mountain nearby." "Hiram asked the man what the place was called." "He scribbled down the answer in his notebook Machu Picchu." "He decided to have a quick look at it the next day." "A young Indian boy led the party up onto a plateau a few hours away." "Hardly had we rounded the promontory than we were confronted by an unexpected sight:" "a great flight of beautifully constructed stone faced terraces, perhaps a hundred of them." "I could scarcely believe my senses." "Would anyone believe what I had found?" "Fortunately, I had a good camera." "He knew he'd found an Inca ruin of exceptional beauty, but I think because of his lack of experience, he didn't fully appreciate how unique the discovery was." "It was an entire city which had lain untouched since the Incas had abandoned it almost 400 years before." "Not understanding what he had found, Hiram left two of his team to start clearing and mapping the site while he pressed on to his real goal, Vilcabamba." "He forged on northwards" "pushing his team through tangled..." "jungle and perilous ravines sure he was heading toward greater discoveries a fabulous lost city of temples and palaces that would put any other Inca ruin to shame." "Finally, after weeks of arduous trekking, he approached the area where he knew Vilcabamba must be." "For days his team hacked through dense underbrush and tangled vines." "To their great astonishment, they found nothing." "Espiritu Pampa was a desolate upland plateau with a few unimpressive stone foundations and a lot of dense jungle." "It was a far cry from the magnificent city Bingham had imagined." "He was disappointed and confused." "Could this be Vilcabamba?" "Or had his calculations been wrong?" "A perplexed Hiram turned back the expedition." "The men were exhausted and supplies were running out." "As his team trudged back to civilization, morale hit rock bottom." "I often wonder why under the sun I picked out a career that would force me to spend so much of my time away from my dear ones." "The future is not clear to me." "As Hiram headed back to the U.S. and Alfreda, gloom and uncertainty hung over his whole project." "Once back in the U.S., Hiram's spirits revived, and with them his dreams of Vilcabamba." "He rechecked his calculations of its position." "If it was not Espiritu Pampa, could it be Machu Picchu?" "But Machu Picchu's position still seemed wrong." "He decided to return to Peru the following year and investigate his find more thoroughly." "When he arrived in Machu Picchu again in the summer of 1912, what the workmen had revealed was, quite simply, stunning." "It clearly was some sort of city its size, its spectacular location, its magnificent terracing, all made him sure it was a royal city." "No one but a king could have insisted on having the lintels of his doorways made of solid blocks of granite, each weighing three tons." "What a prodigious amount of patient work had to be employed." "Overcome with excitement, Hiram immediately began to speculate that this must be the last refuge of the Inca kings." "Even if the location was wrong, everything else was so right." "Here in this breathtaking hideout, the Inca rulers had surely sheltered the last remnants of their world." "Hiram devoted himself to his spectacular find at Machu Picchu." "It was his passport to worldwide fame." "National Geographic devoted an entire magazine issue to Bingham and his work in Peru." "Suddenly, everybody knew about Machu Picchu and the man who uncovered it." "At a special National Geographic Society dinner he was honored along with the world renowned discoverers of the North and South Poles." "Hiram had finally achieved the fame he'd always wanted." "But his career as an excavator was not to last much longer." "He returned to Peru in 1915 to a storm of controversy." "For many Peruvians, the apparent absence of spectacular gold among Bingham's finds was deeply suspicious." "Rumors flew that Bingham had found gold and was smuggling it out of the country." "Fed up, fearing arrest, Hiram packed and left Peru." "On his return to the U.S., he decided to abandon his excavations." "The first World War was raging." "He signed up as an aviator." "World War I offered him a very convenient way of extricating himself from what had become an intractable situation in Peru." "He could honorably say that the world needed him to become involved in the military effort that, as a patriot, he should do that." "After a tour of duty in Europe," "Bingham had the perfect qualifications for a political career." "Yale man, world famous explorer, and now war hero." "He was elected in 1924 to the U.S. Senate with little difficulty." "His political star rose steadily through the 1920s, but a bribery scandal and the Great Depression brought it down fast." "The political tide turned against Hiram and his buccaneering style." "He lost his Senate seat in 1932." "Before long, he lost Alfreda too, and left taking a large part of her family's money with him." "Remarried, eager to make up for past mistakes, he turned back to tend the one reputation he knew was secure, discoverer of Machu Picchu." "He believed to his dying day that Machu Picchu was Vilcabamba." "As it turned out, here too he was mistaken." "Later discoveries made it clear the real Vilcabamba was exactly where Hiram's first calculations had put it, at Espiritu Pampa." "Beneath the tangled overgrowth of Espiritu Pampa's desolate jungle, the remains of Vilcabamba had been lying only a few hundred yards from where Hiram had searched." "Determined to dispel any lingering doubts that Machu Picchu was not the last refuge of the Incas," "Hiram devoted many of the years up to his death in 1956 to his researches into Vilcabamba and its fall." "His studies took him back to the 16th century." "The bloodstained and tumultuous era of the Conquest and to a brilliant, chilling, now largely forgotten man who changed the course of Peru's history" "Francisco de Toledo, administrator of genius, passionate believer in the law, destroyer of Vilcabamba, killer of the last Inca king." "Francisco de Toledo was born in 1515 into the high Spanish nobility in the town of Oropesa." "In the 16th century, you couldn't get much more privileged than this." "Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth." "Its massive armies had subdued Moslems in the Middle East and Protestants in Europe's north." "It was the powerhouse of the West." "The recent astonishing discoveries of a whole new continent promised an inexhaustible supply of wealth, and it all belonged to Spain." "This was the confident, aggressive and opulent world" "Francisco was born into." "But despite his family's position, his early life was not easy." "His mother died in childbirth, and young Francisco was raised by nuns." "He grew up isolated in a world of austere Catholicism and fervent devotion." "Young Francisco took on the qualities of the religious world that shaped him." "He became tough minded, disciplined, and an ardent believer in the justice of Christ." "His family had always been loyal servants of the Spanish crown, so at 15 Francisco became a page at the royal palace." "In 1532, Francisco would have been at court for only two years when he heard the astounding tales of Pizarro's conquest of Peru and the astonishing ransom in gold of the Inca king, Atahuallpa." "These were reports from beyond the edge of the known world." "How could his imagination not be seized by the faraway kingdom of Peru and its amazing riches?" "Francisco joined a religious and military order at the forefront of Spain's expansion." "He took the necessary vows and dedicated his life to Christ, Spain and the law." "Toledo was brought up to be what we would consider a humanist." "He had training in the law, he could read Latin." "So, he was a man trained to be like, today we would say a Harvard or a Yale man, ready to rule." "Francisco rose fast through the ranks." "By 1558, he'd become a permanent, powerful member of the royal household." "He was one of the chosen few present at the bedside of King Charles V when he died." "Francisco went on to serve the next king of Spain," "Philip II, who on taking the throne was confronted with the devastating and unexpected realization the empire was broke." "Overextended in Europe," "Spain had also financed decades of conquest and exploration in the Americas." "Very little was coming back." "All that Inca and Aztec gold that had been melted down turned out to be a drop in the ocean." "The real wealth of the colonies was in the hands of the 'encomenderos,' the new Spanish overlords who had divided up the lands and the Indians amongst themselves." "In a feeding frenzy over the astonishing wealth of their newfound land, the encomenderos had spawned Spain's very own Wild West," "where lawlessness and the sword ruled." "They were busy making themselves rich, and not paying tribute to the crown." "Philip realized he desperately needed someone who could straighten out the colony in Peru and get some revenues flowing back to Spain." "That man, he decided, was Francisco de Toledo." "In 1569, Francisco set sail for Peru to take up the most challenging and important job in the Spanish Empire, Viceroy of Peru." "The grueling journey took almost an entire year across the barely charted waters of the Atlantic," "and then down the Pacific Coast of South America to Peru." "On November 30th, 1569," "Francisco arrived in the Spanish capital of Peru, Lima." "Anxious for his favor, the local encomenderos gave him an enthusiastic welcome." "But in a letter to King Philip, he secretly confided his disgust for the anarchic little frontier town and its Spanish overlords." "The Spaniards in this kingdom have tried to fill their greedy hands in the looting of ancient tombs and sacred worship sites." "And it is the most common thing for them to wildly flaunt their finds." "But this is what he'd been sent to put right." "The new viceroy threw himself into the task of reforming the delinquent colony." "It quickly became clear to him that the colony was being pulled apart by two powerful forces." "On the one hand there were the encomenderos who fought amongst themselves and enslaved the Indians." "On the other, there was the Church, which also felt it had a moral right not only to Indian souls, but their labor." "The whole colony was feeding itself on Indian toil and Indian ignorance." "Not surprisingly, the native population simmered with resentment and discontent." "Francisco could immediately see where he had to focus his reforms." "I am informed that the Indians are not free as a result of their weakness, and the great awe they have toward Spaniards." "It is, therefore, my duty as their protector to see they are not cheated in their work." "Francisco also learned the Inca court in exile, now established in Vilcabamba, had already been at the center of the violent rebellion which had raged for years." "When Toledo arrived to Peru, he was sympathetic to the Inca." "On the other hand, there had been this famous uprising of the Incas." "The Incas had retired to Vilcabamba and they were threatening the whole process of the conquest." "Francisco had to somehow introduce order into this volatile and chaotic situation." "He realized he could never put things right unless he came to understand it in greater depth." "So he proposed something that, for the time, was absolutely remarkable a research trip to find out at first hand what was happening in the colony." "I saw clearly that I would not be able to govern the Spaniards or the Indians with the zeal that I had for serving God or Your Majesty unless I saw the land, traveled through it, and inspected it." "It was what we would do today in a social survey." "It was completely innovative." "The government up to that point was based on brutality and the use of arms." "What Toledo proposes is government based on knowledge, which makes him a man ahead of his time." "So in 1570, Toledo set out on his remarkable voyages of investigation through the remnants of the vast Inca Empire." "They would last for five years." "With translators and scribes, he traveled from one end of the colony to the other, interviewing Indians and Spanish alike, collecting data on population, land holdings, resources and local history." "In the years of his travels, he accumulated an astonishing 600,000 documents." "As Francisco listened to Indians talking, he understood the magnitude of their catastrophe." "Not only had they been subjected to the encomenderos, but they were dying by the hundreds of thousands." "A series of devastating epidemics of European diseases to which they had no resistance had already wiped out over half the Indian population of Peru." "In just 30 years since the arrival of Pizarro, almost a million people had died of colds, flus, measles and small pox." "In despair, many people were focusing unreal hopes of salvation on the Inca court in exile." "Francisco started to believe that" "Vilcabamba's hold on the Indian imagination had to be broken." "Francisco traveled on." "In the course of his research he covered all the territory from what is now Quito in Ecuador to Bolivia." "And as he traveled, he learned something else." "The Inca Empire had been composed of many different tribes." "The Incas were just one of them who had come to dominate the others only recently, about 100 years before the arrival of the Spanish." "Just like the Spanish, they had waged fierce war to conquer the country." "There was no shortage of evidence of Inca brutality to weaker tribes." "The Incas are tyrants, and as such, intruders in the government of these lands." "I think he was looking for arguments in order to justify the Spanish conquest within this particular region." "And he saw that the excuse could be to blame the Inca people as being tyrants, as being dictators, as being people who had imposed themselves with force on the populations they had conquered in order to present the Spanish Conquest" "as a sort of liberated process." "He wasn't wrong." "What happens is when you use the word 'tyrant' it has a whole moral connotation." "The Incas were an authoritarian system, with an imperial military force which was extremely violent, cruel, and would use the sorts of torture which would scandalize us if they were used in European wars." "As Francisco pondered the realities he had discovered on his voyages, any doubts he might have had about the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest evaporated." "With typical thoroughness, he came up with a plan which was brilliantly argued, utterly coherent and totally draconian." "His vision was of a great kingdom of stern justice in Peru." "He would impose Spain's authority on the quarreling encomenderos and church alike." "He knew he would make enemies of both of them." "He did it anyway." "And he would totally reorganize the Indian world so it could experience both the justice and authority of the Spanish crown." "The Indians were to be resettled from their remote villages into more accessible towns where they would pay taxes to Spain and be protected by her." "And he would insist that, as subjects of Spain, they had rights." "But there was one terrible price to pay for Francisco's vision of a just social order in Peru" "there would be no place for Vilcabamba." "There could not be two kings in the colony." "Vilcabamba and the remaining power of the Inca kings must be destroyed." "Unknown to Francisco, the Inca king he was deciding to destroy was little more than a boy, Tupac Amaru." "Brought up by the Inca priestesses of Vilcabamba, he was deeply religious and knew nothing of the outside world." "He was gentle, famously beautiful, charming, and it seems, not very smart." "Tupac Amaru was very young when he was crowned Inca." "Tupac Amaru is referred as an 'Uti'." "Uti is meant to be sort of not mentally retarded, but not the quickest, not the brightest." "Tupac Amaru was a very young person." "I don't imagine him as being very well politically trained." "He was very young." "He was just a symbolic figure." "Tupac Amaru was an innocent, but that wasn't going to save him." "On June 16th, 1572, Spanish troops thundered towards Vilcabamba." "As they charge into the citadel," "Tupac Amaru manages to escape with his wife who is expecting their first child." "They don't get far." "The bewildered young Tupac is dragged back to Cuzco, and on September 21st, 1572, condemned to death." "As Tupac Amaru is led through the streets to his execution, the town is seething." "Everybody has fallen in love with the handsome young king, not just Indians, but Spaniards too." "They all want Francisco to relent." "Francisco locks himself in his office and refuses to see anyone." "In the main square of Cuzco, Tupac Amaru rises to the execution block." "An eyewitness records the scene:" "as the multitude of Indians saw that lamentable spectacle, they deafened the skies making them reverberate with their cries and wailing." "There are two versions of what happens next." "In one, Tupac quiets the crowd and says nobly," ""Mother Earth, witness how my enemies shed my blood."" "In another, he makes a rambling, tearful speech and renounces the Inca gods." "Everyone prays that Toledo will change his mind." "But from Toledo's closed office, there is a resounding silence." "Toledo writes to King Philip:" "what Your Majesty has ordered concerning the Inca has been done." "But His Majesty had not ordered the death of Tupac Amaru, only a solution to the Indian problem." "From this moment the tide starts to turn against Francisco." "Toledo accomplished the mission that he had set out for himself." "That's why he wanted it to be so public and so theatrical, to send a message, "This is over; this is it."" "But it wasn't over." "As Tupac's head was mounted on a pike in Cuzco's central square, the Inca king's faithful subjects held vigil all night." "And immediately the stories circulated that" "Tupac Amaru's head became more beautiful with each passing minute." "As the centuries passed, it became more beautiful still." "Tupac Amaru was converted into a Christ like figure of martired innocence, the symbol of native resistance to oppression." "For 500 years, almost every popular rebellion in Peru, from the Great Indian uprisings of the 18th century, led by Tupac Amaru II, to the urban guerrillas of the late 20th century, have invoked his name." "It's a tragic myth, because everybody who invoked Tupac Amaru failed as well." "Tupac Amaru II failed, the Peruvian Revolution of '68, which relied on the image of the two Tupac Amarus, also failed." "As history turned Tupac Amaru into a tragic hero, it turned Francisco into a caricature of the cruel Spaniard." "Forgotten were his stands for justice and the rights of Indians against the brutal exploitation of the encomenderos, he became famous for one thing:" "executing the innocent boy king, Tupac Amaru." "You've got to remember who was writing that history." "The history of Spain was written by priests, the missionaries who hated Toledo." "I think he held everybody to the same standards." "In administrative terms, he did the right thing." "In terms of his conscience, only he can tell." "After a remarkably successful reform of the colony in Peru," "Francisco returned to Spain expecting honors for his years of faithful service." "Instead, insults and disgrace were heaped on him." "The church had worked its influence on Philip." "The king who he had served with such brilliance and devotion dismissed Francisco without an audience." "Go away to your house." "I sent you to serve a king, and you killed a king." "It was a devastating blow." "Mortally wounded, he returned to his family's home." "Six months later, Francisco de Toledo," "Fifth Viceroy of Peru, died a broken man." "His stern vision of a realm of justice in Peru never came to be." "The greed and corruption of the colony slowly reasserted itself." "The Indians were exploited as never before." "As the screws of colonial oppression tightened, the memory of Francisco faded, and Vilcabamba became the tragic myth which would return to haunt Peru forever." "It was the birthplace of civilization, now a barren and exotic landscape, alluring in its mystery." "For thousands of years, the Middle East had guarded its secrets." "But by the 19th century it had become a battleground for competing empires eager for political control and archeological treasure." "It was a time when archeology was intertwined with espionage." "When politics was called "The Great Game"." "Into this arena stepped two remarkable Britons a young adventurer named Austin Henry Layard, who uncovered the treasures of a fabulous lost civilization," "and a brilliant politician named Gertrude Bell, the "brains" behind Lawrence of Arabia." "Both would follow their dreams into the desert changing it forever." "In the spring of 1840, an intrepid young Englishman found his way to the ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, now part of Iraq." "He was on his way towards India to make his fortune." "But there was something about this desert that caught hold of him and wouldn't let him go." "More than 2,000 years ago, two mighty empires had ruled this land:" "Babylonia and Assyria." "Their cities were fabled for their opulence." "Their power rivaled only by each other." "The Assyrians were fearsome warriors." "Eight centuries before Christ, they had marched on the Israelites." "City after city fell before them." "Even Jerusalem was under siege." "Thousands of captives were taken, immortalized as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel." "And all this was written in the Bible." "But now almost all traces of these great civilizations had disappeared." "There was nothing here but desert as far as the eye could see." "Yet in this wasteland, Austin Henry Layard saw the chance of a lifetime." "In the decade to come, he would uncover the secrets of this barren desert, and reveal the truth in a Bible story." "When he saw the mounds and saw this area, he saw opportunity." "He saw opportunity for fame, and he was looking as a way to make his name and his life." "From his earliest childhood," "Austin Henry Layard was an unusual young man." "Most of his youth was spent in Florence where he fell in love with that ancient city's history and art." "Formal schooling was not for him, but he knew almost every painting in the galleries and churches of the city." "The rest of his time he spent dreaming, lost in stories of adventure." "His favorite was a book only recently translated into English." "The work in which I took the greatest delight was the Arabian Nights." "My imagination became so much excited by it, that I thought and dreamt of little else." "The Arabian Nights have had no little influence upon my life and career." "To them, I attribute that love of travel and adventure, which took me to the East." "Ever since Napoleon rediscovered the wonders of Egypt at the turn of the century," "Europeans had been captivated by the exoticism of the East." "From the time he was a boy," "Austin Henry Layard fell under its spell." "His family tried to make a lawyer of him." "Layard hated the law, but he stuck it out and passed his exams at 22." "Casting about, he learned of a possible job in Ceylon, a British colony halfway around the world." "It was the chance he had been waiting for." "Layard found another traveler to accompany him in the overland route through the Ottoman Empire." "In 1839, this was a journey well off the beaten track, which could take more than a year." "The two men wore Turkish dress to assure safe passage, and lived out of their saddlebags." "They made their way down into Turkey, the gateway to another world." "This was my first glimpse of Eastern life." "The booths in the covered alleys of the bazaar;" "the veiled women gliding through the crowd;" "the dim and mysterious light of the place." "I felt myself in a new world, a world of which I had dreamt since my earliest childhood." "When Austin Henry Layard reached the desert, he was living his deepest fantasy." "You know how sometimes you go to a place, and it is you, and you just fit, and you feel comfortable?" "I don't think Layard, at that stage in his life, was comfortable in Victorian England." "But when he got to Petra, in particular, where he was robbed and had a terrible time, he felt at home because he felt a kinship with these people who were very volatile and friendly and outgoing like he was." "Petra also satisfied Layard's fascination with history." "The city's fading grandeur carved from solid rock." "But there were other even more ancient ruins, and these proved more intriguing still." "One day on his way through the Tigris and Euphrates valley, he caught sight of something extraordinary" "rising out of the flat desert plain." "I saw for the first time the great Mound of Nimrud against the clear sky." "The impression it made upon me was one never to be forgotten." "Layard vowed that some day he would return to investigate the mysterious mound." "In the meantime, the romantic young Englishman lost all interest in continuing on to Ceylon." "For a year, he lived with the Baktiari nomads in Persia, whose way of life had not changed for 3,000 years." "And it was I think one reason he became the archeologist he did." "He learned how to improvise on the spot;" "he learned how to adjust circumstances, how to live in discomfort;" "and above all, how to interact with these people." "His meager funds now growing short, the enterprising Layard used his facility with different cultures to get a job with the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire." "For three years, he served as a kind of roving reporter." "He was really a secret agent." "A lot of his work was very sensitive, and negotiating with these sorts of people." "And the skills he gained were priceless, but it is only a certain sort of person who will gain those skills." "Very outgoing, very entrepreneurial, in a way." "Never at a loss." "That's where Layard was brilliant." "Layard's new skills were just the right mix for his next assignment." "A new kind of conflict was heating up in the Middle East." "Ever since Napoleon had brought back treasures from Egypt, the great powers had been on the lookout for archeological booty." "The idea of museums, temples of the muses, was one which was capturing the imagination of 19th century Europeans." "The British, the French, the Germans were all building these palaces in which to place... well, what are they going to place there?" "Like Layard, the French recognized the potential of the strange mounds rising out of the Middle Eastern desert." "Now they had begun to dig, and at Khorsabad they were uncovering some very interesting sculptures." "There was certainly a competition between the French and the British as to who could find the biggest treasures in order to stock the museums in Paris and London." "And, in fact, newspaper articles and magazines at that time actually described these finds as "Trophies of empire."" "To catch up with the French, Layard persuaded the British ambassador to fund a trial excavation at his mound at Nimrud." "Within weeks, he was ready to begin, instructed to keep a low profile." "On the 8th of November 1845, having secretly procured a few tools, and carrying with me a variety of guns, spears and other weapons," "I declared that I was going to hunt wild boars in a neighboring village, and floated down the Tigris on a small raft." "It was dark by the time Layard arrived at the mound." "Five years had passed since he'd first laid eyes on it." "His head was filled with excitement." "He found it almost impossible to sleep." "Visions of palaces underground, of sculptured figures and endless inscriptions floated before me." "After forming plan after plan for removing the earth and extricating these treasures," "I fancied myself wandering in a maze of chambers from which I could find no outlet." "At dawn the next morning, the resourceful young Englishman assembled his team and set to work." "He had no experience, very little money, and no guarantee of success." "He really had no expertise in what he was doing, except his natural talent." "And he was rushing because the French were competing, and their influence over the Turks could mean that his license to be digging would quickly be cut off." "And he needed a good find quickly because he knew that's what would bring the support from the British government, or from the British Museum, from the British community to enable him to go on." "Amazingly, on the very first day of digging, Layard hit pay dirt." "A piece of alabaster appeared above the soil." "We could not remove it, and on digging downward it proved to be the upper part of a large slab." "The men shortly uncovered ten more." "It was evident that the top of a chamber had been discovered." "Digging along the walls of the chamber, within weeks the men uncovered a series of splendid sculptured panels." "Layard was captivated by their beauty." "But he knew they wouldn't be enough to get the British Museum to fund him." "He was looking for the spectacular sculpture, which would dazzle the public, and give him fame in London." "I say this not out of a criticism of Layard." "He was penniless." "This was his way to fame and fortune." "And he knew it." "A few months later," "Layard was on his way to visit a local sheik when two horsemen caught up with him." ""Hasten, O Bey," they cried." ""Hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself."" "Rising out of the earth was a gigantic head." "The workmen were terrified of this colossus they called Nimrod, and ran off to spread the news." "But Layard was elated." "He'd only been digging a few months, and here was treasure the French would envy." "Unfortunately, the resulting uproar gave the Ottoman Turks the excuse they'd been looking for to shut down the dig." "Layard suspected the hand of the French." "Quietly he kept a few men on who unearthed two gigantic sculptures" "strange and awe inspiring." "With his knowledge of art history," "Layard knew that he had found an entirely new style of art." "The British Museum agreed and finally gave him the money he needed." "A year after he'd begun, Turkish permission in hand," "Layard launched full scale excavations at Nimrud." "Every day produced some new discovery." "My Arabs entered with alacrity into the work, and felt almost as much interested in its results as I did myself." "Tunneling along the walls of what turned out to be a palace, they found hundreds of alabaster sculptures, some disintegrating from ancient fires." "Layard drew what he could, working from dawn until dusk." "In the evening, after the labor of the day," "I often sat at the door of my tent and gave myself up to the full enjoyment imparted to the senses by such scenes as these." "I live among the ruins, and dream of little else." "But still Layard had to face his biggest challenge." "Somehow he had to transport his treasures back to London." "It's quite one thing to dig up these large human headed lions or bas relief, some of which weighed several tons." "And quite another thing to take them back to London or Paris." "And this is where Layard was a genius he had learned to improvise." "He acquired the loyalty of the local people." "He got a cart built, and there were wonderful pictures in his books of luring these lions with ropes down on to one of the carts, and the famous occasion when the ropes broke and the lion fell like this." "And they thought it was broken, but it wasn't." "And the workmen burst into a wild dance." "And they towed this thing to the river." "And they built a raft of timber and supported it on inflated goatskins." "I watched the rafts until they disappeared, musing upon the strange destiny of their burdens." "After adorning the palaces of Assyrian kings, they had been buried unknown for centuries beneath the soil trodden by the Persians, the Greeks and the Arabs." "They were now to cross the most distance seas to be finally placed in a British museum." "1848." "The year of great revolutions in Europe is the year when all of the Assyrian stuff that Layard had discovered was first displayed in England, and it was a sensation." "He was lionized by society." "He became a public figure." "A young man who had gone out East and made good." "Look what he had bought for Britain." "Layard wrote a best seller about his adventures uncovering the impressive civilization of the Assyrians, lost to history for more than 2,000 years." "But he struggled to understand the strange beasts he'd discovered, and which had taken London by storm." "This creature stood to either side of the doorway of an important location in the Assyrian world to guard the way in." "And that lion's body will tear you apart, and those wings of a bird of prey will overtake you, and that human head will out think you." "And believe me, the Assyrians believed that, and would have been suitably intimidated just as the British were suitably impressed by this extraordinary exotic creature that he brought back." "The treasures of Assyria were trophies of Empire." "But to many people, they were more." "In the secular 19th century, the historical validity of the Bible was under attack." "Were its stories true, or were they simply stories?" "Perhaps the answer could be found in the mounds of Mesopotamia." "With mounting public interest, the British Museum decided to fund a second expedition." "In 1849, Layard tackled a mound the French had given up on, near the banks of the Tigris River." "Tunneling deep inside, he uncovered indisputable evidence that would prove he had found Nineveh, the biblical capital of Assyria." "Nearly two miles of sculptured alabaster panels proclaiming the bloody conquests of its kings." "A great library which would unlock the lost history of the Assyrians." "And most extraordinary of all, evidence of the bloody siege of the Israelite city of Lachish that was depicted in the Bible." "To dig and dig and dig, then to uncover what you come to recognize both by the images and then corroborated by the cuneiform descriptions is the siege of Lachish," "The conquest of Lachish," "the carrying of captives from of Lachish of Judean captives." "Judean, the word is there, back to other parts of Assyria must have been phenomenal." "Here is a site that is mentioned in the Bible." "And, again, is it a real site?" "Suddenly, it becomes real." "Suddenly, it is three dimensional." "Suddenly, it is tangible, and that provoked an enthusiasm that has lasted 160 years until our own time for the archeology of the Near East with specific respect to its relationship to the Bible." "Layard's remarkable discoveries lifted Assyria from obscurity, placing it firmly in the pantheon of history's great empires." "He went on to a successful career as a member of Parliament, and ambassador to Constantinople." "And by the time this Victorian statesman died in 1894, the Middle East was no longer a forgotten backwater." "The Ottoman Turks were losing their grip on the region, and it had become a pawn in a game of empire, veering dangerously out of control." "In the new century, another British adventurer would help forge an even bigger role for the crown in the Middle East." "Her name was Gertrude Bell, and she has often been called the brain behind the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia." "At the close of World War I, it was she who redrew the map of the Middle East." "She also championed modern archeology, and insisted that a country had the right to keep its own antiquities." "Born in 1868, Gertrude Bell is in many ways a tragic figure." "Despite a life of achievement, unusual for a woman in her time, she remained unsatisfied, never convinced that the treasure she was seeking was truly the one she wanted." "As a teenager, the red headed young woman spent most of her time surrounded by books." "Like Austin Henry Layard, she was captivated by the mysterious world of the Arabian Nights." "This was really the height of British Imperialism in the East, so that all of these images of the Orient were even far more prevalent than during Layard's childhood." "The museums by then were stocked with antiquities from Assyria and Babylon." "Gertrude was especially fascinated by the politics of the East." "But she always felt as if she were laboring under a handicap-her gender." "I wish I could go to the National Gallery, but there is no one to take me." "If I were a boy, I should go to that incomparable place every week." "But being a girl, to see lovely things is denied me." "Gertrude was an exceptional child." "As a girl in particular, she was exceptional because her father encouraged her to read, to learn, to be adventurous, to explore." "And then she was sent off to Oxford University, one of the first women to attend Oxford." "And she left there with the highest honors in her field." "Gertrude was 20 years old." "But now, instead of thinking about a suitable career for a person of her talents, convention dictated that she go about the business of finding a suitable husband." "She had three chances." "Three seasons in which she was presented to society." "And it was expected that she would find a husband along the way." "She didn't." "Either she didn't like the men who were attracted to her, or the men she was attracted to were not interested in her." "At the end of the three seasons, she had no husband, and in British Victorian terms, no future." "For a wealthy young woman like Gertrude, there was only one solution." "Travel." "Gertrude prevailed upon her father to allow her to visit a family friend in the place she'd dreamed about ever since she was a child." "When she arrived, she found it everything she'd imagined and more." ""Persia," she wrote in her very first letter home, "is paradise."" "Gertrude Bell was 23 years old when she arrived in the city of Tehran in the spring of 1892." "She began studying the language at once, and within a few months was translating Persian poems into English." "Soon, she was happier than she'd ever been before." "She had finally met a man worthy of her affections, a young British diplomat named Henry Cadugan." "It wasn't long before the two of them fell quite madly in love." "He introduced her to the desert, which took her breath away." "But when the two of them wrote to her father asking for his permission to marry, the answer was slow in coming." "They waited and they waited until finally the answer came." "And it was not what they wanted to hear." "Gertrude's father was very upset." "He had checked out her fiancée, so to speak, and discovered that he was a gambler, and her father was afraid that this was not a man who was steady enough, secure enough for his daughter." "And so, as a Victorian daughter, she did what her father told her." "She came home, and she gave the romance time to cool." "For eight months the heartsick" "Gertrude did everything she could to change her father's mind." "Then a telegram arrived from Tehran." "Henry Cadugan had fallen into an icy river while fishing, had developed pneumonia and died." "At that moment," "Gertrude knew that she would have to make a life on her own." "But it wasn't until she returned to the Middle East that she felt like herself again." "In November of 1899, Gertrude arrived in Jerusalem." "I am extremely flourishing, and so wildly interested in Arabic that I think of nothing else." "I have not seen the moon shine so since I was in Persia." "In England, she could barely venture out without a chaperone." "Here, she could come and go as she pleased." "Once Gertrude Bell arrived in the Middle East, she felt like a free spirit." "She could really soar, and she did, and she absolutely loved it." "And the Arabs respected her." "They had no problem with her being an independent woman." "From Jerusalem Gertrude began to make a series of sorties into the uncharted desert." "She learned to ride like a man, comfortable in the saddle." "The barren landscape brought back the happy times with her lost lover," "Henry Cadugan." "It was almost is if she was searching for his soul, searching for his spirit." ""Daughter of the Desert" the Arabs began to call her, or sometimes "The Desert Queen."" "It was, as she gleefully informed her parents, her first taste of notoriety." "I am a person in this country." "One of the first questions everyone seems to ask everyone else is," ""Have you ever met Miss Gertrude Bell?"" "The quest to be recognized as a person would haunt Gertrude for the rest of her life." "She sought recognition in a series of fearless treks into the desert, writing books about her travels, and documenting the culture and people of the Middle East in thousands of photographs." "Along the way, she discovered the excitement of archeology, flourishing here in these years before World War I." "It was like a banquet open for the taking." "At site after site, archeologists were unearthing the priceless treasures of humanity's earliest civilizations." "Staking their claims to this booty for their museums back home." "At the ruins of Babylon, Gertrude marveled as German archeologists brought the imposing city back to life." "It is the most extraordinary place." "I have seldom felt the ancient world come so close." "She stopped to visit English archeologists at the ruins of Carchemish." "A dig strategically placed near the construction of a new German railroad through the desert." "One of the archeologists was a promising young graduate student named T.E. Lawrence." "In these uneasy years before wartime, it wasn't surprising to see the English doing double duty digging and keeping watch over the activities of the Germans nearby." "This complete separation between archeology and politics that we have today or at least that we think exists today was not true at that time." "Archeology and politics were very closely interrelated." "Gentleman archeologist, gentlewoman archeologist, gentleman spy, gentlewoman spy." "It was part of what in the 19th century was called "The Great Game."" "And there was this constant interplay between archeology and intelligence at a very informal level." "It is no coincidence that a lot of archeologists became intelligence officers in World War I, because they had done it before the war working at archeological sites." "Gertrude was intrigued with archeology, but she had other things on her mind." "In the spring of 1913, at the age of 45, she fell hopelessly in love for the second time in her life." "His name was Richard Doughty Wiley, and he was everything she wanted in a man." "A soldier and a scholar who was handsome and brave, and radiated British pluck." "Unfortunately, he was also married." "She was completely intrigued with this man, and fell madly in love with him." "He was a bit of a callous man." "He was a man who was a true womanizer, and he even told her about some of his other experiences, which was kind of cruel, I think." "But no matter, she was wildly in love with him, and he encouraged her and her work." "Secretly they met for a passionate weekend at Gertrude's family home in the English countryside." "Victorian to her core, she resisted consummating their affair." "The situation seemed hopeless." "And then he was sent off to the Balkans in 1913, and it was a heartbreaking thing for her, but it also stimulated her desire to show that she was as adventurous, as intrepid, as indomitable as Doughty Wiley." "So Gertrude Bell actually set off on the journey of her life." "Her destination was Central Arabia, the vast desert of the Nejd." "Gertrude embarked on a private mission to meet with two of the desert's most powerful sheiks." "Men whose rivalries had kept the area a no man's land for a generation." "Turkish and British authorities forbade her to go." "But as usual, Gertrude did things her way." "When Gertrude set off on her big expeditions into the desert, she would take with her Wedgwood china, her crystal stemware, the silver flatware, her tweed jackets, her linen clothes, her fur coats, her fringed shawls," "her petticoats and her crinolines, and she would use those to hide her rifles and her guns and her theadolite and her compasses, because she did not want the Turks to know what she was doing in the desert." "With her imperious manner," "Gertrude had a way of ensuring an audience with even the most elusive sheiks." "She impressed them with her command of Arabic and her passion for politics." "When she would present herself to a sheik or to a tribal leader or to a dignitary, the way that she spoke and the way that she held herself was of such import" "that they saw her not as a woman, but as a figure of authority." "And so her gender was forgotten about." "It was completely ignored." "In fact, they saw her as a person with a capital P." "And that was something that Gertrude Bell aspired to to be seen as a person wherever she went." "I think by paradox, in the Arab world, she was so exotic, both because she dressed every bit the Victorian" "Englishwoman, and because at the same time she spoke Persian, she spoke Arabic, she could deal with them man to man, and yet she looked very much the woman yet not one of theirs, but a foreign, exotic, other woman" "made her such a fascinating creature that she gained entry, paradoxically, into their world as a man from Britain could not have done." "To Bell it was clear that the power of the Ottoman Turks was fading in the Middle East." "To be replaced, she believed, by British influence." "Some Arab sheiks favored the British, others the Turks." "On this trip in 1913, tensions were too high even for Gertrude." "She headed home and wrote up her impressions for the British government." "Just a few months later, World War I broke out." "And the report that she had written became vital to the British." "She was the person who knew the balances of powers, the shifting alliances." "She had contacts which were truly awesome in the desert, and the respect of the chieftains." "Gertrude's report reflected her keen understanding of the opportunity in the Middle East." "The time had come, she wrote, to organize the Arabs in a revolt against the Turks." "In wartime, the strategy was irresistible as the Ottoman Turks had sided with the Germans against the British." "The same British who had forbade her to go into the desert, turned around and drafted her as a spy for the British in the Middle East." "Working closely beside Gertrude in intelligence in the Cairo bureau were several ex archeologists, including T.E. Lawrence," "A.K.A. Lawrence of Arabia." "Gertrude Bell was actually the brains behind T.E. Lawrence." "He had actually never been to Arabia." "It was Gertrude Bell who had been there, and so she was the one who was able to tell Lawrence which sheiks he should contact, and who was reliable and who was not." "She was as essential or more so than Lawrence, I think, in convincing Arab leaders to side with the British." "She had their trust in a way that" "I think no Western man could quite accomplish." "But, of course, when it came time to go off to the desert and become the liaison with the Arabs, the British said, Lawrence is going, and when Gertrude Bell said, I want to go," "they said, Don't be ridiculous;" "it is much too dangerous for a woman." "Now, of course, she was the one who had been there originally." "But the British being the British, that was their attitude, and they would not let her go." "Gertrude remained desk bound, feeding information to Lawrence at the front." "She knew every important oasis in the Arabian desert, every Arab sheik who might be persuaded to rise against the Turks." "Slowly, the tide of the war turned." "In January of 1917," "Lawrence led his famous charge against Ottoman forces in Aqaba, one of the finest moments of the Arab revolt." "Two months later, British forces occupied Baghdad." "Gertrude Bell wasn't far behind." "When the Armistice came in January 1918, she was exactly where she wanted to be." "There was always this sense of ownership in her attitude towards Iraq." "And she loved it in a very paternalistic way, with this attitude that she, herself, could control the area that she could decide what was going to happen to it." "There was one letter that Gertrude Bell wrote home where she said, "I feel like God in his creation."" "She was so aware that the British were creating countries," "Puppet states, if you will, for the British." "But starting from scratch." "There had never been a state of Iraq before." "There had never been any such thing." "In this great expanse of empty desert and disparate tribes," "Gertrude Bell drew the lines, creating the modern state of Iraq." "Defining the contours of the contemporary Middle East, still in contention today." "In 1919, nationalism seethed as the British and French divided the area into protectorates." "At first, Gertrude believed that the British should govern Iraq." "But T.E. Lawrence helped change her mind." "He argued that the throne belonged to this man, Faisal, the charismatic leader of the Arab revolt." "At a conference in Cairo in 1921," "Gertrude Bell took her place between Lawrence and Winston Churchill." "There were these famous pictures of her at conferences where she is the only woman." "This must have been incredibly hard, and she carried it off." "She was a woman in a world dominated by men." "Surprisingly, Gertrude Bell preferred it that way." "Back in England, she had campaigned against a woman's right to vote." "In her gut, she really never did believe that women were the equal of men." "She believed that she was intellectually, but of course, if all women were treated as the equal of men, that would also have made her less special." "It would have made her just another woman who happened to be an extraordinary one, but just another woman." "Now, this extraordinary woman prepared for the coronation of King Faisal." "She made sure he couldn't do without her, hosting a series of teas and dinners for him in the garden of her home." "These were some of the best years of Gertrude Bell's life." "She was very close to the King, King Faisal." "In fact, she had an almost school girl crush on him, and he was very fond of her." "And everybody relied on her, so she had a great sense of importance, of power." "On pleasant afternoons, Gertrude would take Faisal to view the ancient ruins in the desert." ""We shall make Iraq as great as its past," she promised the new king." "But it wasn't long before Faisal had his own ideas, his own set of advisors." "To occupy Gertrude's time, he appointed her honorary director of antiquities." "She took the position seriously, insisting that her British and American colleagues turn over 50 percent of the treasures they found in Iraq to form the nucleus of a new museum in Baghdad." "Gertrude Bell wrote some of the first laws protecting the rights of a country to safeguard its ancient treasures." "Yet her letters home were sounding plaintive." "Except for the museum, I'm not enjoying life at all." "The role of the British in Iraq was waning, and with it, Gertrude's power." "As time went by, there were no more dinner parties in her garden." "And so she found herself there more and more on her own, with less and less to do." "She became sadder and sadder, until she felt as if a great black cloud had come over her." "She felt that there was nothing left for her in Baghdad, and certainly nothing left for her in England." "One has the sharp sense of being near the end of things, with no certainty as to what, if anything, one will do next." "It is a very lonely business living here now." "In her mind she felt that she had failed in her lifelong quest to be recognized as a person." "She was tired, ill, and alone." "Haunted by doubts about the choices she had made." "On July 11, 1926, three days before her 58th birthday," "Gertrude Bell took an overdose of sleeping pills and died." "She was buried the next day in a full military funeral attended by thousands of people." "One of her colleagues paid tribute:" "Hers was the brightest spirit that shone upon our labors in the East." "Gertrude's dream of the East had sustained her through a life of public achievement and personal heartache." "She may have died doubting it, but to history she was a person at last." "It was a forbidden place, and thus irresistible." "A timeless land in the sky, an other worldly people, and no use for the wheel but as a spinner of prayers." "And so they came," "Westerners intent on exploring Tibet and its elusive capital Lhasa." "Few survived the trials of fire, ice and violence that awaited them on Tibet's natural ramparts." "Where so many others had failed, two would succeed." "One prevailed through stealth, a spy whose feats of espionage still rank among the greatest in the world, but have almost been forgotten." "The other prevailed through force, leaving a trail of blood and tears that would shock the world and utterly transform the victor." "These are the tales of their epic journeys in the fantastic and deadly race for Tibet." "Winter, 1865." "An over burdened caravan descends from the snowy passes of the Himalayas into the forbidden land." "Few tread lightly here." "Most foreigners are turned back or killed." "But these hearty merchants carry coveted goods from neighboring lands." "The caravan has picked up a pious hitchhiker of sorts, a lone holy man on a pilgrimage." "The only other kind of incursion that Tibetans welcome." "But strangely, the Buddhist's strides are all exactly the same length." "His rosary is missing several beads, and his prayer wheel contains no prayers." "He is a spy, not a monk." "If discovered, he will die." "The roots of Nain Singh's secret journey run as deep and old as the world's obsession with the magical kingdom on the rooftop of the world." "At the heart of Asia, thrust some three miles in the air by a clash of continents," "Tibet is an astounding natural fortress the size of Western Europe." "For hundreds of years, Tibetans saw no need to bar foreigners." "Only a handful survived the trek through the surrounding mountains and deserts." "And these proved no threat to their cherished Buddhist theocracy." "Here every fourth person was a monk or a nun." "But by the 1800s," "Tibet began to feel the pressure of two new powers in Asia." "Britain, effectively in control of India since 1833, had been steadily expanding its influence northward into the Himalayas." "Russia, meanwhile, was swallowing up territory in Central Asia as it pushed its empire eastwards." "Tibet knew little about the outsiders, except that both powers were Christian, not Buddhist." "Fearing for their way of life, the land of monks closed its borders." "Paradoxically, it was the closing of Tibet that ensured the West would have to pry it open again." "And this was during the era of exploration where people wanted to get to Antarctica, the North Pole, they wanted to go up the Nile, and so Lhasa became a real, as we might say today, a real destination." "But nobody could get there." "You had the last European in Lhasa in 1811." "And then you suddenly have a gap" "Right up until the very end of the 19th century where you get no foreigners or no Europeans mentioned going to Tibet." "And this creates this great kind of mystery of Tibet, and the idea that somehow people had to break through and sort of reach the Forbidden City of Lhasa." "In India, paranoia, much as curiosity, drove the need to get into neighboring Tibet." "It was the era of the "Great Game", a cold war between Russia and Britain for the domination of Central Asia." "The British feared that if the Russians were to gain a foothold in Tibet, they might use it as a base for invading India." "The forbidden land became the center square on the chessboard of the "Great Game"" "one that needed to be explored and mapped at all costs." "The Russians were coming, and this created a great deal of anxiety." "The problem was that Tibet was basically closed." "So that left the Brits with a problem how do you map Tibet if you can't get in to have a look?" "It was a young officer in the Royal Engineers who hit upon Britain's best hope in the race for Tibet." "Thomas George Montgomery had spent years overseeing natives in the great trigonometrical survey of India, a massive British effort to create an accurate map of the entire Indian subcontinent." "He'd also noted that Indians often passed freely into Tibet where no white man would be allowed." "Perhaps an Indian spy, trained in the arts of espionage and surveying, might penetrate Tibet, disguised as a trader or holy man." "Captain Montgomery, in typical colonial fashion, had some doubts whether a native of sufficient intelligence and raw nerve might be found, but obtained permission to give his plan a try." "Thus began the unlikely career of one of the most successful spies in the history of espionage." "Nain Singh, then a 33 year old school teacher, had grown up in the shadows of the Himalayas." "His family had traded in Tibet and he could read and write Tibetan." "He quickly accepted the assignment, despite its dangers." "Nain Singh was just one of those people." "You know, they are individuals who are great achievers." "There was this man living in a very remote village." "I mean, what kind of opportunities did he have to really accomplish something really great?" "In 1863, the young schoolteacher reported for duty at the survey of India's headquarters in Dehra Dun." "There, he would undergo two years of intensive training in the arts of surveying." "He learned the use of the sextant and the compass, and to locate his position using the stars." "Through endless repetition, the novice spy learned to walk at an exactly measured pace" "31 and a half inches a stride." "Or 2,000 paces to the mile." "He would keep track of those paces on a rosary." "The Buddhist rosary contains 108 beads, a holy number." "Nain Singh's rosary would have only 100 to more easily keep track of the strides." "Montgomery had dubbed him the Pundit," "Hindi for the "wise one" and sent him on his way." "His daunting task, to find his way to Lhasa, the Forbidden City, to chart his course counting every stride along the way and to spy on the political, religious and economic life of Lhasa for as long as possible." "Nain Singh knew what fate awaited him if he were caught an almost certain death." "It would take Nain Singh eight frustrating months to cross into Tibet." "At first, the Pundit had tried to enter through Nepal disguised as a horse trader, but suspicious border guards turned him away." "He managed to slip by those same border guards a few weeks later, disguised as a holy man." "He had already acquired an escort, the first of several caravans that would offer him protection on the dangerous journey." "In the outlying areas of Tibet, bandits far outnumbered monks." "Singh seem to be quite the favorite with these caravans, some of whom would vouch for him when Tibetans they encountered grew curious." "But sometimes the Pundit had to travel alone." "Once, when his companions had the chance to travel by river, he had to make his excuses to continue on foot." "Without his measured pace, his survey would have gone awry." "With numb feet, he strode his perfect 31 and a half inch stride." "With numb fingers, he counted those strides on his rosary." "He kept his surveying notes where no one would think to look in a cleverly modified prayer wheel." "Usually the wheel contains a scroll with a holy incantation on it." "Each turn sends the Buddhist prayer whirling heavenward." "While his companions slept, the Pundit would slip a thermometer into the camp pots." "The boiling point of water would tell him his altitude, a vital part of the survey." "Five months into the journey, the Pundit was beginning to worry." "The caravan was approaching the town of Shigatse, where they planned to stay several months." "The Forbidden City was still a long way off, and Nain Singh's funds were almost exhausted." "Once in Shigatse, the resourceful Pundit managed to support himself by teaching accounting to merchants." "But he also received a most unwelcome invitation to the great Tashilhunpo monastery, home to some 3,000 Buddhist priests." "To refuse would be to arouse suspicion." "But could a Hindu pretender remain undetected among so many true Buddhists?" "Even worse, he would have an audience with the monastery's leader, the Panchen Lama." "Second only to the Dalai Lama in power, the Panchen Lama was reputed to be able to see into the hearts of all men." "Nain Singh would have to offer the Lama a gift of silk, then respond to any three questions the Lama asked." ""Is your king well?" "Does your country prosper?" "Are you in good health?"" "With amazed relief, the Pundit realized that the Panchen Lama was an 11 year old boy, who seemed to have no interest in peering into the heart of a spy." "But it was a close call." "How long could a pretender in a land of monks escape detection?" "In December the caravan moved on with their Buddhist holy man in tow, the mind numbing rhythm of the Pundit's walking survey resumed." "Tedium, punctuated by fear." "Anyone who's walked in Tibet, trekked, hiked, tried to get around Tibet on foot knows that it is exhausting." "I mean, the altitudes are extremely high." "You go up passes 16, sometimes 17,000 feet where you're just barely able to put one foot in front of the other." "The oxygen is thin." "You have a terrible splitting headache." "I mean, there was no roads, there were no wheels." "There was no nothing." "Above all, it was risky because you might be discovered." "Several times the nightmare of all caravans in these badlands occurred." "A violent attack by bandits." "Once the Pundit was forced to escape by horseback a desperate maneuver that would foil his plans to walk off every yard to Lhasa." "He vowed to make it up by pacing the journey on his return trip." "January 10th, 1866." "Exactly one year since he set out from India, the fabled city of Lhasa lay before the Pundit." "He had counted over a million strides to get here." "But now the most crucial and dangerous phase of his cloak and dagger existence had just begun." "He would be living on borrowed time." "We arrived this day at Lhasa and, soon after my arrival, engaged two rooms: one was well adapted for taking star observations." "After fixing the position of Lhasa," "Singh set about fulfilling the rest of his mission to gather as much intelligence on the political, economic and religious life of the Forbidden City as possible." "Singh's rooms situated just 20 yards from the Jokang, the holy central square of the city, were perfect for the task." "In the center of the city stands a very large temple." "The idols within it are richly inlaid with gold and precious stones." "This temple is surrounded by bazaars and shops." "On a low hill, there is a large and strong fort, called the "Potala" which is the residence of the Lama Guru." "The Lama Guru is the chief of all Tibet, but he does not interfere with state business." "He is looked upon as a guardian divinity, and is supposed to never die, but transmigrates into anybody he pleases." "I observed there is but little order and justice to be seen in Lhasa." "In the Forbidden City, the Pundit's position was more precarious than ever." "The threat of discovery a constant dread." "Once, a chance encounter with merchants from his professed homeland, exposed his deceit." "Somehow, he managed to convince them not to turn him in." "Not long after his arrival," "Nain Singh would once again receive an invitation he could not refuse." "This time, an audience with the Dalai Lama himself in the great Potala." "And once again, the Pundit would find himself before a living god who could peer into the hearts of men, it was said" "only to find himself gazing into the eyes of a child of 13." "But his luck could not hold forever." "And the price of discovery was about to become terrifyingly clear." "One night on the street, Singh witnessed firsthand what happened to foreigners unwelcome in Lhasa." "In this case, a Chinese man who did not have permission to be in the capital." "He was brought out before the whole of the people and beheaded with very little hesitation." "Owing to my alarm," "I changed my residence and seldom appeared in public again." "When Singh heard that the caravan that had conveyed him to Lhasa was ready to head back out of Tibet, he knew it was time to begin the 500 mile walk home." "October 1866." "An exhausted Nain Singh crosses the Himalayas once again and descends from the Rooftop of the World into his homeland in the foothills of northern India." "He has been gone almost a year and a half." "He has walked two and a half million paces on his 1,200 mile trek, counting virtually every step of the way." "He has lived undetected in the Forbidden City of Lhasa for three months." "He has returned to the Survey of India in Dehra Dun with a treasure beyond the wildest imaginings of his mentor," "Captain Montgomery." "By these really in a way quite primitive techniques, they were able to map the whole of sort of southwestern Tibet." "What is interesting is that the Survey of India maps, which are around today, are still based on quite a lot of information which were obtained by the Pundit." "Until Nain Singh went to Lhasa, the western world had no idea, really what was where in Tibet." "It didn't really even know where Lhasa was... they knew it was up there." "Years later, it would be confirmed that Nain Singh had calculated the position of Lhasa correct to within half a degree of latitude a remarkable feat." "Montgomery, while keeping the identity of his super spy to himself, detailed Nain Singh's amazing journey to the president of the Royal Geographical Society." "I'm quite sure he would make a good impression anywhere." "And I can quite understand his being an immense favorite with the Ladhakis who conveyed him into the sacred city." "The Pundit, I think, deserves all praise." "His work has stood every test, capitally." "Captain George Montgomery." "Nain Singh would go on to make two more secret journeys into Tibet." "He then helped Montgomery recruit and train other Pundits who continued filling in the blank spaces on the map of the forbidden land." "Some never came back." "Others, like Nain Singh himself, would never be the same." "Nain Singh paid a very heavy cost in terms of his health." "He was totally worn out." "His eyesight had also been affected." "I mean, there was no way to protect himself for snow blindness and the glare." "He just had to retire." "He couldn't undertake any more journeys." "For his extraordinary work," "Singh was quietly awarded a gold medal from the Royal Geographic Society and a small pension." "He was the first native to be recognized by the Royal Geographical Society as having accomplished something that was the equivalent of any of the greatest explorers of the West." "So in a certain sense, that was a real breakthrough." "The Pundits suffered the same fate as so many spies, which is they don't really get much recognition for what they do;" "everything is shrouded in secrecy." "What I think is extraordinary is really how little recognition or thanks they got for the remarkably dangerous work that they undertook on behalf of the Survey of India and, you know, ultimately the British Empire in India." "Nain Singh, one of the most extraordinary spies the world has ever seen, died in obscurity at the age of 53." "Almost four decades would pass before a European, following in the Pundit's footsteps, would reach the Forbidden City." "This journey, unlike Nain Singh's, would be marked by bloodshed." "March 31st, 1904." "On a desolate plain some 10,000 feet in the air, two forces eye each other warily." "They are divided by a crude stone wall, and a tragic chasm of culture, time and faith." "The defenders:" "Tibetan peasants and monks, bearing arms that are centuries out of date." "The invaders: a British force equipped with the new killing machines of the 20th century." "No one who watches the terrible four minutes that follow will be unmoved." "The man responsible will be utterly transformed by the maelstrom he unleashes here." "As the 19th century pushed to its close," "Tibet was much on the minds of many Europeans." "Being the first to reach Lhasa since the closing of Tibet's borders had become the holy grail of explorers, as well as for the spies playing out the "Great Game" in the Himalayas." "For about I'd say about 1870-1880 onwards, you get increasingly sort of obsessive interest in Tibet." "Tibet was seen as this inaccessible, forbidden, foreign Shangri La." "And I think there were probably hundreds or thousands of British officers hanging around in the Himalayas at the end of the 19th century, all of whom wanted to be the first one to break through and get to Lhasa," "The Forbidden City that no European had been to since 1811." "And it created this great race in the latter part of the 19th century to be the first to get to Lhasa." "And many tried, and many failed." "Russian Colonel, Nikolai Prejevalsky, made five failed attempts, even though he was escorted by heavily armed Cossacks." "American diplomat and scholar, William Rockhill, disguised as a Chinese pilgrim, also failed twice." "Renowned Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin, he too disguised as a pilgrim, was turned back just five days' march from Lhasa." "British missionary Annie Tayler made it to within three days' march of Lhasa, before being betrayed by her Chinese guide and taken prisoner." "Canadian Susie Rijnhart's story is the most tragic." "Physician and missionary, she watched her infant son perish from altitude sickness, then lost her Dutch husband to bandits after Tibetan officials forced them to turn back." "At the close of the 19th century," "Tibet had managed to repel some 11 Western attempts to reach Lhasa in four decades." "But its medieval weapons could not hold off the modern world forever." "The man who would win the Europeans race for Tibet was born in India in 1863, the year Nain Singh arrived at spy school in Dehra Dun." "The son of a British army officer, Francis Edward Younghusband would be sent off to England at four to be raised by two spinster aunts, a religious pair who beat him regularly." ""I lost my childhood happiness, and became serious,"" "Younghusband would later write." "At 12, he would be sent off to boarding school at Clifton, an institution designed to mold young men of empire." "Already oversensitive, repressed and shy, the small statured Younghusband found his more rambunctious schoolmates intimidating and made few friends." "It was not until he was 16 that he would find his soul mate in his previously distant sister, Emmy." "After he fainted in chapel one night, she nursed him back to health, and the two would exchange strangely passionate letters for much of their adult lives." "After graduating from Clifton and then military academy, he left a distraught Emmy behind and set off for India." "Like his father before him, he would serve on the Northern Frontier in the King's Dragoons, and take his place in the "Great Game"." "Shy, but fiercely ambitious," "Younghusband was a natural 'Great Gamer,' a true believer of the righteousness of empire, and a vocal worrier about Russian designs on all of Asia." "But regimental life proved stifling to the young man, and once again his seriousness isolated him from his peers." "Francis had always imagined himself living a life more like that of his uncle and childhood hero, Robert Shaw." "A flamboyant adventurer and tea planter," "Shaw had traveled to many exotic lands beyond the Himalayas." "He had earned himself a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society, as well as a penchant for dressing in native costumes." "At age 21, Younghusband trekked into the Himalayas not far from his late uncle's house, and was enchanted." "From this moment forward, his urgent ambitions would take the shape of these mountains." "And for the rest of his life, mountains would stir odd mystical longings that his strict religious upbringing had never satisfied." "I had caught just a glimpse of the other side of the Himalayan range, but I thirsted for more mountain beauty." "I determined to go to Tibet, and to come to know the curious people of that secluded country, make a great name for myself, and be known ever after as a famous traveler." "It was China, not Tibet, that would give Francis Younghusband his first taste of fame." "1887 found the 24 year old officer in the middle of the Gobi Desert, retracing a path followed by no European since Marco Polo." "He had managed to convince his superiors that he could find a new land route from China to India." "The promised route would take him to the Mustagh Pass, the watershed between India and China, and long considered impassable." "Under the shadow of K2, the world's second highest peak, this small man found himself once again spiritually transformed by a mountain." ""Having once seen that,"" "he would later write, "how could I ever be little again?"" "The ice precipice at the crest of the Mustagh did indeed look impassable to Younghusband, but when his native guide started down the other side, he followed." "On slick leather boots and without ice crampons, it was a near suicidal descent, but it would earn Younghusband the fame he craved." "Some called it the greatest feat of mountaineering yet accomplished, and the Royal Geographical Society would award him the coveted gold medal for his journey." "His exploits would also bring him to the attention of another 'Great Gamer' called George Curzon, who shared his fascination with Tibet and would one day cast Younghusband's fate in the forbidden land." "Younghusband was now one of the world's most eligible bachelors, but only on paper." "Around any woman other than his sister Emmy, the daring explorer was in agony, desperately wishing himself miles away, preferably alone in the Himalayas." "He was terrified of women." "He found them baffling." "He found them strange." "He didn't really know how to get on with them or relate to them." "If you like, he could express himself probably better by climbing a mountain than he could by having a conversation with somebody." "Francis, for his part, was agonizingly aware of his plight." "A beautiful young socialite had agreed to marry him, but broke it off when the smitten Francis could not overcome his stiff, nearly mute panic in her presence." "I am losing my darling May." "All the time I am cold and stiff and formal." "Dejected, Younghusband set his sights once more on Tibet." "He requested leave to slip into the forbidden land disguised as a Himalayan merchant." "But his superiors had had enough of his adventures." "And 15 years would pass before fate would give him his shot at Tibet." "In January 1899, a miserable Francis Younghusband watched as his friend George Curzon was installed as Viceroy of India amidst great pomp and circumstance." "While Curzon's star had risen, Younghusband's own had fallen, his early fame eclipsed by a reputation as a bit of a loose cannon." "His army career had plateaued early." "And his personal life was desperately unhappy." "He had married an older woman who made him promise that they would never have sex." "Somehow the couple managed to have children, but the marriage was never a happy one." "Approaching 40, the once great explorer was now going nowhere fast." "He has really reached this point by his late 30s where his career has stagnated and almost stopped." "And that's the moment when suddenly he gets the call from the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, who is a personal friend of his." "He says to him would he like to lead a small expedition into Tibet." "Curzon, from all accounts, was a fairly paranoid person when it came to the potential designs of Russia." "Tibet was important for him because he felt that if imperial Russia was to move down and to sort of win Tibet over, then they would have the Russian bear right at the door of the British Raj." "But the 13th Dalai Lama had refused to open the country to British trade, to allow Curzon's emissaries beyond the border, or even to open Curzon's letters." "The Viceroy decided it was time for more forceful measures, and his friend heartily agreed." "I have no hesitation in recommending that the power of the monks should be so far broken as to prevent them any longer selfishly obstructing the prosperity of both Tibet and of the neighboring British districts." "Francis Younghusband" "Thus it was that in 1903 Younghusband led 2,000 British and Indian soldiers over the 14,000 foot high Jelap Pass into Tibet." "Behind them marched a ragged support column of some 10,000 coolies and a handful of English journalists dying for the scoop of the new century." "Also pressed into service were six camels, 3,000 ponies, 5,000 yaks and buffaloes, and 5,000 bullocks, and more than 7,000 mules most doomed to die on the journey." "The whole strange caravan trailed telegraph wire that stretched back into India like an umbilical cord to the modern world." "Younghusband would be in charge of negotiating with the Tibetans." "The military leader was an undistinguished General named McDonald." "Younghusband and McDonald detested each other, a situation that probably contributed to the tragedy ahead." "The British would meet little resistance on the first leg of the journey, but the conditions would be harsher than any the British and Indian soldiers had encountered before." "Twenty men of the 12th Mule Corps were frostbitten, and 30 men of the 23rd Pioneers were so incapacitated that they had to be carried on mules." "On the same day, there were 70 cases of snow blindness among the 8th Gurkhas." "Edmund Candler," "The Daily Mail" "Outwardly, Younghusband himself seemed impervious to the elements, taking cold baths each morning and spending long periods reading, writing and meditating out in the elements." "In his journal, he was already writing about mental telepathy, extra terrestrials and out of body travel." "Four months into the journey as the mission approached the town of Guru, the Tibetan resistance finally materialized." "In the middle of a barren plain, massed behind a small hastily built wall, some 1500 Tibetan troops lay in wait." "They vastly outnumbered the British advance guard, but their firepower was 300 years out of date." "If you read the Tibetan accounts of this period, it seems that the Tibetans say we're not going to fight, but were not going to go away." "And the British are baffled by this." "You've got to remember the whole idea of passive resistance was not something that was understood in 1903, 1904." "And Tibet's reaction was, just please go away." "Younghusband's reaction was, we've got to talk." "He went further and further and further, and it was an enormous tragedy by the end." "The whole thing must have been incomprehensible to these poor men." "No order had been given to them to retire." "Gathered together in a body, heir enormous superiority in numbers must have struck them." "They had no idea, of course, of the advantage which we possessed." "Perceval Landon," "The Times, London." "In my view, I think the Tibetans actually knew that they were up against a formidable force." "I think it is wrong to say that they were so naive that they thought they really could resist the British." "They had no other choice, even if they knew they would be slaughtered, but to oppose that." "The Tibetan general rode out to plead his case." "He begged Younghusband to turn back, retreat to the border and negotiate there." "But Younghusband was unmoved." "He gave the general 15 minutes to begin disarming." "15 minutes later," "General McDonald ordered his troops into fighting positions, assuming the Tibetans would simply hand over their arms when confronted with his machine guns, modern rifles and heavy artillery." "But each Tibetan carried on his chest a small pouch containing a blessing from the Dalai Lama, designed to render him impervious to English bullets." "McDonald gave the order to approach and begin disarming the Tibetans." "What exactly happened next is still unclear." "That it was one of the bleakest moments in military history is not." "According to British reports, it was the Tibetan general who resisted and fired the first shot." "Immediately the British began firing their terrible weapons into the mass of the Tibetan soldiers." "The Tibetans poured over the wall, while the artillery and automatic weapons cut them down in waves." "To the horror of the British manning the guns against them, the few Tibetans still standing did not run away, they walked." "I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire." "Though the General's order was to make as big a bag as possible." "Lt. Hadow, Commander, Maxim Gun Detachment" "The impossible had happened:" "prayers and charms and mantras the holiest of their holy men had failed them." "They walked with bowed heads, as if they had been disillusioned with their gods." "Four appalling minutes after it all began, some 700 ragged Tibetans lay dead or dying on the field, their useless charms strewn among them." "Francis Younghusband, who had served for over 20 years in the army but had never seen battle, was horrified." ""It was a terrible and ghastly business,"" "he would later write." "It may have been even more ghastly than his British sensibilities would allow him to admit." "According to the Tibetan and Chinese accounts of the battle, the Tibetans had extinguished the fuses of their ancient matchlocks as a sign of non aggression, rendering them useless for several minutes." "If so, the British were firing artillery and military weapons into a mass of people armed with swords, slingshots, and perhaps five modern rifles." "The British set up a field hospital to save the wounded Tibetans." "Baffled by kindness on the heels of slaughter, the Tibetans nonetheless quickly won over their captors with their spirit and stoicism." "Daily Mail correspondent, Edmund Candler, who had lost a hand in the first few seconds of the battle wrote:" "They were consistently cheerful, and they never hesitated to undergo operations." "Did not flinch at pain, and took chloroform without fear." "Everyone who visited the hospital at Tuna left it with an increased respect for the Tibetans." "It would take four more months for the British force to reach Lhasa." "On July 30th, 1904, in anticipation of the inevitable, the Dalai Lama fled the city." "Five days later, the British marched into the Forbidden City." "Younghusband, who had once hoped to make it to Lhasa as a spy, now entered at the head of an army, only to find the place nearly empty." "Undaunted, he arranged a sort of parade to impress the remaining citizens, and was greeted by what he thought was a conqueror's welcome." "They'd clap at them, like that." "Younghusband thinks this is a very good sign that he is being welcomed." "Later on when I looked at this, I talked to some Tibetans about it who said that it is a way of driving out evil spirits." "They'd go like... (claps)" "So, I think Younghusband thought they were so happy that they were lining up and clapping." "This, again, you know, the culture difference." "Finally, Younghusband rounded up some high ranking monks with whom to negotiate." "After a month of wrangling, he had achieved all his king and country had asked of him." "He had inspired his troops to follow him through hundreds of miles of the most hostile geography that" "British and Indian soldiers had ever encountered." "He had pried open the doors of Tibet, and negotiated a trade settlement highly favorable to Britain." "But Tibet would not bestow its real gift on Younghusband until the moment of his departure." "On the day before Younghusband is due to leave Lhasa, having gotten the treaty in his pocket, he goes off into the mountains on his pony, and he's suddenly infused with this kind of cosmic joy." "He's infused with this very strong mystical or spiritual experience." "The exhilaration of the moment grew and grew until it thrilled me with overpowering intensity." "Never again could I think evil, or ever be at enmity with any man." "All nature and all humanity were bathed in a rosy, glowing radiance." "That single hour on leaving Lhasa, was worth all of the rest of a lifetime." "I was boiling over with love for the whole world." "That world, however, had already begun to lament the despoiling of Lhasa." "There are no more forbidden cities which men have not mapped and photographed." "Why could we not have left at least one city out of bounds?" "Candler, The Daily Mail" "Even Lord Curzon was shaken by the taking of Lhasa:" ""I am almost ashamed to have destroyed the virginity of the bride to whom you aspired,"" "he wrote to Swedish explorer Sven Hedin." "Almost immediately London began to distance itself from Younghusband's invasion." "Soon, it would negate it entirely." "What happens a couple of years later is that a liberal government comes to power in London, and three years after his expedition, a new agreement is signed which effectively takes away all the privileges and benefits that Younghusband has gained through the Treaty of Lhasa." "And so the great irony of Younghusband's invasion of Tibet, is that, from a political point of view, it gains almost nothing for the British." "Far more than Tibet itself," "Francis Younghusband would emerge forever changed by his hollow victory and the tragedy he created there." "Outwardly, he remained the good imperialist, serving as provincial governor, president of the Royal Geographical Society and coordinator of the first four expeditions to Mt." "Everest." "But he also became a passionate advocate of Indian self rule, and founded his most lasting legacy, the World Congress of Faiths, a group dedicated to bringing together people of all religions in a spirit of tolerance." "Like many of his time, he would write enthusiastically about spiritualism, the occult, and even extra terrestrials." "His ideas become increasingly kooky." "You can actually get this sense from his diaries that he is going to official functions, and people are slightly thinking" ""What on earth has happened to Francis Younghusband?"" "His prolific writings ranged from confident predictions of a new messiah, to tracts on the sanctity of marriage, though his own marriage was an empty shell." "As his daughter Eileen would later say:" "He had an essential warm heartedness, but it always, somehow, missed the mark." "But finally, at age 76 and for the first time in his life," "Francis Younghusband fell in love." "His passionate affair with the much younger Madeline Lees, a married mother of seven, brought back to him the happiness he had lost in childhood." "You know, the Tibetans very interestingly think that ultimately they actually conquered Younghusband." ""Well, you know, he came and conquered us, butchered us, but in the end, he went back kind of converted and found the right path for himself."" "And this is very much part of our kind of notion of Tibet, that it has this quality to heal, transform, change and to highlight for people, if you could just get there, the spiritual side of life." "The two men who marched to Lhasa did no favors to Tibet, but they revealed to the rest of the world the land that would become the symbol of humanity's spiritual yearnings." "In July 1942," "Sir Francis Edward Younghusband died in the arms of his beloved Madeline." "His last request, a tombstone, carved with the place of his terrible triumph and his strange redemption Lhasa, the Forbidden City at the heart of the once and future forbidden land." "They were 18, or 19, or 20 years old sailors in a tropical paradise." "They didn't know that on the other side of the ocean, another group of young men was preparing to strike them while they slept." "Their paths would cross for a few short hours on a Sunday morning in December." "And in one terrifying instant, more than 1000 of them would die." "The legacy of what happened on December 7th still haunts us today." "In the first images from inside the U.S.S. Arizona, an underwater cemetery that's also an ecological time bomb." "In the search for a top secret Japanese submarine that was sunk about an hour before the attack began." "The submarine's heading north starting to dive and in the quest to learn what really happened that day." "And most of all, it still lives on in the memories of the men who were there when everything changed." "Just a young kid when this happened, and I've lived through it." "I lost a lot of my friends." ""I reached down to try and help him and the skin all came off."" ""But I hope it never happens again." "Nobody will ever know what it was like, except somebody that was actually there."" "They never had a chance." "They didn't know what was coming." "Nobody knew about it." "They never woke up."" "This is the story of a day when the history of the world took an unexpected turn at a sleepy little port in Hawaii called Pearl Harbor." "Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in the first summer of the new millennium." "Sixty years ago, on this island, a battle was fought, perhaps the most one-sided battle in American history." "It plunged the United States into war and, in the space of a little more than two hours, took the lives of 2400 Americans." "Ever since that day, Pearl Harbor has been a place of pilgrimage." "Many of the men who lived through the attack have returned at least once, to remember what happened and to pay their respects to friends who didn't make it." ""We remember December 7th, 1941, when so many gave their last devotion of their efforts" ""Well, it was kinda hard, yes, I'll admit it, because I couldn't do anything that the other guys could." "I was only 5ft 3, weighed 125lb." "My battle station was the number 2 loader on a 5 inch gun and I couldn't even pick up the shells I had to put in the gun."" ""How can this ever happen?" "One of the strongest navies in the world and we're sitting here with our pants down." "We got caught, period."" "It was one of the best assignments in the Navy." "A sailor joining the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii could expect warm air, lots of sunshine, and plenty of things to do on shore leave." "In the Atlantic theater, things were different." "Europe had been at war for more than two years." "Hitler's soldiers occupied Paris." "London was being blitzed by Nazi bombs." "For sailors stationed in the Pacific, there was only one threat on the horizon yet most Americans new next to nothing about the country or its people who were thought to be short and near-sighted quaint little people ruled by an old-fashioned emperor." "In reality, Japan was a modern military power that had signed a pact with Nazi Germany." "Japanese troops brutally occupied parts of China and were poised to move against other neighbors." "But the United States Pacific Fleet stood in the way and early in 1941, the Japanese military decided to do something about that." "Why would Japan want to go to war with the United States?" "What Japan wanted was the oilfields in the Dutch East Indies." "What they wanted was the tin and the rubber out of Malaya." "They wanted the Philippines because of its strategic location." "Nobody thought that they would ever come out to Pearl Harbor." "That's how you achieve surprise in war." "You attack where nobody expects it." "It was the brainchild of a 57-year-old Japanese admiral named Isoroku Yamamato." "Yamamato decided to strike the U.S. fleet at its home base at anchor in the cramped, shallow harbor near Honolulu." "Yamamato, he'd studied in the United States, he'd gone to Harvard, he knew what the Americans were like." "And he said at one point," "I don't care if we march troops down Pennsylvania Avenue." "We're not gonna conquer the United States." "He planned the attack with the idea that if we're gonna have any chance of winning this war we've gotta destroy the American fleet, and that'll give us six months to run wild in the south west Pacific," "and we can build up a defensive barrier that will be very difficult for the Americans to crack." "And at some point they're going to say, we quit." "Keep your gains." "In the spring of 1941, planning for the attack began in earnest although only a handful of Japanese officers knew about it." "A talented pilot named Minoru Genda was given the task of figuring out how to inflict maximum damage on the American fleet - especially its battleships and carriers - in a surprise attack from the air." "Genda decided that a combination of bombs - and torpedoes modified to operate in shallow waters - would have the best chance of success." "Late that summer and into the fall," "Japanese pilots trained for their top secret mission." "They rehearsed the low altitude attack angles they would need over the harbor." "They practiced strafing runs over and over." "By fall, Yamamoto's plan had evolved into a mammoth undertaking that would require six carriers, more than 350 airplanes and, almost as an afterthought five midget submarines." "Those five midget submarines played a curious and little known part in the attack and an expedition is getting underway in Honolulu to learn more." "One of the tiny subs almost cost Japan the critical elements of surprise." "And that's the one undersea explorer Robert Ballard is hoping to find." "For the man who found the Titanic and the Bismarck, this search represents a unique challenge." "it's one of the smallest ships Ballard's ever looked for and, no one really knows where it sank." "Joining him will be a man who was part of the submarine task force six decades ago" " Kichiji Dewa." "The midget they'll be looking for was sunk by an American destroyer well before the attack started, and should have alerted the American forces but did not." "Gentleman, I'd like to introduce some colleagues here." "Good morning, good morning." "Sir." "Will Lehner and Russ Reetz were there when it happened." "For Ballard, the expedition offers an opportunity to clear up a common misconception." "Well I think most people think that the first shot was fired by the Japanese as they swooped over the Pauli and descended on our sleeping fleet that Sunday morning, but in fact the first shot was fired out here" "and it was fired by a U.S. destroyer." "And not only was it the first shots fired by America in the war, it should have alerted us to that something was going on." "I find it incredibly ironic that the attack and sinking of this Japanese submarine an hour before the planes arrived did not alert us and I just find that to be amazing." "Ballard's tight schedule only allows him two weeks for the mission- sponsored by National Geographic... but the search area isn't too large, and he does have the right equipment." "Now, all he needs is a little luck." "November 26th, 1941." "The Japanese armada slipped out of port and headed east through wintery seas." "Six carriers were grouped at the center of the formation, surrounded by a protective ring of cruisers, battleships, and destroyers some 30 ships in all." "Because the success of the mission rested on taking the Americans totally by surprise, their route would take them well north of commercial shipping lanes." "If another ship spotted them, the mission would be in jeopardy, and possibly called off." "Strict radio silence was maintained at all times as the attack force moved into position, while, far to the south." "Five Japanese submarines were already closing in on the island of Oahu." "Each mother sub, as it was called, carried one midget submarine, lashed to its afterdeck." "Together, they made up the most controversial element of the strike force." "The Japanese wanted to put everything that they had into this attack and they had midget submarines and so let's use them was Yamamato's decision." "Now there were people in the Japanese high command that objected strongly to that." "'Don't bring submarines into Pearl Harbor in the first place, they're not going to get in, and in the second place they're not going to do much damage if they do, and in the third place and by far more important," "that's going to tip off the Americans that an attack is coming." "and it's going to put the Americans up in general quarters, all across Pearl Harbor and all across Hawaii." "So don't use them.'" "But they did use them." "Each midget sub would carry a 2-man crew into battle ten hand-picked, highly trained young men, who were prepared to die for their country." "On the night before the attack, they would penetrate Pearl Harbor wait on the bottom for the planes to strike- then fire their two torpedoes at any large ship in their range." "If circumstances permitted, they would try to leave the harbor and rendezvous with the mother subs." "But no one really expected the submariners to return." "They were young, they were enthusiastic, they were courageous, they were ready to go out and die for the Emperor." "And it wasn't a suicide mission." "Nobody said that quite that way but that's what it was, a suicide mission and these guys were eager for it." "There was no sense of impending tragedy." "Everyone felt that we were simply carrying out our duty by taking part in a military action though I felt that they might never make it back."" "Day one of the search about two miles outside the narrow channel that leads into Pearl Harbor." "It was here - somewhere - that a destroyed called the U.S.S. Ward was patrolling in the early hours of December 7th." "I was thinking we were a little more of that way, but Russ said we were more of that way." "It's the history that tells you what you need to know and so you have to steep yourself in the history and you have to read all sorts of sources because a lot of history's conflicting." "One book will say one thing, one book will say another thing and so you have to find out well what do we all agree upon and where is the uncertainty?" "Here the uncertainty was where were they exactly when the attack took place?" "Coming in from another direction and all the historical data." "Well you know after the war, and in fact during the war, this became a dumping site and our biggest fear is that they dumped something right on top of what we're looking for, so basically what you have down here is a museum of World War II." "We don't know what the currents are going to be like, we don't know what the visibility is going to be like," "We don't know how the ships are going to perform." "So today is a big learning curve." "Day one of our expedition." "Ballard decides the work will go faster if he adds another machine to the mix- a remotely operated vehicle called little Herc." "It's an imaging RO V. It moves very rapidly, we can cover a lot of ground quick and see a lot of targets quick." "So it's just a good way to go." "Little Herc is tethered behind a bulkier imaging system called Argus, and the two vehicles descend to 600 feet." "In the control room, the team gets its first glimpse of the sea floor." "What's this coming up?" "A cylinder Is that a torpedo?" "No. a piece of pipe." "This is really exciting every little thing looks like part of it." "Well it looks like these are depth charges, there's a whole bunch of 'em." "There's another one." "As the first few days of the search come to an end, they've seen a lot of debris and not much else." "Saturday night December 6th, 1941." "Sailors on shore leave filled the bars on hotel street in Honolulu." "The usual Saturday night crowd gathered for dinner and dancing." "At Hickam field, the airplanes were parked wingtip to wingtip." "and, in the harbor, the warships of the Pacific Fleet prepared for the night." "California, Oklahoma, Maryland Tennessee, West Virginia," "Arizona, Nevada." "The last day of peace in the United States was coming to an end." "December 7th 1941 a few minutes after midnight." "Ten miles away from the mouth of Pearl Harbor, the five mother submarines prepared to launch the midgets." "The Japanese crews could see the lights on Waikiki and make out strains of jazz when the wind shifted." "Each of the submariners wrote a letter to his parents." "Sadamu Kamida was a quiet mountain boy who loved baseball." ""Forgive this negligent son for not writing these long months." "We are soon to be dispatched to regions unknown." "Should anything happen to me, do not grieve or mourn;" "should I fail to write, do not be alarmed;" "for it means I am well and discharging my duties faithfully." "Goodbye."" "The night before they left, commander Yokoyama, his crewman Kamida, and I went to the officer's mess that normally enlisted men couldn't enter." "We ate a farewell dinner." "Later there was a small party in the officers wardroom." "Dewa watched his friends enter the midget sub and spoke to Yokoyama one last time over a phone link." "I said something like, "take care" to them." "I didn't say anything special, just words of parting said on the phone, very normal." "Even though the fact that they wouldn't return was a foregone conclusion, we didn't talk about it." "The midget carried by Dewa's submarine was the first to leave released into the water around 1 a.m." "By 3 a.m., all the midgets were making their way toward the harbor except the one skippered by ensign Sakamaki." "he was having trouble with his gyroscope." "Without it, he'd have to take his bearings on the surface - and risk being spotted by an American ship." "You're sneaking into a harbor and you don't want to trip the alarm and let the Americans know that the war has begun." "And so you must be extremely nervous." "You've got to be just on pins and needles." "And then-the first missed opportunity for the Americans." "At 3:42 a.m., an officer on board the minesweeper Condor spotted a periscope in the water, fifty yards off the port bow." "Condor alerted the ward - patrolling the approaches to Pearl Harbor." ""I remember about 3, three thirty or so we, skipper called general quarters about 3:203:30." "I don't remember the exact time remember that?" "And we thought what kind of skipper is this he just came aboard and now we've got general quarters and he's middle of the night gonna start drilling us and we thought remember, we thought it was just a drill" "that skipper was gonna be a tough one to live with but he was one of the best skippers we ever had, remember?"" "But the ward's new skipper misunderstood the message and went to look in the wrong place." "The one thing Japanese planners feared most had occurred." "Four hours before the attack, one of their ships had been spotted." "And nothing happened." "Sunday, December 7 around dawn." "Aboard the six aircraft carriers, the pilots and planes of the first wave began to assemble." "Yamamato's plan called for two distinct waves of attack the first to reach Honolulu at about 8 a.m." "The second to follow within the hour." "It meant getting the right aircraft into the air at the right time - each wave would take about fifteen minutes to launch" "The first to go were 43 Mitsubishi fighters armed with machine guns and cannon." "The dreaded Zeroes." "Then 49 Nakajima bombers "Kates"" "each carrying a single 1760 pound armor-piercing bomb." "51 Aichi dive bombers were next to leave the Vals." "And, finally, another 40 "Kates" carrying specially modified torpedoes." "At about 6:20 AM, the planes formed up and headed south." "At almost the same time the first wave turned toward Oahu, the U.S. Navy got its second report of intruders near the harbor." "At 6:30 a.m., a lookout on the freighter Antares spotted another submarine periscope, then a conning tower." "Once again the ward raced to investigate and this time, the destroyer found what she was looking for." "This submarine started to surface and I'm amidships, right at the rail, when I see this thing start to surface." "I thought, wow, what's this?" "Then the skipper took after this submarine." "And of course we didn't know it at the time but later on he told us that his first thought was ramming it but he said, this is my first ship and I don't want to ruin it." "And then all of a sudden number one gun fired and they missed because their elevation wasn't great enough and we were that close." "And then number three gun fired and I saw the splash of the water at the waterline of the conning tower as the shell hit the conning tower." "It must have rang like a bell," "I mean it must have been an incredible explosion that went off right next to their head." "I mean, remember the skipper is standing in the conning tower and the shell hit the conning tower." "You would think he was, must have died instantly." "Or did he?" "Because they then began to dive, so clearly they weren't dead." "And they then began to dive and no sooner did they dive than the depth charges are going off." "And then they exploded and I didn't see the submarine as it came up but I'm told that it came up, rolled over and then went back down again." "After the depth chargers that we dropped" "I can't see any way it could've gotten away from us." "At 6.51 a.m., skipper William outerbridge of the ward radioed headquarters that he had seen and fired upon an unidentified submarine." "He repeated the message two minutes later." "At headquarters, the ward's terse report slowly worked its way up the chain of command." "For the second time that morning, the Japanese had tripped the alarm- and for the second time nothing happened." "Day 10 of Ballard's search - and still no sign of what they're looking for." "We were patrolling along in here." "The submarine was coming this way, we were coming this way." "Why was this one on the surface?" "Maybe he's not sure but maybe the passenger in the small submarine, they are looking and they make sure the position." "So far, Ballard has covered about two square miles of seabed - in an area called the flats where the ward was patrolling." "So far they've seen a lot of debris, but the missing sub has eluded them." "Each time they pick up a promising target on sonar, it turns out to be something else." "A crumpled seaplane, used by the Navy in the late 20's and 30's" "a Grumman Hellcat fighter." "Then part of a similar type of midget sub captured later in the war, and then dumped." "And, finally, something that seems to have treads." ""You think so?" "Yeah, it's a tank." "It's a tracked vehicle." "Well, let's work it over."" "Another day's search is coming to an end without results." "Well we've exhausted all our targets." "Yup there's nothing left to look at." "Alright, well, the only thing left is the base of the wall and that the sub does so let's call it a wrap and pull it up, okay?" "Out of the pool." "Well, it's not out on the flats so the only place left is up against the wall." "So tomorrow we'll come out with the two subs and take it right in next to the channel and look at the base of the wall which we couldn't do with these vehicles." "They've used up most of their allotted two weeks with nothing to show for it." "For Bob Ballard and his team, time is running out." "December 7th, 1941 7 AM." "A mobile radar station on the northwest coast of Oahu picked up the signal of a massive number of aircraft approaching the island from the north." "They were less than 140 miles away, moving at 180 miles an hour." "A telephone call went immediately to the information center in Honolulu, 40 miles to the southeast." "The call was routed to a private named Macdonald, who passed it on to a Lieutenant Tyler who had just been assigned to the job." "Tyler told the radar operators not to worry about it." "In his mind, it was just a squadron of American B-17s due in from the mainland." "For the third time that day, the Japanese had tripped the alarm - and for the third time, no one seemed to notice." "It was 7:15 AM." "At 7:40 a.m., the first wave of airplanes reached the coast of Oahu, guided by the signal from a Honolulu radio station." "The bombers and torpedo planes were at 9,000 feet." "5,000 feet above them, the Zeroes flew cover." "The first wave began to break up into their attack formations one to fly inland towards wheeler airfield the other to move down the western coast to Pearl Harbor." "They were the only planes in the sky." "There was no sign whatsoever that the Americans knew they were about to be attacked." "At 7:50 a.m., the first wave reached Pearl Harbor." "Among their first targets " "Hickam airfield and the naval air base on Ford Island." "Clarence Minor was an airman stationed on Ford Island." "After all that noise on the tin roof up there and stuff was popping around." "And looked up and I saw this airplane come diving down and that big meatball and I said 'oh shit!" "'" "And then all hell all over the place was breaking loose." "Bombs dropping and machine guns firing, and like I said those things are so darned low you could throw rocks at them." "Ralph Lindenmyer was also on Ford Island." "7:55 in the morning, an explosion woke us up." "And I looked up at the clock when I first heard the explosion and felt it and I said 'the Japs are here.'" "And when I looked out the window, the plane came over and I saw the meatball on the fuselage and the wing and I could look into the pilot's face and I can almost see him grinning" "Anchored on pier 1010 was the utility vessel Argonne, where 19 year old Charles Christiensen worked in the machine shop." "And I thought oh that was a bad explosion." "I wonder what happened." "And I opened the port hole up and I stuck my head right on, out there you know and oh boy was there ever a fire on Ford Island." "I thought 'oh my goodness, something is really bad blowing up over there.'" "It took a while for sailors in the ships at anchor to comprehend what was happening." "Bert Davis, a machinist mate on the USS Selfridge, thought it was some kind of readiness drill." "That's where I was standing when the plane came in," "I was standing there shining my shoes, and I, I saw these planes coming in." "Came in and came right straight across to where the Raleigh was and I thought to myself what in the hell is the army doing holding maneuvers on a day like this?" "While the dive bombers hammered the airfields, the torpedo planes descended to an altitude of a few dozen feet" "and took dead aim at battleship row." "Aboard the Argonne," "Charles Christiensen had a perfect view of the first torpedo run." "He's coming in almost straight across me at a slight angle across." "And he's low enough that he's maybe 30 feet off of the water, which puts him maybe eye level or a little more for me." "And I can see the man's face." "He's got his helmet on, he's got his goggles on and he's looking over the side." "And when he straightened that plane out, leveled it out, he dropped that torpedo." "And I thought 'oh my god look at that.'" "And that torpedo just went as straight for the Oklahoma as it could go." "This photo, taken from a Japanese plane shows battleship row just after the attack began." "The ripples emanating outward are the result of multiple torpedo strikes." "George Smith was below deck on the battleship Oklahoma when general quarters sounded." "All of a sudden a guy come over the loud speaker and just says 'no shit, move it!" "'" "And then we got a torpedo." "I was really so scared I didn't know what the hell was going on." "The Oklahoma started to capsize almost immediately." "When they said abandon ship, the only way we could get out was through the casement window." "We went out there and the ship was rolling on top of us." "Maybe we jumped about 5 feet into the water which wasn't far." "But when you turn around and see this thing coming on top of you, you swim for all you can swim and as fast as you can swim." "Because we know we had to get around the big gun turrets, they were coming over next on us." "It went over so fast I, I just was sure," "I didn't know, but I was sure they were trapped inside of that." "Because it, it just rolled right on over." "And there it was keel up." "George Smith had just been released from the Oklahoma's brig - for going ashore without leave..." "and it saved his life." "And when the ship got the torpedo." "The brig was in the carpenter shop on board ship and when the torpedo hit, it broke the carpenter's workbench loose, pinned the guard against the wall, the bulkhead, and he couldn't release the other men that were in the brig" "and they all drowned." "On the far side of Ford Island, the old battleship Utah also got hit a few minutes before eight." "Clark Simmons worked on the Utah as a mess attendant." "And as I looked out the port, I saw a plane making a run on the Utah." "And as she dropped her torpedo the wing dipped and then he straightened up, and the torpedo hit it, and another one right behind it did the same thing." "And we knew it was just a matter of time before the ship was going to sink." "And actually it took eight minutes, and eight minutes to the ship, was history." "She had turned turtle in eight minutes." "As the lines began to part, came over the side and began to swim toward Ford Island, and as we were swimming they were machine gunning us from both directions." "From this direction and when they came from Pearl City over here, from that direction also." "I saw fellows yelling and screaming, some of fellows was in the water was asking for help." "It was just, it was so chaotic, I really didn't know what was going on." "But the biggest blow was yet to come." "Lying inboard of the repair ship vestal was the battleship Arizona." "High overhead a Kate released an armor-piercing bomb that drifted down towards the Arizona's number two gun turret." "It was ten minutes after eight." "A motion picture camera captured the moment of impact." "In that instant, more than a thousand crewmen died." "Stu Hedly was on the West Virginia, a few hundred feet away." "One gigantic explosion." "Now when we fired the 16 inch, you're inside, it sounds like thunder off in the distance." "But this didn't sound like no thunder." "This was one gigantic explosion." "The stern of our ship lifted out of the water but at the same time we were getting hit with torpedoes, we were starting to list." "But we saw about 32 men flying through the air from the Arizona." "Oil from the fully fueled Arizona began to spread and catch fire." "The heat was so intense even sailors on nearby ships were threatened." "So Clausen and I stripped right down to our undershorts and jumped in and swam underwater." "Now we're not underwater swimmers." "But we swam underwater that day because that was the hottest breath of air we ever breathed because that was the oil from the Arizona that was ablaze." "The bomb had penetrated Arizona's forward magazine and ignited more than a million pounds of gunpowder." "Those who were still alive found themselves in an inferno." "They were in this oil that was on fire." "They were trying to swim out of it." "They'd come up and trying to get their breath." "Their eyes, the white of their eyes was just as red as they can be." "I, I can just see it today." "The skin on their face was just falling off." "And on top of that all of this oil, they were just drenched in oil." "Bert Davis went out in a whaleboat to pick up survivors." "Oh God it was horrible." "This one fellow started to reach up to try to get a hold of the gunwale on the boat from the outside and I reached down to try to help him." "And I took him by the arm and as I tried to lift like that, the skin came, all came off." "He was dead by the time we got him in." "Thirty-five minutes after the attack began, the first wave flew away, leaving behind more than a thousand dead American sailors - many of them teenagers, caught belowdecks, when Arizona exploded and sank." "Six decades after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Arizona still lies where she sank with her cargo of sailors." "Most of their bodies have never been recovered." "Her superstructure was removed during the war." "Only the mount of her number three turret remains above water." "The Arizona was built nearly a century ago - and she's spent more than half that time underwater." "The national park service, which is responsible for maintaining the memorial, periodically checks on her condition" "her passageways and hatches her 14 inch guns." "The interior of the ship is too dangerous for divers, so it's never been investigated by the park service, until now." "With the help of a tiny RO V made available by National Geographic, workers will get their first glimpse of Arizona's condition deep inside the ship since about the time she went down." "The initial survey reveals that the corrosion is worse than expected." "And that may portend an ecological disaster because of something happening deep inside the ship." "The Arizona has been leaking an estimated two pints of oil a day ever since she sank- but the park service is worried that the remaining fuel tanks of the ship's bunkers could rupture at any moment." "Current estimates are that there is approximately a half a million gallons possibly in the bunkers on the aft section of the ship." "And so with current technology can we get to those bunkers and what's happening with the metal on the hull and the internal portions of the ship." "And so that is what we're trying to do is find out is there a way that we can contain that oil." "Today, the oil has begun to leak from more places than ever." "To understand the extent of the threat to Pearl Harbor, the park service is conducting a detailed survey of the Arizona." "Dan Lenihan is a park service diver and archeologist." "If it's all released at once, it will probably be a major problem." "For the park service, the challenge it to avert a final catastrophe:" "an oil spill in the middle of Pearl Harbor." "There's no excuse for having this happen here." "There's no excuse for not knowing enough about this ship that is would go to the point that we would have a travesty like that on our hands." "We need to get ahead of it and find out what's happening." "The problem is complicated by the ship's designation as a gravesite- and by the oil's symbolic meaning." "Many visitors and survivors to the Arizona memorial consider the oil to either be the tears of the ship or that the ship is bleeding we'll also be dealing with that emotional feelings that people have about the oil and the significance." "It'll be a balance between what protecting the ecosystem is all about and protecting the tomb, the shrine that this place symbolizes." "Joining the park service on its survey is National Geographic underwater photographer David Doubilet." "Even though parts of the Arizona were salvaged- and the rest is slowly corroding- it is still impressive close-up." "These huge naval rifles." "They could fire something that weighed something almost the weight of a Volkswagen 20 miles away." "The Arizona, in fact every battleship, was built around these main armaments." "We gotta find out number 31." "Hidden in the oily murk of Pearl Harbor, gun turret number one was forgotten for forty years." "Now Doubilet is trying to document its massive guns for National Geographic Magazine." "Almost every problem that I had related to visibility." "One foot fall, a fin stroke, would kick up this very very soft mud, and the clouds would billow out of the bottom and the visibility would drop instantly from a my wonderful 7 feet or 5 feet down to nothing." "The guns are as long as a bus, and bringing enough light down here to photograph them is an arduous operation." "Doubilet needs a crew of six people, to bring this submerged shrine to life." "His moody images recall the ghostly legacy of the Arizona." "I think I got the shot." "The shot of the three main guns of turret number one." "And they come out of the gloom like three fingers, and I'm looking up at them with a green background in the background." "It's very gloomy, it's very dark." "And Dan Lenihan from the Park Service is down examining the central barrel of the guns it's a very gloomy, secret picture of the Arizona." "To its survivors, the Arizona is much more than a sunken ship." "This national park is probably the only one that has the intense emotional reaction that this one does to all visitors." "And the survivors have taught me that." "I mean the survivors have really shown me what it is to be an American." "And I'm probably the strongest American you'd find out, after having worked here for five years." "I think this place can really teach what the price of war is and what the price of freedom is." "Inside the memorial a wall lists the 1177 service men who dies on the battleship." "Every returning survivor knew someone who died on December 7th." "They never had a chance." "They didn't know what was coming." "Nobody knew about it." "They never woke up."" "Aloha, aloha." "I was going to ask you for a hug but I'm gonna get one anyway." "Big, big hug." "I thought maybe that you wouldn't want to hug an ugly old man like..." "I do, I do." "Carl Carson was a twenty year old sailor on the Arizona the day she went down." "he decided to come back to Pearl Harbor when doctors told him he didn't have much longer to live." ""I lost a lot of good dear friends over there." "It's just awful hard to even think about it." "And I almost lost my own life." "I hope I can make it over there all right." "Carl has never talked very much about what happened to him that day." "Now, at last, it's time." ""This is where I came out of, turret 3 here." "Came back on this." "There used to be ladders up and down and I came up the turret and went down the..."" "I was out on deck doing the morning chores all of a sudden this plane come along and didn't pay much attention to it because planes were landing at Ford Island all the time." "And all of a sudden the chips started flying all around me and the plane it was strafing me." "And uh somebody hollered it's the damn Japs, get under cover." "The bomb went off, I learned later, it was back about turret number 4 about where I've been working about 10, 15 minutes before." "And evidently it knocked me out, ruptured both my lungs and I got smoke inhalation." "And all the lights went out." "I don't know how long I laid there." "But when I woke up it was no panic down there or anything." "But there was smoke and water knee deep." "I ran into a friend of mine that he was crying and, and asking me for help." "And I looked at him in horror." "And the skin on his face and his arms and everything was just hanging off like, like a mask or something." "And I took hold of his arm." "Skin all came off in my hand." "And there, there was just nothing in this world I could do for that boy." "And that has bothered me all my life." "Well they gave the word to abandon ship and we just practically stepped off of the quarter deck into the water and I guess I must have passed out." "And went down in the water and everything was just as peaceful and nice that it would have been so easy to just let go." "And I saw this bright light and something made me come to." "And so I got back up to the surface of the water and, and oil all around." "And I had water in my, oil in my teeth, down in my throat and everything." "Tasted horrible." "I still taste it today." "And the oil was a fire all around." "A man saw me down there and the fire was approaching me, wasn't but two feet from me and he reached down and pulled me up out of the water." "And that man saved my life." "Bob Ballard has spent the entire mission searching the flats outside the harbor- without finding any sign of the lost midget sub." "This is a mile, so what we're going to do we are going to drop you down here at the base." "Now he's turning his attention to the steep coral escarpment running roughly parallel to the shore- an area he calls the wall." "In an expedition like this you have to put your mind in the mind of the commander of the submarine because his actions are gonna define the size of the search area." "What he does at that moment is going to tell you how big a search area you have to have." "Clearly if he was killed outright then you didn't have to put yourself in his mind at all because he's dead and he's going to be right were they say he sank." "But if he's still alive, he's going to then take certain evasive actions and you have to then say, well if I were that person, what would I do?" "And there were two options he had." "One was to continue forward into Pearl Harbor or the other was to turn and run for the high seas." "If the midget made a run for the high seas, and sank farther out, there's no hope of finding it in the remaining time." "But if it had continued toward the harbor," "Ballard's team might stand a chance with the help of their own miniature submersible." ""Head north turn left."" "The one disadvantage of using a submersible is that Ballard's team won't be able to see what the sub pilot is seeing during the dive." "They'll have to rely on his descriptions over the radio - and look at a videotape later." "We've landed the sub." "It's going to land about 200m of water, head due north." "As you can see the airport's right there so it's going to run into something and it's going to run into a wall, and then it's going to head west along that wall, because if the submarine hit against that wall" "it's going to fall down to the base." "So we're going to spend the day exploring the base of the steep scarp that leads right up the channel into Pearl Harbor." "To me deepworkers look like sort of manned robots." "They've got a human inside of them but they have this big, you know, this exoskeleton." "But what they do is they permit a person to be highly maneuverable." "They can spin on their axis." "And they can go into very dangerous places because they're so small." "In the control room, all anyone can do is listen to the squawk box." "They just reported finding a pile of batteries and this submarine was a lot of batteries." "So, starting to look like, smell like, but we're not sure." "Then the sub pilot spots a torpedo." "We're right where it should get interesting and it is getting interesting." "He's picked up a torpedo and debris right in the area where we'd expect the submarine to have impacted with the wall." "Ballard feels they are getting close but they can't be sure of anything until they retrieve deepworker - and take a look at the video tape." "December 7th, 8:35 a.m. and the beginning of a brief, twenty minute lull in the action." "At airfields all over the island, crews scrambled to clear the runways so American planes could get in the air." "Anti-aircraft guns were made ready." "Field hospitals were set up to take care of the wounded - many of them burn victims." "The first stories of individual acts of heroism began to make the rounds." "One of them was about a mess attendant on the West Virginia named Dorrie Miller." "Miller had carried the wounded captain of his ship to safety, then taken up a machine gun and shot down at least two Japanese planes." "What made the story remarkable is that" "Dorrie Miller had never handled a machine gun, much less trained on one because he was black and like all African-Americans in the 1941 Navy, restricted to the lowest ranking jobs." "Fourteen men received America's highest military award - the medal of honor - for their heroism on that day - but Dorrie Miller wasn't one of them." "He got the Navy cross instead." "The only reason why he didn't get the congressional medal is because he was black." "You know the Navy being what it was at that time you only could be a servant to the officers." "He never gave any thought for his life or anything, he grabbed a machine gun and started blasting away over the side of the ship." "What he did was courageous and many of us thought that man should have been given the congressional medal of honor"" "Two years after Pearl Harbor," "Dorrie Miller died when his ship went down, torpedoed by a Japanese submarine." "Pearl Harbor 8:55 a.m." "The seas were still boiling with smoke and flame when the second wave of the Japanese attack struck the island." "This time, 167 aircraft split into two main groups." "One headed inland." "The other hugged the eastern coast, and continued south to Pearl Harbor." "But this time, the Americans fought back." "The smoke in the harbor was now so thick the Japanese pilots had trouble seeing their targets." "One of their targets was the battleship Nevada, with a hole in her side, steaming toward the channel." "Dive bombers honed in on the crippled giant." "If they could sink the battleship now, it might block the channel and trap the fleet in the harbor." "With all of these planes coming in when the, Nevada got under way the planes come in, dive bombing that." "It looked like bees coming back to the hive." "There were so many of them in there at one time that it was amazing that they didn't collide." "With bombs falling all around," "Nevada's commander was able to run his ship aground on hospital point which kept her from sinking and left the channel clear." "By ten o'clock, it was over." "he second wave of attackers headed back to their carriers, leaving behind a shattered Pacific Fleet." "December 7th 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United Sates of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan" "The United States was at peace with that nation." "On the mainland, Americans were stunned by the news they we're hearing from Pearl Harbor." "Every American alive over 65 years of age can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they got the news." "It was unifying event." "It brought us together." "Nothing else could have done it in that way." ""And Attacked by Japan on Sunday December 7th 1941" "President Roosevelt addressed the Congress the following day." "a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire."" "And by December 11th, the United States was at war with Germany and Japan, plunging it into a conflict that would forever change its place in the world." "Back in Pearl Harbor, one problem survivors faced was notifying people back home that they were okay." "The Navy told us that everybody sent a postcard home to your parents letting them know everything is all right." "Well I got one of the last postcards out of there and I sent it home on December the 9th is exactly when I sent it home." "And my mother didn't get that post card until February the first week of February some time." "I don't know why it took so long but that's what it did." "She didn't know if I was alive or dead." "When the mailman got the card at the post office, he closed down the office and ran all the way to my house." "He woke my mother and step father up at 6:00 in the morning and told them, your son's OK." "Here's a card." "Ha, I still have that card." "My mom she couldn't be, believe it." "I get emotional when I think about it." "How she says she, she felt." "I just don't know it just turns me on." "Jack McCarron had been married to his high school sweetheart Roberta for seven weeks when the attack came." "It wasn't until Christmas day that she found out what had happened to her husband - who was stationed on the Arizona." "The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your husband John Harry McCarron, gunners mate second US Navy has been reported wounded in action in the performance of his duty and in the service of his country." "This was received by me" "Christmas morning, 7 AM, December 25th, 1941." "Yuck." "You know I hate to say this but in my entire 81 years of living that was the worst time in my entire life was to have received this telegram." "Because I had no idea whether or not my husband of 49 days was alive or dead." "Lying in a hospital on Oahu, badly burned," "Jack decided to spare his new wife the horror of seeing him again." "I said tell Roberta to forget about me and go back to Saugus, cause you know I had been burned and I had my, I didn't look like me," "I guess my face and my hair was only like a, you know, short." "On top of which it being Christmas." "I was 3000 miles away from my home." "3,000 miles away from my husband." "I didn't know anybody." "I guess I never did write to you for, I didn't write to her for a long time." "The state of shock I was in was almost as bad as his." "Some time passed before I, I probably started coming out of it and I was aboard ship and you know I love this girl." "And now I realize that if I was going to survive it would be with her." "My friends and shipmates took me over to the sick bay at Ford Island." "And they laid me alongside the bulkhead over there." "I looked over another ship mate laying across from me against the bulk head and he was holding his intestines in with his hands." "And he looked up at me and he said that it sure, war sure is hell isn't it, shipmate." "And I said yeah it is." "Well, lately I was diagnosed with stomach cancer and I don't figure I have too many more years to live and I thought that perhaps I might be a poor spokesman so to speak for my shipmates in telling my story so that they wouldn't be forgotten" "and that's the one and only reason that I came back." "And I'm a kind of a private person." "It's been hard to do." "But I think it was time that it needed to be told." "And I think it has been well worth it." "I, I feel a lot better now." "It's the final day of the search, and Ballard has had his machines in the water for hours." "But he's not hopeful about the outcome." "We're in the final throes of this expedition." "I mean today's the last day, we have two subs going in the water right now, but we're, you know it doesn't look good because we've looked at all the high priority sites and we haven't found the midget submarine." "We're now out in the very low priority areas and that can go on forever because it's a big ocean." "So I'd be very surprised if we succeeded today." "Deepworker returns from its pass at the wall and is hoisted out of the water for the final time." "With it is a videotape of the debris it encountered." "The news isn't encouraging." ""We have a possibility but I'm personally not hope it..." "A quick review of the videotape confirms Ballard's fears." "On closer examination, what had looked to the sub pilot like a pile of batteries turns out to be something else." ""Looks like anti aircraft gun clips isn't that what it looks like to you" "And the torpedo the pilot spotted has had its warhead removed - so it can't be from the lost midget sub." "You reach a moment when you know you're not going to succeed because you've given it the best shot you're going back over the same territory seeing the same targets for the second or third time." "Well, we've found a bunch of junk." "We don't really have a definitive set of objects that says that the submarine broke up but it could have." "So... clearly the sub did not survive" "and did the ward play a role in its demise?" "Certainly it did." "But how did it finally meet its end?" "Gloriously in battle in Pearl Harbor?" "Was it sunk by someone else later on?" "What was it's final moments?" "And for now we don't know what they were." "The mystery of what happened to the midget subs would have been even deeper." "Had it not been for a surprise development on the morning of December 8th, 1941." "in the early morning hours, a small submarine washed ashore on Oahu's east coast." "It was the one piloted by ensign Kasuo Sakamaki - the sub with the gyroscope problems." "Sakamaki also washed ashore exhausted and delirious." "He was captured before he could kill himself- and thus became America's first prisoner of war." "Of the ten submariners who set out before dawn on the 7th," "Sakamaki was the only one who survived." "Historians have generally labeled the submarine mission a failure - since only one midget that we know of entered the harbor - and was sunk during the attack after firing two harmless torpedoes." "But analysis of a photo taken from a Japanese airplane just as the battle began suggests something else." "It shows battleship row already under attack a few minutes after eight and in the water just beyond a shadowy shape that appears to be a small submarine and the wake of a torpedo aimed directly at the West Virginia." "While some historians remain skeptical, that analysis could explain a message Dewa received on the night of the 7th- more than twelve hours after the attack." "It came from his friend, ensign Yokoyama." ""Successful surprise attack."" "Then silence." "Yokoyama's sub never made the rendezvous - and neither did any of the others." "For years Dewa has wondered what happened to Yokoyama and all the others who didn't come back." "All he knows is that somewhere, in these waters they died, as they expected they would." "Of course I hoped they would return, but the commander told me." "If I come back I'll come back with a wolf as we say in Japan and put the mother sub in danger so I don't think they planned to return even if they had succeeded." "Before he set out on his mission one of the submariners left behind a poem he'd written earlier that day." "AS THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS FALL" "AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR GLORY" "SO, TOO, MUST I FALL" "THAT MEN MAY CALL ME" "A FLO WER OF YAMOTO," "THOUGH MY BONES LIE SCATTERED" "IN THE BLEAK WILDERNESS" "OF STRANGE AND DISTANT LANDS." "On the last day of his visit, Dewa asks to see the Arizona memorial to pay his respects to the Americans who died on December 7th." "America and Japan must have had their reasons for starting a war." "But after coming here and seeing the waves of the Pacific" "I question why we had to go to war." "Japan and the United States are brothers." "Pacific peace is world peace." "This trip has made me feel that together we must protect it." "Jack McCarron and Carl Carson are also there to remember their ship and their shipmates." "Underwater, the National Geographic camera prowls through the empty ship, these are the first images of the officer's quarters." "images from a another era, frozen in time." "A bathroom, with it's regulation soap dish." "An officer's desk, its papers still arranged in their pigeon holes" "a washbasin now filled with sand beneath a shaving mirror" "For Jack McCarron, the pictures of his old ship are almost too painful to bear." ""For over 40 years over 40 years I couldn't if I was asked I couldn't talk I didn't talk about it," "I didn't think about it, I had erased it from my mind" "I didn't have any memories," "I really didn't" "I saw that barnacles on that doorknob, and the lights overhead, and I thought who was that officer down there, did he survive?" "At one time that knob was real nice and shiny and he turned on that light to read." "I don't remember the ship as that."" "The legacy lives on in a Navy ship called the U.S.S. Pearl Harbor." "For survivors, a journey on this ship is a chance to see the advances that have taken place over the decades" "and to participate in some things that never change." "Wandering through the galley," "Clark Simmons recalls his service in the segregated Navy of 1941." "There was only one duty open to you." "And that was serving the officers." "I've been very impressed by the achievements of the black Americans aboard the ward the young ladies." "Some of the leading pay off aboard the ship of Black Americans," "I don't know the word should put it, how happy I am to see the things that they have done" "For veterans like Charles Christiensen, this is a chance to pass on the legacy of the battle to a new generation of sailors." "'Oh, I look at them and I see me when I was eighteen when I joined" "I was nineteen when the attack went off'." "I can't even imagine it." "I mean I can't imagine if I would panic or not." "I can't imagine my world being turned upside down, and my whole world to be on fire." "For three days after the attack, the Arizona continued to burn." "The final totals from the surprise assault were staggering." "More than 2400 deaths and almost 1200 wounded." "21 ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been sunk or damaged, including all eight battleships." "Over 300 airplanes had been put out of commission." "Admiral Yamamato had accomplished everything he set out to do - except destroy the American aircraft carriers." "And in the fighting to come, that would proved to be a critical failure." "One of the best things that ever happened to the United States was our carriers were not involved in the attack." "Yamamato sank battleships." "The battleship was not the queen of the seas any longer after that day." "From now on it's the aircraft carrier." "And the attack on Pearl Harbor for all of the losses of live, which comes first of course, and the losses of ships, they didn't sink any aircraft carriers and that made, what was already a very bad mistake on Japans part even worse." "But perhaps the greatest miscalculation was how the defeat would affect the American fighting spirit." "Instead of a crippling blow, it became a rallying cry." "The next morning, the fire was still burning, and there was the ships, some of them not for sure some of them still had the flag flying from yesterday, and at 8 o'clock guess what?" "These ships were sitting there in the mud, its time to raise the flag and there's the American flag flying, everything is fine." "And then the Americans went to work." "Every ship that had been hit except the Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma was refloated, repaired, and put back into service." "Many would take part in the battles yet to come " "Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa" "And so would the men who survived that day." "I grew up in the Navy." "I learned a lot." "When I came out of the Navy I was 6ft even, weighed 200lb." "I actually grew up." "I learned to be, you could say, a man." "When I walk with the Pearl Harbor survivors especially when I have my uniform on I walk very proud." "I represent the country and I will represent it 'til the day I die." "And I will always be proud to be part of it." "Well Pearl Harbor to me is like beginning a new life." "I may be a certain age but it seemed that I was reborn that day." "Pearl Harbor survivors are special." "They have a feeling for each other and for their country." "They have a comradeship that is not matched anywhere in the civilian world." "The only people that I've ever met that have that kind of comradeship are foxhole buddies." "These guys were in foxholes together," "It's not a feeling of 'we showed them,' it's not a feeling of triumph." "It's a feeling of we did it together, we were there, and that's what matters." "It's kind of a hallowed place." "It's very beautiful." "I'm amazed that it's this beautiful." "And I understand that this millions of visitors every year that come by to pay their respects to my shipmates." "To a lots of them I know a lot of them they were just names but to me they'll always be my shipmates." "I don't think we'll ever be done with Pearl Harbor." "I think Pearl Harbor is like Gettysburg, it's like Appamatox its like Lincoln's assassination it's like Yorktown and the surrender to General Washington." "God help our country if it's ever forgotten." "In the beginning, there is the fertilized egg." "Its form couldn't be simpler." "But this will change." "It's a piece of work to craft a creature from a single cell." "By the time it enters the world, every living thing has experienced an odyssey of alteration." "Change doesn't stop with hatching or birth." "Growing up is also a story of transformation." "A newborn kangaroo can grow over 50,000 times in weight." "Some creatures do far more than simply grow up." "They reinvent themselves." "A fish can start life as a female but end up as a male." "A bird can grow or shrink a brain area for song to suit the season." "Polliwogs become frogs." "Caterpillars turn into butterflies." "We learn few more curious facts than these." "But it's easy to lose sight of just how astonishing these changes are!" "And even weirder transformers live among us." "Turn and face the strange." "Meet the body changers." ""Hey, Emma, come here!"" "Compared to the epic alteration of a caterpillar, our own changes may seem subtle." "But there's no denying that kids change shape as they turn into grown-ups." "The brain kicks off our own sexual transformations." "Girls tend to get curvier from estrogen and other hormones." "A child's body, and that of many other young creatures, changes shape when it reaches the age for reproduction." "These alterations prepare us to compete for mates, to have babies, and to care for them." "Boys change in their own way." "They add muscle." "Shoulders become broader." "The body gets hairier." "Vocal cords lengthen as does the jaw." "A child's journey to adulthood is a long one." "A grown-up is not just a scaled-up kid, but one rebuilt from head to toe." "Look back at the odyssey of growing up, and we see that even our faces change shape, starting in infancy with small chins, huge eyes, and plump cheeks." "We are all body changers when it comes to growing up and growing old." "It may be no accident that many baby animals have different face shapes from their parents." "Adults find baby features irresistible, a hard-wired system that promotes infant care." "Silvered leaf monkeys have Day-Glo offspring." "No one knows why, unless it's a reminder to rough-and-tumble mothers to handle the baby with care." "The young and old of many animals have different colors, sometimes to conceal newborns that are less able to flee danger." "A young, sexually mature male orangutan has a distinguished, mournful visage." "But in middle age, his face changes shape." "His new jowly look is a badge of power." "Changes in our own faces tell many stories." "A face that forms symmetrically in the womb and stays that way through adulthood can be a mark of good nutrition and resistance to disease." "Is it any wonder we are highly attuned to symmetry and find it beautiful?" "Old age brings new changes as our faces transform again, keeping a faithful record of wear and tear, loves and losses." "As we change ourselves in the subtle ways that human beings do, we're surrounded by creatures that become entirely new." "Around us are animals that live out the youthful fantasy of sprouting wings and flying like a bird." "But we also share the world with animals whose stories of change echo darker myths." "Hercules' enemy, the many-headed Hydra, sprouted two new heads for every one lopped off." "Nature nearly matches legend." "The salamander has powers of regeneration bordering on the magical." "It will need these talents, for it lives not in a fairy tale, but rather in a world of real dangers." "A red-eared slider enters the stream." "The salamander picks an unlucky moment for a swim." "It's a vulnerable creature, unarmored and undisguised." "The turtle has nipped off the salamander's hind leg." "Over three months, the creature miraculously transforms itself back to an earlier stage of life." "The genes that grew the leg in the first place are activated again." "The new leg will be indistinguishable from the original." "Unique among animals with backbones, the salamander can regrow not just limbs but the lens of the eye and even part of the brain." "This beast can survive a bite to the head!" "The Hydra lives." "The power to change shape or color offers a special edge in life." "Some creatures change to stay hidden." "Others transform to find new kinds of food." "Still other animals change for upward mobility, for the chance to fly or leap to another pond." "This lake is home to two body changers that can be lifelong rivals." "A dragonfly nymph spends the first part of its life beneath the surface." "Everything about this creature seems honed for water." "It is tapered for speed." "Its head has powerful jaws and huge eyes-the better to catch prey with." "It breathes through an anal gill, also handy for jet propulsion." "It's hard to believe that this pond predator, sleek as a torpedo, accurate and deadly, will one day take to the air." "Wings are already forming." "An amazing makeover is beginning." "But the dragonfly will not be able to complete its body change without regular meals." "Sharing the pond are gray treefrog tadpoles." "You can't get any fishier than this without actually being a fish." "A tadpole breathes through internal gills." "Its long flat tail propels it like a fish's tail." "Inside, powerful front legs have formed and are nearly ready to burst out." "But not every ungainly swimmer will live to be reborn as an elegant leaper." "With a secret weapon locked and loaded, the dragonfly nymph waits for an opportunity." "Folded up under the nymph's head is a hinged lip with a grasping tip." "This tadpole's dreams of frogdom are dashed." "But in these death throes, a chemical is released which fellow tadpoles take to heart or to tail." "In two weeks, tadpoles in the area transform remarkably." "Their tails turn a shade of red." "The colored tail may protect tadpoles from attack like a neon sign flashing "Don't Eat."" "Why this works, no one is sure, but there's no need to turn tail with a tail turned red." "The pond is abuzz with changing bodies." "Not only are tadpoles about to turn into frogs, they've already changed colors." "At the age of five weeks, tadpoles, both red- and clear-tailed, shed their underwater ways." "Rear legs emerge slowly." "Front legs pop out of gill slits." "The tail is absorbed." "This frog may not have turned into a prince, but the tadpole's transformation is no less astonishing." "An air-breathing, bug-eating, lily-hopping, sweet-singing adult has emerged from a silent scum-sucking swimmer with gills." "Now is the dragonfly nymph's time to change." "It's been lurking in the shallows by the shore, waiting for just the right moment to abandon the water forever." "Tonight is perfectly calm, since rain or wind could dislodge the dragonfly at a vulnerable moment." "The nymph has crawled out of the water and fastened itself to a stem." "It is now committed to the air." "A brand new creature emerges from the old." "The husk of the nymph splits open." "In a single magical hour, an adult struggles out." "At first, its goggle eyes look like deflated beach balls." "But soon they are pumped up to full size, some of the keenest eyes in the insect realm." "In the remaining hours before dawn, the dragonfly pumps blood into its soft, wet wings, doubling their length." "The dragonfly has changed from a jet-powered aquatic hunter armed with a hydraulic spear to a peerless aerialist that will stalk on the wing." "About two hours after emerging, the dragonfly takes flight." "Once master of the pond bottom, the dragonfly now controls the air space above." "No other insect devotes as big a share of its body weight to flight muscles as the dragonfly." "Scuba certification has been traded in for a pilot's license." "As larvae, dragonflies once hunted tadpoles." "Adult frogs sometimes have the chance to even the score." "A dragonfly is a curve ball on the wing." "There's nothing wrong with the occasional whiff if now and then you connect with a solid double." "Just as body changes can take place in individual creatures, so they can occur across generations." "That's evolution." "Natural selection is the long process of picking winners and losers among organisms that differ slightly from their parents." "Without body-changing over generations, evolution would come to a standstill." "As it is, change adds to change to create the entire parade of life." "Life may have begun with a blob that by chance transformed." "When alterations were successful, the transformer thrived and transformed again." "One of natural selection's winning picks is the trick of morphing during a single lifetime." "Plankton is a potpourri of larvae, body changers of many species at an early stage of life." "Creatures like this have an edge:" "each stage can be honed for a different job." "Now they are shaped for spreading around-drifting on the currents." "Soon these beasts will be changed beyond recognition into new forms tailored for feeding and reproduction." "One member of the plankton, a crab larva, starts life with scant resemblance to its parents." "It shares the ocean with another tiny drifter, the seaslug." "This relative of the snail hatches wearing a transparent shell, a suit of crystalline armor." "Seaslug and crab, similar as larvae, may confront each other as adults, as different as two animals can be." "Having shed its shell, the seaslug eventually becomes an adult four inches long." "It now has a new organ, a feeding hood." "The billowy hood caresses eel grass to catch food like skeleton shrimp." "Like a submarine Venus fly trap, the seaslug closes up, trapping prey like skeleton shrimp with a zipper like seal." "Growing on the seaslug's back are other new organs, fleshy paddles that will soon save its life." "As the seaslug feeds, it is being watched by its former plankton mate." "The crab has changed into a formidable scavenger with molar-like grinders on its claws." "Blind except perhaps to light and dark, the seaslug approaches danger." "The crab pinches at the seaslug, as hard to grab as a water balloon." "Finally the crab gets purchase." "But it gets only a small serving of seaslug, whose paddles pop off by design." "The seaslug swims away with wild undulations." "Only a stump remains where once there was a paddle." "The missing organ may eventually grow back." "Once a tiny drifter, this body changer is now rebuilt for escape." "Up the water column without a paddle, the seaslug leaves the crab, its fellow transformer, with a meager souvenir." "Transformation is not just the privilege of living things." "The morphing of clouds may offer nothing more than delight." "The morphing of bodies serves a more important goal: survival." "In the Arizona desert, the weather shifts late in June." "After eight crispy months, skies darken." "The monsoon has arrived." "The pounding of the rain has stirred strange creatures beneath the soil." "In this small, evaporating pond, animals race against the clock to transform." "Tadpoles of the spadefoot toad must absorb their tails, grow lungs, sprout legs." "They must transform from fish-like swimmers with gills to hopping air-breathers." "If changing from tadpole to toad isn't miracle enough, tadpoles of this species have two ways to do it, the nice way and the not so nice." "In this hot summer, the pond is shrinking quickly." "It could become a death-trap, a cauldron of bouillabaisse." "As the water level drops, time is running out for the tadpoles to become toads." "Meanwhile, another creature joins the fray." "Fairy shrimp may have lain dormant underground as eggs for years, waiting for just the right conditions to rush through their lives." "As the pool dries up, it gets more crowded." "Tadpoles bump into more and more of these crustaceans." "Advantage: tadpole." "If they end up snacking on lots of Sonoran scampi, the tadpoles sense that their pond is shrinking fast." "There's something about fairy shrimp that throws a chemical switch inside some of the tadpoles." "And these gentle browsers now begin to transform into brutes that will stop at nothing to become a toad." "Some of the tadpoles are turning into cannibals!" "This is body-changing with attitude." "The cannibals are lighter in color and larger." "A huge muscle forms in the jaw, the better to grab their neighbors with." "We're no longer on golden pond." "The cannibals grow at breakneck speed on their unneighborly diet." "On the fast track, they will need only two and a half weeks to become toads." "The slower, mild-mannered tadpoles need six weeks to grow up." "The extra time helps them become healthier adults than the cannibals." "But often in the desert, time is a luxury." "And the race goes to the swift and brutal." "It was a remarkable turning point in evolution when a fish transformed to emerge from the sea, gulp air and drag itself around." "But what took eons in evolution is an everyday occurrence in tadpoles." "To reach adulthood, spadefoot toads must live fast and hard, then dig down into cool damp soil before the next drought arrives." "For others in the desert, the season of change has also arrived." "On an acacia blossom, an egg barely visible to the human eye hatches." "A bristled beast emerges." "This caterpillar has a problem." "If it's ever going to become a butterfly, it must first survive its life as a larva." "The desert is alive with predators like ants and wasps." "This caterpillar has an ingenious defense." "It will soon enlist one of its enemies, but only after it transforms to develop special organs for manipulating ants." "At the base of the acacia tree, ants have dug a nest." "Most ants like nothing better than dismantling caterpillars." "But these ants love them, intact." "They will protect the caterpillar." "That's because the ants march to the beat of a different drummer." "The caterpillar has become the drummer." "This is the sound the caterpillar makes with body vibrations so tiny we can't see them." "But ants feel the beat through twigs and stems and come running." "A strange rendezvous of two very different creatures is about to take place." "The caterpillar has, in effect, shouted to the ants," ""Come and get it!"" "It's not a ploy." "The caterpillar doles out sugary droplets which the ants lap up." "For the price of a few servings of food, the caterpillar is surrounded by friendly ants." "Not a bad thing to have the neighborhood toughs at your beck and call when you have a soft body and a nasty array of predators." "This remarkable relationship will last for most of the caterpillar's life." "The caterpillar now transforms into a new stage." "Tentacles have appeared, strange chemical transmitters, that seem to rile up the ants." "The caterpillar needs the ants to be ferocious: danger is near." "Another kind of ant lives nearby, a predatory species." "An enemy ant has grabbed the caterpillar." "The friendly ants rally in a desperate tug-of-war." "Not all battles can be won." "But without the aid of bodyguard ants, not as many caterpillars would live to become butterflies." "About ten days after hatching, the caterpillar descends the tree." "It's hard to believe this creature will soon shed its wormy form, sprout wings and head for the heavens." "But that is the miracle of a caterpillar." "Down in the enclave of the ant nest, the caterpillar is reborn as a pupa." "Hunkered inside what looks like a sarcophagus, the pupa is a creature in the midst of a total makeover." "Nerves are being rewired." "Old organs are dissolving;" "new ones are being built." "The ants tend this defenseless animal even though it will no longer feed them." "After ten days, one of the most radical redesigns in all of nature is complete." "The pupa has become an adult, a butterfly." "This creature's long relationship with ants is now over." "The butterfly struggles to emerge." "It must move quickly." "In fact, if the butterfly isn't out of the nest in minutes, it will be devoured by the same ants that protected it for almost its entire life." "As larvae, these creatures were basically enormous digestive tracts hauled around on caterpillar treads." "As adults, they are flying machines dedicated to sex." "If we couldn't witness a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, we'd never believe they were the same animal." "It's as astounding as a Cuisin art transforming into a 747." "Some animals undergo one major transformation in their lives." "Others change fashions every year with the seasons." "Dogs may wear heavy coats in winter." "But lengthening days will cause the fine underhairs to drop out." "Soon, this dog will be cooler in his new spring wardrobe." "Some animals change not only their coat but their color." "The arctic fox wears white for stealthy winter hunting." "By summer, the coat is less than half as thick." "Arctic birds like the ptarmigan also change color." "In summer, they're as mottled as the terrain." "By winter, the ptarmigan is a bird of a different color." "Other prey species like the arctic hare must track the seasons with their wardrobe." "Understatement is de rigueur." "If some animals change for the seasons on the outside, others are transforming on the inside." "All over North America, redwing blackbirds prepare for spring with remarkable changes." "Males arrive from winter havens to squabble for territories." "No one gets a home without singing for it." "But this male is out of practice." "He hasn't sung much at all for half a year." "But he's been quietly transforming." "It's now opening day of a new season of song." "The transformation was all in his head, literally." "The blackbird is a brain changer." "Over the past months, one tiny area in his brain devoted to song has more than doubled in volume." "With his new swelled head, this male now woos females with song." "When a female becomes all a-flutter, the serenade has succeeded." "The happy new couple flies off to the shrubbery." "It's time for a little two-in-the-bush." "The burgeoning brain of the male may have kept the sexes in tune this season." "Transformation promoted communication which helped launch the next generation." "Late in the summer, blackbirds glean the fields for the last easy morsels." "Males will transform once again." "The brain's song area dwindles, along with sweet serenades for sex." "Birds are in good company when it comes to changing for reproduction." "For most of its life, a flowering plant makes stems and leaves, a single pattern repeated." "But when the right conditions arrive, of temperature, daylight, or rainfall, a plant will suddenly transform, producing a brilliant package of sex and advertising." "As one poet put it, "The flower is a leaf mad with love."" "Deer browse among blossoms, eating tender leaves and grasses." "A once flowering feast is transformed into a pile of dung." "In the leftovers of a deer's meal, two organisms will each struggle to survive." "A fungus begins to grow threads invisible to the human eye." "The fungus is transforming for reproduction." "It shoots up stalks as tall as an eyelash is long." "Each stem lifts ripening spores above the deer's ground zero." "Meanwhile, tiny larvae are growing." "The deer was infected with a roundworm." "To survive, these wriggling parasites must leave their dump of a neighborhood to reach a new deer." "So the worm climbs a fungus stalk." "Just below a black beret packed with spores, water pressure builds." "When the cap bursts, spores can be shot up to eight feet away." "And worms will fly." "One of the parasites lands several feet away." "A passing deer eats it, an inadvertent diet of worms." "The roundworm has found a host, and millions of scattered spores await their fate." "Wintertime." "And the living's hard in the far north." "At least for a relative of the deer... caribou." "The landscape is littered with body parts." "Antlers." "Up to 20 pounds of bone, grown every year and discarded." "Males start to grow antlers every spring, a transformation from bald to bedecked." "Antlers are living tissue crisscrossed with blood vessels and nerve endings." "The sensitive fuzzy skin is called velvet." "Each caribou has a signature pattern which can grow back year after year." "It would be no less wondrous if we were to sprout a fresh arm, the same arm, every year." "When antlers stop growing late in the summer, another transformation takes place." "The tender velvet dies and is scraped away until it hangs in tatters." "Each male is now crowned with spikes of unfeeling bone." "Fighting is one reason for the male caribou's transformation." "And this helps solve the mystery of why antlers shed their velvet:" "You can't fight a battle if your sword can bleed and is sensitive to the touch." "Some creatures grow head weaponry every year." "Others, only a single time." "Altogether, male caribou have plenty of company when it comes to transformations for battle." "If some animals transform what's on their head, others change what's in it." "This male's appearance and his personality will transform with his fortunes." "Meet a member of the cichlid family." "He's something of a piscine Austin Powers." ""Oh behave, baby!"" "He's the proud owner of a prime bachelor pad, about one square foot of lake bottom." "He's dressed for success, or, rather, because of it." "His dark stripes and sharp colors are the marks of a territory holder." "Nearby lurks a male with the dull colors of a wannabe." "In fact, he looks just like a female." "If fish experience envy, this one covets his neighbor's life." "The flashy bachelor invites a female over to suck gravel." "This counts as fine dining in these shallows." "After dinner, the couple retires to the grotto for a little spawning." "There's only so much a guy can take." "The wannabe has switched on his colors, a kind of warpaint, to prepare for battle." "The wannabe wins." "And he is transformed by victory." "He retains his bright colors." "His grievances are redressed as much as he himself has been redressed in the wardrobe of a winner." "A more profound transformation will soon take place inside his body." "In a week his gonads will plump up thirty-fold in weight and a brain area dedicated to sex will increase eight times in volume." "At last the new bachelor is ready to take his enlarged gonads for a spin." "Guided by his bigger brain area for sex, he courts a female with macho motions and furling fins." "But no male holds a long-term lease in these gravel beds." "The new owner soon discovers the high cost of upkeep for his pad." "Neighboring bachelors are always testing the lot lines." "A neighbor attacks." "The new territory holder is defeated." "He switches off his fancy colors." "His gonads and brain region for sex will soon shrink." "He rejoins the ranks of the wannabes." "Some body changers save their most dramatic transformations for the end of life." "Sockeye salmon are beckoned from the ocean back to the Alaskan streams where many hatched five years ago." "Some must travel hundreds of miles in an odyssey that can take weeks." "Along the way, salmon will undergo one of the most remarkable changes in all of nature." "Head shape starts to change." "Every salmon will die by the journey's end." "The only question is whether they will get the chance to complete their transformation." "Many will be stopped here by a terrible gauntlet of brown bears." "On this journey of the condemned, the salmon throw themselves upriver with abandon." "The salmon that escape, especially the males, will now carry on with their transformation." "The head turns green and body red as the fish prepare to die, on their own terms." "Few have made it this far." "Fewer yet will finish the transformation." "Approaching the spawning grounds, the males achieve their final shape." "A sleek silvery male, over a few weeks, transforms into a gaudy hunchback with a toothy grimace." "The skin turns smooth and unfishlike as the body absorbs its scales." "In tatters after their journey, salmon arrive in the shallows where they hatched." "They've lost up to a third of their weight." "Not to mention their looks." "Only one in a thousand has completed this harrowing roundtrip." "With her own changed body, a female sweeps out a gravel nest and releases her eggs." "A male offers his swirl of milt." "This grotesque body change is still a mystery." "Does the male's hooked face help in jousting matches with rivals?" "Does the female choose a male for his new colors, a sexy but reckless display that draws the fire of predators?" "All that's certain is that this change is the creature's last." "And perhaps in death, the final transformation, the parents offer their decaying bodies to feed the pools where the next generation will grow." "The life of every creature is a journey of change." "So too is the path of all life since the very dawn of living things." "Though we may resist change, or wish to turn back the clock, no one can tether time." "We are all transformers, for the story of life is the story of change." "I learned to look at the world through the eyes and ears of elephants." "Some people, other elephant people, have told me that I think I am an elephant." "In some ways, perhaps they are right." "Like Africa, the elephants take hold of your spirits." "They can possess you and persuades you to look at the world in a different light." "There is something so grand about the life of an elephant, its great size, strength, and age." "Elephants have so many of the qualities we like best about ourselves, dignity, loyalty to families and friends, compassion, and a sense of humor." "Biologist Joyce Poole has taken a journey, without maps, into the heart of the African elephant." "She came to know elephant like family." "She discovered biological forces no one had ever suspected, and elephant voices no human had ever heard." "For years, Joyce fought for their survival, never imagining that one day she would face a terrible choice." "Joyce Poole would have to give the order to kill elephants." "This is the story of a woman who loved elephants in a world that had no room for them." "Looking back at how it all began, it seems as if Africa has always been my home." "Joyce Poole's family came to Kenya in the 1960s when her father worked for the Peace Corps." "She grew up in Africa." "The family loved wild places and often camped in Kenya's Amboseli National Park." "I saw my first elephant as a child of seven, a huge bull in Amboseli." "And I remember asking my father what would happen if he charged the car." "And as my father said," ""He'll squash the car down to the size of a pea pod," he came." "I remember a lot from Amboseli." "It was one of our favorite places, but I remember most the elephants." "The swamps were home to a huge number of animals." "But it was always the elephants that captured my imagination." "At the age of 11," "Joyce knew what she was going to be when she grew up, a wildlife biologist." "When the time came to leave home, she went out to live among the elephants." "Her journey would soon change the way the rest of the world thought about elephants." "But in time, it would change Joyce, too, and turn all her dreams for the elephants into dust." "It began in the shadow of Kilimanjaro on the Kenya border." "Her new home was Amboseli National Park, where she had first encountered elephants." "Her mentor was Cynthia Moss, who had already embarked on the most comprehensive study of elephant society ever attempted." "Using a photo book with pictures of the elephants in Amboseli," "Cynthia taught Joyce how to identify individuals." "Just keep your eye on Tuskless." "Now look, here in this picture, you would say M-57 was older than M-22 because of the angle of his head." "Yes, Yes." "He's much younger." "The elephants also got to know the researchers." "Babies played on camp as if under the watchful eye of their own aunts." "At first, all the elephants looked alike to me, large and gray with big ears." "But Cynthia taught me how different each elephant really was." "Elvira." "Esmeraldo was born in 1948." "Joyce gradually learned to recognize individuals by their familiar features." "Vee was named for the V-notches in her ears." "Tuskless had no ivory." "Joyce was particularly fond of jezebel, a noble old matriarch with one tusk pointing skyward and the other straight ahead." "Each new arrival was given a name that identified it as part of a specific family group." "Cynthia Moss's work was already revealing that elephant families formed an unusually complex society dominated by females." "But the lives of the males were still uncharted territory." "Males leave their families as teenagers and never again live in stable groups." "Alone in her car, Joyce followed them." "She was 19 years old and had no idea what she was getting into." "To study the males Joyce needed to get as close as possible." "But the shadow of a bull elephant was perilous place to be." "A male that seemed placid could easily turn around and impale her car on his tusks." "When I first started studying the males, there were many times when I had elephants corner me, tower over the car, and I thought it was all over." "Showing who's boss is something male elephants do from the time they're youngsters." "Most fights aren't dangerous." "Size normally dictates rank and every male already knows where he fits in the social hierarchy." "But every once in a while, fights turn deadly serious." "What was it that changed all the rules?" "Joyce noticed several older males dribbling gallons of urine." "Glandular secretions darkened the skin behind their eyes as if with tears." "She saw one elephant who also seemed to be suffering from a fungal infection she'd never seen it before, so she named him Green Penis." "But then other makes turned up in the same curious condition." "Joyce soon realized there was a pattern." "Each male had his own time of year when the symptoms appeared." "And it appeared at the same time every year." "In Asian elephants, these symptoms were already recognized as part of a male sexual cycle." "African elephants are a different species, and the experts all said they did not have such a cycle." "It took long months of tracking and recording the behavior of individual males, but Joyce proved the experts wrong." "At the age of 23, she had discovered a driving biological force that every other researcher had overlooked: it's called musth." "Musth is a heightened sexual and aggressive period or rut." "And the word musth actually comes from the Urdu meaning intoxicated." "Males start coming into musth on average around 28, 29 years old and their first musth periods only last a day or two." "With time, they last longer and longer, and by the time they're in their mid to late forties, they stay in musth for three or four months at a time." "How do you study six tons of intoxicated male?" "It takes art as well as science." "They're predictably aggressive when they're in musth, and even though you feel you know an animal a 100 percent, when they're towering over the car and starting to put their tusk on the bonnet," "you don't feel quite so sure of yourself." "But over time, the musth males accepted her, and Joyce came to feel at ease with them." "His name is Beach Ball because everything about him is round, his ears are round, his head is round, his tusks are round, his body is round and his penis is round." "Beach ball, you be nice, you be nice." "I hear you've been misbehaving out at headquarters, knocking down fences and gates." "You be careful with my car." "I've just fixed it." "Each of the males used to have a sort of a ritualized way of greeting me." "Um, Agamemnon used to come and put his tusks up against the windshield, and then throw his head back and forth over the top of the car with his front legs up against the bumper." "And Alfred always, you know, put his trunk on the bonnet." "And this one, I mean, he just, you know, he likes to sort of press up against the side of the car." "He's very sensual." "The old stories of aggressive behavior by "rogue" elephants suddenly made sense." "Males in musth can be hostile, but mainly to each other." "These fights captured by Joyce in videotape could end injury or even death." "Who wins?" "Size is no longer decisive." "The male who is closer to the pea of musth has the advantage." "What they are fighting for is the right to mate with a female at the height of her cycle." "The dominant male stays close to the female." "Hormones in her urine tell him whether she's ready." "When the time is right, they mate frequently, while her family surrounds them." "Joyce was intrigued not just by what she saw, but by what she heard." "She dubbed it "the mating pandemonium,"" "a sound heard at no other time." "Joyce's discoveries about musth made it possible, for the first time, to understand the complexities of elephant mating behavior." "But now the focus of her research was shifting." "Joyce was about to unlock the secret language of the elephants." "The language of elephants was a complete enigma." "Sometimes elephants are incredibly vocal." "Other times they seem to communicate in silence-freezing as if on command" "or suddenly racing off together with no apparent cue." "Even a charging musth male barely made a sound." "I kept hearing a sound like, you know, if you take a thick piece of cardboard and you go" ""whop, whop, whop" with it;" "and they were flapping their ears in a certain way, so I thought the sound was the ear flapping and it was a threat to me." "And then I realized afterwards that, in fact, it was vocalization that was being made and the ear flapping was just in association with it." "In the mid1980s," "Joyce collaborated with Katherine Payne, and expert on whale songs." "Together they were determined to uncover the secrets of elephant communication." "We began making take recordings of the elephants." "It turned out that we were only hearing part of what they said." "The rest was at a frequency too low for us to hear." "Sonograms revealed that humans miss two-thirds of elephant conversation like whales, elephants were using a language that was mostly below the range of human hearing." "Joyce slowly learned to decipher the sounds she could hear." "She came to understand 33 different vocalizations, calls that meant, "lets go," or "attack"" "or baby saying, "help, I'm scared."" "Females comforted their young with rumbles that were as specific as saying, "It's okay, we're here."" "It was a radically new way to think about elephants." "What people used to believe was just stomach rumbling was actually a complex language." "These were intelligent creatures." "Now that she knew what the elephants were saying," "Joyce knew when to be afraid, and when it was just play, even when to talk back." "Anyone who's watched elephants would say, you know, what is it that makes elephants so much?"" "Why do you like elephants so much?"" "They're so funny." "Why are they funny?" "Well, they're not just funny to look at, they're funny acting, they're clowns; not all of them," "I mean, they've got different personalities, but some are real clowns." "Joyce believed that elephants had emotions, a whole range of feelings, from joy to grief." "She was moved to witness one family come across the bones of their own matriarch." "And it was very different from the way elephants usually approach bones." "They gathered around her bones in a defensive circle facing outwards and gave a very loud rumble that went on and on, and they really were standing over them as if it was a member of their family." "And this whole, just turning the bones over, ever so slowly and gently and, you know, feeling every little crevice," "paying particular attention to the jaw and the skull, and then, you know, backing around and touching with the hind feet." "Joyce witnessed the death of many elephants, but the loss of one of her favorites was especially painful." "It was the elderly matriarch Jezebel." "By the time Joyce arrived," "Jezebel's tusks had been stolen and the corpse had been mutilated." "Feet have been taken!" "She had been ill for a number of weeks and I think when she fell, she was tracked and her tusks were taken." "The 1980s were ominous times for elephants." "Amboseli had always been a sanctuary for them but throughout the rest of Africa, elephants were being slaughtered for their ivory." "I just found it devastating that the more I was learning about these incredible animals, the faster they were being slaughtered." "I just found that I had to try and get out there and do something about it." "The world was at war with elephants." "For Joyce Poole, it was time to join the battle to save them." "In the late 1980s, poachers were killing thousands of elephants to meet the demand for ivory trinkets." "They targeted the males for heavier tusks and hacked the ivories from their faces with machetes." "When the Amboseli elephants project started, there were 167,000 elephants in Kenya," "now there were just 25,000." "In the vast area where the elephants once roamed, all that remained were gleaming white skulls of the dead." "The social structure of the elephants was on the brink of collapse." "Almost all the breeding males were gone, and many families unit consisted entirely of orphans." "If the killing continued, experts predicted," "Kenya's elephants would go instinct." "To save the country's wild life, the government turned to Richard Leakey, a third-generation Kenyan who was already famous as paleontologist." "I am going to do my level best to eliminate the elephant poachers..." "In 1989, Leakey took over Kenya's Wildlife Service and immediately declare war on the poachers." "He got off to a bold and controversial start." "...and it would be my hope that in the coming weeks the press will not ask for permission to film dead elephants, but will have an opportunities to film dead poachers." "Leakey turned Kenya's Wildlife rangers into a crack antipoachering army." "Now when poachers fire on them, they have orders to shoot back." "The first year the rangers killed 50 poachers they unearthed huge caches of ivory from butchered elephants." "Then Kenya did something that shocked the world." "At Leakey's urging President Daniel Arap Moi burned three million dollars worth of ivory." "It was Leakey's way to wake up the world to the horror of poaching." "It was a very emotional moment watching the tusks of 1800 elephants to go up in flames and smoke." "But at the same time, I felt a great sense of relief because I believed that the elephants were going to have a reprieve." "A few months later, the nations of the world banned all trade in Ivory with dramatic results." "The next year, instead of losing 3,000 elephants to poachers," "Kenya lost fewer than 50." "But like any war ravaged society, the elephants would need decades to recover." "They weren't going to get that time." "In the very years that elephant population was being decimated," "Kenya's human population had doubled." "People and elephants were both hungry for the same land." "The deal with the inevitably conflict," "Richard Leakey needed someone who understood elephants." "He asked Joyce Poole to run the National elephant program." "It would mean leaving the idyllic world of Amboseli." "It was difficult to leave Amboseli behind, but at the same time," "I was being given the opportunity of a lifetime." "I had been so privileged to spend so many years with elephants, to have learned so much I felt a sense of, almost of obligation, of giving them something in return and I felt that with the knowledge I had" "that perhaps I could make a difference." "Joyce was convinced she could help the elephants find a place in modern Kenya." "She didn't realize how difficult it was going to be." "Joyce Poole had now entered the very heart of the conflict over elephants." "At Kenya's wildlife service, she recruited a team of committed young Kenyans." "They were eager to develop new programs that would help people and elephants live together." "One of the first tasks that I had at Kenya wildlife service was to survey the country and find out how many elephants we had left." "I would have loved for them to have been able to return to their old haunts, but there just wasn't the space anymore." "I began to have this horrible vision of a future world where almost all of the land would be taken up by people and the only space left for elephants would be inside a few national parks." "Other African nations had already confined their elephants to national parks." "Joyce hoped that would never happen in Kenya." "She knew it would ultimately mean controlling the elephant population." "Elephants need space." "An adult eats 300 pounds of vegetation a day." "As the population grows, elephants can have a devastating effect on park habitat." "For other African nations, the solution is to compute how many elephants the land can sustain, and kill the rest." "It's called culling." "I think culling is totally unethical." "I think it's barbaric." "I suppose I imagine it like taking a group of humans and just deciding we're going to take out this family or we're going to take out that family." "Joyce believed she could avoid culling in Kenya." "But now there was a new problem." "Elephants were beginning to move out of the parks." "And when they did, tragedy was waiting." "The elephants could no longer go back to their old migratory routes." "Settlers had planted crops everywhere." "Families had staked their entire lives on what had once been prime elephant habitat." "The elephants were just going back to their old haunts, but from the settlers' viewpoint, they were out of control." "The radio messages came in from the stations, almost every day." "Elephants were on the rampage." "They were eating their way through cornfields, they were knocking down houses, and they were trampling people to death." "Joyce knew she had to keep people and elephants apart, and it was a matter of life and death on both sides." "She tried to protect vulnerable farms with electric fences." "But the elephants learned to short circuit the fences." "Elephants broke through here last night, and they went out into the shambas out here." "Probably, one of the bulls was in charge of this and he must've broke in and they went out." "Every day we have to keep repairing after every breakage and this is taking up resources." "The elephants were always one step ahead." "Under cover of dark, they constantly found new ways to get through to the farms." "In one night, an elephant could destroy a family's entire food supply for the year." "If you can imagine having to defend your entire livelihood from some enormous beast that came in the middle of the night and weighed close to a hundred times what you weigh." "You can't see it." "All you have is a small torch and this, this beast, this monster can track you down, can smell exactly where you are and you can't see it." "It can crush you in a matter of seconds." "That's what so many people across Africa are up against." "When the elephants come, the farmers have only rocks, sticks, and the sound of their own voices to defend their crops." "In the morning, at least one family faces famine." "As you can see for yourself, I have nothing left for my family." "All the crops were destroyed by the elephants;" "the beans, the corn, the tomatoes, everything's gone." "The children will sit and keep quite." "They have nothing to eat." "They'll just sit quietly." "The close contact between people and elephants sometimes ended horribly." "Many people are killed in Kenya every year by elephants." "It's somewhere, probably between 40 and 50 people a year." "Some areas are worse than others." "I don't think that in most cases." "I think that the elephant didn't intend to kill the person." "But in some cases, they've definitely gone out, tracked down the person and kneeled on them, which is usually the way an elephant would kill someone." "The most effective way to control problem elephants was to shoot them, but local wildlife wardens lacked the equipment and training to do it properly." "Many of the elephants that were being shot were the wrong ones, that it wasn't the elephant that had killed Mrs. So-and-so, that it wasn't the elephant that had gone into the shamba and destroyed it." "The elephants that were being shot were taking hours to die, it just wasn't right." "Joyce had to face a painful reality." "She'd come of age learning how elephants live, and she accepted the need for some to die." "But now she was going to have to give the order." "I realized that elephants were going to have to be shot, that we couldn't allow elephants to go rampaging through people's farms and killing people." "But if we had to kill elephants," "I wanted to make sure that we at least, we killed the right elephants, the ones that were doing the damage." "In 1992, Joyce established a special team and sent them into military training to become marksman." "Their job was to kill problem elephants, but to do it humanely." "I think the question isn't how we can justify shooting elephants." "I think the question is how can we justify not shooting them." "I mean, when you've spent the night out in a maize field with people who are just having their whole livelihood destroyed right there and then, there is no other alternative." "Now when villages suffered repeated attacks, Joyce sent her control team." "They watched by night till the elephants came." "We're going to wait for the elephants." "They'll be coming in, probably, in an hour or two." "We'll wait for them here." "As soon as we hear them cutting into the maize, we'll cut into the maize above them and come around, and try and get in front of them." "So if we can get them coming towards us, we can then pick out the ringleader and we'll shoot him." "We've got to shoot one out of the herd to stop them from doing this." "There's no other way we can stop them." "I'm so happy now that this animal is dead." "I've been up every night, waiting and looking after my crops." "The elephants have been bothering us for the last five years and destroying our crops." "Some of the farmers actually have not harvested anything from their fields." "For now, this village's cornfields were safe." "The killing of one elephant should keep the other away." "Tonight the crops would not have to be guarded but what about all the other villages." "In 1993 alone I gave the order to shot 57 problem elephants and each decision was difficult, but I knew it was the right thing to do." "For these villagers, the monster that once terrorized them was now just thousands of pounds of meat in the morning sun." "Today, it would fed their families." "All over Kenya, deadly encounters between people and elephants were on the rise." "Joyce Poole and Richard Leakey were under constant pressure to kill more elephants." "I realized my worst fears were probably going to come true someday." "Kenya was going to have to eliminate most of the elephants outside the parks." "We would have to confine the rest behind fences as other African nations had done." "If elephants had to be confined to parks," "Joyce wanted to find a humane way to control their numbers." "She had her team had a daring new idea." "They were going to test a form of elephant birth control." "Make sure you don't let them go back across the river." "Critics ridiculed the whole pain." "But Leakey gave her the go ahead." "For the test, Joyce relies on exactly the sort of detailed knowledge of individual elephants that has always been her specialty." "Just bring 'em over here." "They are looking for a female who already has a baby, so they can be certain she is not pregnant." "The marksman brings her down with a tranquilizer dart." "Once again, Joyce is defying the experts." "But this might be a way for elephants to survive in the crowded world of modern Africa." "Once the elephant is down," "Joyce and her team have only 20 minutes to do their work." "They inject the elephant with an experimental contraceptive vaccine which should sterilize her." "Then they strap on a radio collar to track her progress." "Joyce believes birth control for elephants may mean hope for the future." "But it will take years to prove that the contraceptive works." "Then just when they begin to get the first positive results, it's all over." "Political infighting puts an end to their plans." "I have given the best years of my life to public service." "In march, 1994 his enemies forced Richard Leakey out of office." "...and the stress and the pain of being vilified by senior politicians and others is more than I think is good for my health." "Under these circumstances I have today sent a letter to His Excellency the president offering my resignation." "Joyce and several of her colleagues resigned the same day in support." "What was so devastating about it was that KWS had had such successes, and my own program... we had built up such an extraordinary team and we had really done so much and I feel that people knew that," "people were on our side;" "yes, they wanted us to do more, but they realized we were doing the best we could and all of a sudden, Richard is force to resign... and everything is just left in limbo." "Joyce didn't know yet where her life was going to take her." "But elephants still had a hold on her spirit." "She went back to visit Amboseli." "She now had a daughter named Selengei." "Joyce wanted to introduce her child to her old friends." "We'd gone out one evening to watch elephants." "And I saw Vee approaching us with her family." "And then an extraordinary thing happened." "It wasn't just any rumble, it was greeting rumble." "And who knows what was going on in the elephants heads?" "I could only guess that they had remembered me and they were welcoming us back to Amboseli." "For a few days, Joyce blended in with the familiar camp routine." "Her old colleagues were still pursuing their research." "Elephants would always be part of Joyce's life." "But back in Nairobi, someone else was going to have to make the hard choice about their future." "I think in the long term, let's say looking 50 years ahead, that elephants and people will not be able to coexist, that elephants will be confined to national parks, many of them with barriers around them." "And I think between here and now, it's going to be a very painful process to get where we're going... and that there'll be a lot of suffering on both sides." "To save what she loved most in the wild, she had fenced it in, controlled it, even killed it, and it hadn't been enough." "I think that the dreams I had or even have for elephants can never be." "There's not enough space anymore." "And what space there is put aside for people." "I think all we can do is look at each situation and do our best to protect what can be protected, look for solutions for the conflict." "And where we can't do anything, we just let it go." "It can't all be saved." "It can't." "In 1927, an unknown air mail pilot from rural Minnesota enters a race against the best aviators in the world." "He will fly from New York to Paris, alone across the empty sea." "Charles Lindbergh is a dark horse in a deadly competition." "He risks his life on the longest flight ever flown and he lands as the most famous man on earth." "The story is an American legend:" "Lindbergh's dream to prove aviation's future." "A Lone Eagle, who inspires the world to look to the skies." "Early in the 20th century, the airplane is a deadly innovation." "Few people dare to fly, and those who do often pay with their lives." "The heavens beckon, and then destroy." "The most lethal challenge is to fly across the Atlantic Ocean." "A feat so hazardous that, in 1919, a New York millionaire offers 25,000 dollars to the first plane to fly non-stop between New York and Paris." "No one dares." "Planes are too slow, too primitive and the ocean, too wide." "Three years pass." "Then, at a remote airfield in Nebraska, a twenty-year old from rural Minnesota begins his apprenticeship in the uncertain world of flight." "Charles Lindbergh has dropped out of college after just one year to pursue his dream." "Lindbergh wants to be a pilot." "When a daredevil named Erold Bahl brings his aerial act to town, the young Lindbergh sees a way to finally get off the ground." "Bahl admires the newcomer's enthusiasm, and decides to take him on as a protégé." "Lindbergh is self-reliant, calm, and driven." "He is shy and modest, but determined." "Lindbergh knows aviation is his future." "He is electrified by the perils and the freedom of flight." ""Trees become bushes; barns, toys;" "cows turn into rabbits as we climb." "I lose all conscious connection with the past." "I live only in the moment in this strange space, crowded with beauty, pierced with danger."" "In the air, Lindbergh shows no fear, perfecting the most perilous barnstorming stunts." "Wingwalking..." "Then skydiving, with a primitive silk parachute." "He makes hundreds of jumps." "With each leap, he risks his life, and enriches his spirit." ""Of course there's danger;" "but a certain amount of danger is essential to the quality of life." "I don't believe in taking foolish chances;" "but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all." "What civilization was not founded on adventure, and how long could one exist without it?" "What justifies the risk of life?"" "Lindbergh masters the single-engine bi-planes of the day." "Over the next year, he hops from town to town, performing stunts across the rural mid-West." "Then, Charles Lindbergh decides to make a serious commitment to his flying infatuation." "In 1924, he enlists in the US Army flying school in San Antonio, Texas." "Lindbergh wants to hone his skills as a pilot, and the Air Corps owns some of the fastest planes in the world." "Flying in formation teaches him precision and about the dangers of carelessness." "On a routine flight, Lindbergh collides with another plane." "Both pilots narrowly escape with their lives." "Lindbergh is back in the air within the hour." "Nothing can keep him out of the skies." "Of the hundred and four men who join the Air Corps with Lindbergh, only nineteen pass." "Lindbergh, once a first-year college failure, now graduates at the top of his class." "When his one-year army tour is over," "Lieutenant Lindbergh goes to one of the capitals of the burgeoning aviation industry, Lambert Field, St. Louis, Missouri." "St. Louis has ambitions to be an aviation hub." "Lindbergh's experience earns him the best, but most dangerous job on the field:" "chief pilot of the Air Mail run to Chicago." "Air mail pilots live short lives." "Thirty one of forty are killed in crashes in the first five years of service." "The planes are World War One surplus." "Pilots call them "flaming coffins."" "But Lindbergh ignores the terrifying record of the air mail service." "He believes the skies must be tamed." "What a future aviation has;" "yet how few people realize it!" "Somehow they must be made to understand the possibilities of flight." "It is 1926." "Seven years have passed since the 25,000 dollar prize was offered for a New York-Paris flight." "Not one aviator has stepped forward." "But Charles Lindbergh has not yet heard of the challenge." "Throughout the year," "Lindbergh carries the mail through the Midwest's worst weather." "With little more than a compass and courage, he gets the letters through." "Twice, in the dead of the night, he is forced to parachute from his crippled aircraft." "He dutifully runs his fuel tanks dry to prevent letters from being consumed by flames." "He breaks the nation's record for death-defying leaps, and earns a new nickname from his fellow air mail pilots: "Lucky."" "The crashes shake the public's opinion of air mail's safety." "Charles Lindbergh makes it his mission to change their minds." ""Whether the mail compartment contains ten letters or ten thousand is beside the point." "We have faith in the future." "Some day we know the sacks will fill."" "Lindbergh can only dream of aviation's future, while another pilot flies to fame." "On May 9, 1926, US Navy Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd flies his three-engined Fokker over the North Pole." "The achievement sums up Byrd himself:" "part science, part adventure, part self-promotion." "Richard Byrd is acclaimed as America's king of the skies." "With the Arctic defeated, Byrd now sets his sights on the Atlantic, and the seven-year-old challenge to reach Paris." "Byrd plans a mission for a crew of four in one of the largest, most expensive planes ever built." "But another pilot beats him to the airfield." "On September 15, 1926," "French war ace Renee Fonck sets off from New York for Paris." "But Fonck's huge, overloaded plane does not even lift off the ground." "Two crewmen are killed in the wreck." "Fonck survives, his dream in ruins." "But Charles Lindbergh takes inspiration from the tragic headlines." "It is the first time he has heard of the New York-Paris prize." "Lindbergh decides to enter the race." "But his plan is different." "He will fly with just one engine." "And, he will do it alone." "It would be a thirty-six hour, sleepless ordeal." "But first, he needs a decent plane." "Lindbergh approaches eight of the wealthiest men in St. Louis." "Inspired by the young man's boldness, they stake Lindbergh with 15,000 dollars, gambling that the publicity will make St. Louis the aviation hub of the Midwest." "Lindbergh offers his own life savings, 2,000 dollars." "In February, 1927, he makes his way toward the only manufacturer that will build a plane on his meager budget." "His destination is San Diego, California, and a company he has never heard of Ryan Aircraft." "But no one has ever heard of Charles Lindbergh, either." "On February 25th, 1927, Lindbergh arrives at Ryan Aircraft in San Diego." "First impressions are discouraging:" "a dilapidated hangar, with no runway, and a staff of just a dozen." "Ryan's owner is barely a year older than Lindbergh..." "Benjamin Franklin Mahoney, a former bond salesman who bought the company after taking a few flying lessons." "He shares Lindbergh's passion for aviation and his desire to win the Transatlantic race." "Donald Hall is Ryan's only engineer." "He's also young, just twenty-seven." "Hall is astounded by Lindbergh's vision of a solitary, sleepless flight to Paris." "But a crew of one would mean more room for gasoline." "He begins sketches at once for a small aircraft, a flying fuel tank." "Lindbergh wires his sponsors in St. Louis." ""Believe Ryan capable of building plane with sufficient performance." "Delivery within sixty days." "Recommend closing deal." "Lindbergh."" "Lindbergh has his team." "Now, it's time to get to work." "The aircraft will be an extension of Charles Lindbergh himself." ""Every part of it can be designed for a single purpose every line fashioned to the Paris flight." "I can inspect each detail before it's covered with fabric and fairings." "I can build my own experience into the plane's structure."" "The young men who plan a leap across the Atlantic need to know precisely how far it is to Paris." "Lindbergh has a primitive solution." "The bit of white grocery string under my fingers stretches taut along the coast of North America, bends down over a faded blue ocean, and strikes the land mass of Europe." "It's 3600 statute miles." "It will be twenty-eight hours to Ireland and thirty-six to Paris." "Lindbergh will use a simple compass to guide him from New York to Newfoundland, then across two thousand miles of open sea, with no hope of surviving if anything goes wrong." "As Lindbergh's work gets under way, the competition heats up." "On March 2, in New York," "Richard Byrd announces that his plan to reach Paris is almost complete." "Byrd has built a 100,000 dollar, gigantic aircraft named "America," and will be ready by May." "Just two weeks later, in Virginia," "American Navy pilots Noel Davis and Stanton Wooster unveil their own contender:" "a tri-motor called "American Legion."" "But Lindbergh holds to his plan to build a small aircraft." "He is certain that the bigger the plane, the bigger the chance of a fatal accident." "Then, on March 26, a new challenger emerges in Paris." "Ace Charles Nungesser and his one-eyed navigator Francois Coli are ready for a westbound crossing in their plane, the "White Bird."" "The Ryan team works around the clock, a race against the world's most famous aviators all for a twenty-five year old with a dream, and determination." "Then comes a stunning blow." "In mid-April, American pilot Clarence Chamberlin announces that he has stayed aloft for a record-smashing fifty-one hours in skies over New York." "His powerful plane Columbia is now ready for Paris." "Four planes are ready to go, waiting only for clear skies over the Atlantic, while Charles Lindbergh is on the Pacific coast, still waiting for his aircraft to be built." "Suddenly, the odds begin to change." "A test flight of Byrd's America on April 16 ends in a twisted wreck." "Byrd and two of his crewmen are seriously injured and the America needs weeks of repairs." "Eight days later," "Clarence Chamberlin takes off from the same New York runway." "He crash lands the Columbia." "Chamberlin walks away, but his landing gear is destroyed." "Noel Davis and Stanton Wooster are not as fortunate." "On April 26, both men are killed when their overloaded plane stalls and crashes in Virginia." "Lindbergh's prediction has come tragically true." "Loaded down multi engine giants are too unreliable for transatlantic flight." "Two Americans and four Frenchmen have given their lives in the race to link their nations." "April 28, 1927." "Two months after Charles Lindbergh arrived in San Diego, his dream plane is born the Spirit of St. Louis." "Named in honor of his backers in St. Louis, the Spirit is just over twenty-seven feet long, with a forty-six foot wing span." "The plane is trucked to a local airfield, for its maiden voyage." "For Lindbergh, Mahoney, and Hall, the moment of truth has come." "The Spirit of St. Louis is all Lindbergh dreamed it would be." ""I've never felt a plane accelerate so fast before." "There's a huge reserve of power."" "There are no front windows." "A gas tank blocks Lindbergh's forward view." "Visibility and comfort have been sacrificed for endurance." "Weighing just over a ton empty, the Spirit is a tiny challenger to Richard Byrd's eight-ton America." "The first test is a stunning success." "Every possible ounce of weight has been eliminated." "Lindbergh will confront the Atlantic without a radio, without navigational instruments, without a parachute." "He has thought through everything and carries nothing." "He makes two dozen test flights, and declares the Spirit ready." "The time has come to leave for New York, and the starting line." "But he may be too late." "On May 8, French aviators Nungesser and Coli take off from Paris." "The next day, newspapers report the French aces have been spotted over Nova Scotia." "So close to fulfilling his dream." "Lindbergh despairs he has lost the race." "But Nungesser and Coli never arrive in New York." "Their aircraft mysteriously disappear." "It is never found." "Six Men have now been sacrificed." "But Lindbergh has been granted one more chance." "May 10, 1927." "Lindbergh says goodbye to Benjamin Franklin Mahoney," "Donald Hall, and the Ryan factory workers." "They have built the Spirit, it is now up to Charles Lindbergh to fly to New York, before any other pilot attempts the Atlantic." "But first, he must stop in St. Louis to meet his backers." "He flies all night, testing the Spirit, and his own stamina." "He calculates fuel consumption at 100 miles per hour, his planned airspeed over the Atlantic." "And he practices holding his course on a dead heading for St. Louis." "It is dry run, over land, for his Atlantic journey." "Fourteen hours and twenty-five minutes after lifting off from California," "Charles Lindbergh lands the Spirit of St. Louis in the city of her name." "He has broken the world speed record on his flight." ""No man has ever traveled so fast from the Pacific coast before."" "Lindbergh's sponsors want to show off their investment, but the great race to Paris will not wait for a Missouri parade." "They urge him on to New York." "Seven and a half hours later, Lindbergh reaches New York." ""Manhattan Island lies below me millions of people, each one surrounded by a little aura of his problems and his thoughts, hardly conscious of earth's expanse beyond." "What a contrast to the western spaces I have crossed." "I feel cooped up just looking at it"" "At 4:31 PM, on May 12, 1927, the tiny Spirit of St. Louis touches down at Curtiss Field, Long Island." "Charles Lindbergh has crossed the North American continent more quickly than any man in history." "Suddenly, the race to Paris has a new contender." "A young daredevil from the American heartland, with the fastest plane in the sky." "In the Spring of 1927, three aircraft and their impatient pilots are lined up in the race to be the first to Paris." "Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis," "Richard Byrd's rebuilt America, and Clarence Chamberlin's repaired Columbia." "All three are ready to go, but bad weather keeps them on the ground." "The fliers maintain a link of friendship and respect." "The national hero Byrd is courteous to Chamberlin and the young outsider Lindbergh." "Each understands that the best man and the best machine will win." "And that any, or all of them may die trying." "Charles Lindbergh gives the press the story they've been waiting for." "The underdog, the farm boy," "the Flyin' Fool." "Lindbergh is besieged." "On one day alone, 30,000 people come to catch a glimpse of the gallant young American pilot." "Publicity is good for the cause of aviation, so Lindbergh complies." ""The journalistic atmosphere has reached fever heat." "The moment I step outside the hangar I'm surrounded." "The attention of the entire country is centered on the flight and me." "We've helped focus everybody's eyes on aviation and its future."" "His mother arrives in New York to see her son off." "Cameras turn as the two pose stiffly together, a moment they both know may be their final goodbye." "Commander Byrd admires Lindbergh, and praises his undeniable courage." "But he is certain that a single engine, and a single filer, cannot possibly endure a 3,600 mile flight." "Seven days pass and the weather holds the frustrated pilots down." ""The sky is overcast." "Rain is falling." "It may be another week or two before I can take off." "I feel depressed at the thought"." "May 19, 1927." "Bored and restless, Lindbergh accepts an invitation to a Broadway musical." "Before reaching the show, he receives a forecast of clearing skies over the Atlantic." "He races back to his hotel, hoping to catch a few hour's sleep before dawn." "But Lindbergh is far too excited to rest." "At 2:30 AM, already awake for twenty hours, he begins preparing for the 36-hour flight ahead." "At dawn, the Spirit of St. Louis is towed out to the runway." "Five hundred soaked spectators gather, eager to be witnesses to history, or tragedy." ""My plane lurches backward through a depression in the ground." "It looks awkward and clumsy." "It appears completely incapable of flight-shrouded, lashed and dripping." "It's more like a funeral procession than the beginning of a flight to Paris."" "7:30 AM, May 20, 1927." "Fully fueled, the plane weighs two and a half tons." "Lindbergh has never attempted a takeoff at this maximum load." "The commotion has awakened Commander Byrd." "Byrd himself would not dare attempt a takeoff in this wretched weather." "But the pilot nicknamed "Lucky" is willing to take the gamble." "A reporter asks Lindbergh if he has brought enough supplies to live on for nearly two days in the air." "He has packed just five sandwiches and a gallon of water." "He answers with a grim joke." ""If I get to Paris I won't need anymore, and if I don't get to Paris I won't need anymore either."" "Loaded with explosive fuel, on a 5,000 foot runway of clinging mud, the Spirit lumbers into position." "It is a vital moment in the history of human technology, and human courage." "A tiny silver plane, straining and roaring a lone pilot who has passed the point of aborting his flight." "He will take off, or he will crash." "Lindbergh clears wires at the end of the runway by just twenty feet." "And Lindbergh is gone." "As the Spirit of St. Louis disappears into the clouds," "Commander Richard Byrd estimates soberly that the odds against Lindbergh's survival are three to one." "As his thirty-six hour odyssey begins, Lindbergh sets his course." "50-cent highway maps guide him over the New England coast." "He alternates fuel tanks every hour to balance his load, and keeps a careful log of speed, altitude, and course." "The Spirit's engine is the most powerful ever built for flight:" "223 horsepower of aluminum and steel." "It must perform perfectly for almost two days nonstop, fourteen million explosions in its nine cylinders." "As he leaves Massachusetts behind," "Lindbergh heads over open ocean for the first time in his life." "250 miles from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, a preview of the 2,000 mile ordeal across the Atlantic ocean." "He flies low, and faces the sea." ""I come down to meet the ocean, asking its favor the right to pass for thousands of miles across its realm." "The earth released me on Long Island;" "now I need approval from the sea."" "The skies clear." "But in the sun, Lindbergh begins to suffer the tortures of fatigue." "He already regrets staying awake all night before departure." "New York is just five hours behind him." "As he soars over Nova Scotia, the journey has barely begun." "Navigating by a simple compass heading, he is only six miles off his planned course." "But as each hour passes, the drone of the engine, and the monotony of the waves, dull his consciousness." "Urging surrender, demanding sleep." "Twelve hours after takeoff, still a day away from a seemingly impossible touchdown, he is over Newfoundland." "One quick wingover, and the vast Atlantic awaits." ""North America and its islands are behind." "Ireland is two thousand miles ahead."" "Now, Lindbergh has only his compass and his courage to guide him." "Caught between sky and sea, no traveler in history has ever been so alone." "The first night of his journey begins." ""I've given up a continent and taken on an ocean in its place, irrevocably."" "Over the North Atlantic, not far from where the Titanic sank just fifteen years before," "Lindbergh spots icebergs." "He dreams of landing and sleeping." "If he drifts off, even for a few seconds, he will tumble into the waves and die." ""Sleep is winning."" "At this moment, at Yankee Stadium in New York City, 40,000 people gather at a heavyweight boxing match." "The announcer asks the audience for a moment of silence for Lindbergh." "All 40,000 join as one." "Over the Atlantic, Lindbergh flies into dense clouds." "He climbs above them for better visibility." "But at ten thousand feet, the air is colder." "He has made a dangerous mistake." ""I pull the flashlight from my pocket and throw its beam onto a strut." "Ice!"" "His only hope is to dive for warmer air" "and pray the ice clears before the Spirit falls from the sky." "After ten perilous minutes, he triumphs." "A nation flies with him, sleepless and anxious." "The New York Times receives 10,000 telephone calls, asking for updates." "But there is no news to print." "Lindbergh flies alone, without a radio, over the desolate ocean." "Nineteen hours out, he estimates that he is halfway to Paris." "But his body is numb, beyond hunger and thirst." ""My greatest goal now is to stay alive and pointed eastward until I reach the sunrise."" "He abandons his log book, too weary to care." "In New York, the newspapers can only repeat stale bulletins from Newfoundland." "No one on earth knows where Lindbergh is, or the agony he endures." ""This is the hour I've been dreading." "I know it's the beginning of my greatest test." "This early hour of the second morning the third since I've slept"." "Just before dawn, Lindbergh believes he is visited by ghosts." ""These phantoms speak with human voices vapor like shapes, without substance." "The feeling of flesh is gone." "Am I now more man or spirit?"" "On the verge of defeat and death, he finds the fortitude to fly on." ""I'm gaining strength, I'm crawling upward." "I've finally broken the spell of sleep." "The sight of death has drawn out the last reserves of strength."" "His ghosts, and his fears, dissolve in the sunrise." "Suddenly he sees something moving below." "The world has come alive again." "Porpoises." "Then a seagull." "A certain sign that land must be near." "Soon, a tiny dot that can only be a mirage." "Fishing boats." "Where is he?" "Where are they from?" "Within half an hour, another apparition." "He refuses to believe his eyes." "Land." "He looks at the chart, and at the mass below." "It is Ireland." "He is just three miles off his plotted course, and over two hours earlier than he expected." "When he is spotted over Dingle Bay, the world rejoices." "For Charles Lindbergh has not been flying alone." "Only the British Isles remain, then the Channel." "Then, France." "Lindbergh will be the first man in history to be in New York one day, and Paris the next." ""Yesterday I walked on Roosevelt field, today I'll walk on Le Bourget."" "Five hours after reaching Ireland, at 9:52 PM" "Lindbergh is finally over Paris." "But at this moment of triumph, strange lights below disorient him." "He circles lower." "He finally locates Le Bourget Airfield, obscured by bright lights." "Below him, a public hysteria unlike any in history is about to erupt." "One hundred and fifty thousand people have come to witness his arrival." "The lights are their automobiles." "At 10:24 PM, after thirty-three and a half hours in the air, the Spirit of St. Louis returns Charles Lindbergh to the earth." "But his feet do not even touch French soil." "The mob surges forward, carrying the exhausted Lindbergh like a rag doll." "They claw at the Spirit of St. Louis, tearing off pieces of history." "A group of French aviators finally rescue Lindbergh, and carry him off to a waiting car." "He is taken to the American embassy, where he sleeps for nine hours." "And awakens the most famous man of the century." "Lindbergh's shy grace wins the heart of Paris." "The crowds hail not only the pilot, but the dawn of a new age of unity between Europe and America." "Paris is in a Lindbergh frenzy for a week." "Then he flies on to Brussels and London and is greeted with explosive hero worship." "But Lindbergh is more than a hero." "He is a 20th Century phenomenon, the first international superstar." "After two weeks of European adoration," "President Calvin Coolidge orders Lindbergh home." "A Navy cruiser brings the nation's most popular hero and his now, famous plane back to American soil." "When he arrives in Washington, 250,000 people are there to greet him." "An innocent twenty-five-year-old from the mid-West has become a living legend." "His next stop is New York, where four million people line the streets for the largest ticker-tape parade in the city's history." "The public's rapture exhausts the quiet Lindbergh." "But he seizes the opportunity to promote aviation's future." "And now, people will listen." "For the summer of 1927, he crisscrosses America in the Spirit of St. Louis, on a crusade to convince the public to take to the skies." "30 million Americans in 82 cities throng to hear his message, new converts to the aviation revolution." "Lindbergh heralds the dawn of a new era." "By 1928, the air mail service triples its load and the passenger business carries four times as many people than before Lindbergh's Paris flight." "His dream is fulfilled." "Those who once soared above Lindbergh now fade in his shadow." "On June 29, Richard Byrd and his crew of three finally take off for France in their 100,000 dollar plane." "Byrd force-lands off the Normandy coast." "Few take notice of his clumsy flight." "The contest to unite the continents has already been won, by the graceful Lone Eagle." "Charles Lindbergh spends the rest of his life in the air, promoting the cause of aviation." "At the age of 27, Lindbergh marries." "With his wife, author Anne Morrow, he maps new flight routes across the Atlantic and Pacific." "The young couple opens the skies for air travelers of today." "Lindbergh would also endure agonizing personal tragedy." "The kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh's baby son in 1932." "And outrage following his speeches opposing war with Nazi Germany." "But Charles Lindbergh's legacy is not controversy." "It is courage." "The daring of a twenty-five-year old air mail pilot who believed he could change the world, and did." ""When the Spirit of St. Louis flew to Paris, aviation was shouldering its way from the stage of invention to the stage of usefulness." "I believed that aviation had a brilliant future." "Technically, we have accomplished our objectives, passed beyond them." "We actually live today in our dreams of yesterday" "and living those dreams, we dream again."" "From the first dawn of creation to the end of time" "our world, our lives, and every living thing are attuned to a cosmic song" "a celestial cadence of light and dark" "of ebb and flow" "of heat and cold all set into motion by the epic dance of the sun, moon, and earth." "These are the rhythms of life itself." "Before there could be day or night before there was a spring or fall a star, our sun, had to flare into life." "From the seething stuff of stars, over time, the planets of our solar system took shape." "Four billion years ago, or more, one such place was born the planet called, Earth, our home." "But for nearly a billion years, it would be a home inhospitable to any form of life" "a red and angry globe a churning mass of fire, poison gas, and molten rock" "At the core of the planet raged an inferno." "For thousands upon thousands of centuries, this infant planet suffered the violent pains of growth and change, as it formed and reformed itself." "From the very beginning, the earth knew night and day." "But a night and day not like any we know now." "Fueled by the forces of creation, the earth raced through its daily cycle, spinning five times as fast as it does today." "A few brief hours of starlight." "A few brief hours of sun." "Day followed night at a dizzying pace." "Earth and sun were not alone in their orbits." "But cosmic visitors rarely came to stay until one cataclysmic encounter transformed the heavens and earth forever." "One theory tells of a cosmic accident a huge asteroid on a collision course." "It may have been the birth of the moon and so many of the rhythms of life." "But first, the moon would have been a cloud of fragments, circling the planet like the rings of Saturn before coming together into a huge, barren satellite." "Too small to hold a protective atmosphere, the moon itself has long been bombarded by debris ever since." "Without wind or rain to smooth the scars, its face bears everlasting witness to the violent nature of outer space." "On the earth below, an atmosphere was brewing from endless clouds of poison gasses and water vapor, expelled from beneath the crust." "Closer to the sun, the precious water might have boiled away." "On a colder planet it would be locked into eternal ice." "But on the earth, water vapor condensed falling back as rain upon the land." "And so the first oceans were born." "Over millions of years, the seas rose to flood the earth." "But these were not the cool, life-giving waters we know today." "The primal atmosphere provided little protection." "It had no blanket of ozone to filter out lethal radiation." "Virtually unobstructed, the sun's unforgiving rays seared whatever they touched." "Much closer than now, the moon also played a violent part, tugging at the seas with a force countless times greater than today." "The first tides were mountains of water, miles high." "Torn by sun and moon, the surface waters offered no hope for life." "Still, there was sanctuary below." "In the ocean, the first building blocks of life amino acids emerged." "They incubated in water heated by the planet's internal fires and fed on a bubbling broth of nutrients straight from the heart of the earth." "But even the ocean's depths were not safe from a cataclysmic universe." "In a galaxy still littered with the debris of genesis, asteroid strikes may have vaporized the oceans, laying the seabed bare." "More than once, life on earth may have been snuffed out." "Yet the fire and rains of creation kept their hold on earth, and the oceans rose again." "Life has proven stubborn here." "Some three billion years ago, as the earth cooled and calmed once again, new forms appeared, the heralds of life as we understand it." "In quiet, sheltered pools, algae spread." "Colonies of single-celled organisms, they thrived off abundant sunlight and carbon dioxide." "And in their waste they left behind oxygen, the precious breath of life." "This was the birth of photosynthesis, a new, life-giving cycle that transformed the earth." "For countless millennia, algae flourished in the brief days so bright with sun." "And now the cosmic rhythms were changing." "Gradually, the moon and its tides slowed the earth's mad spinning, and the forces that bound planet and satellite together loosened their hold." "The moon retreated to where she stands today, still slipping imperceptibly away over time." "With the moon more distant, the tides fell." "Calmer waters bred more algae and more oxygen." "And with the oxygen came ozone, protection from the sun's most lethal rays." "At last, the stage was set for the next phase of creation." "Like the fire of a new sun, the spark of new life appeared in the waters." "Still just single-celled plants, but organisms far more complex than any that had come before." "Within each was a genetic code that reflected the rhythms of earth and heaven, a biological clock to guide their lives." "Daytime would be the time to feed on the power of the sun." "Reproduction would be saved for the shelter of night." "Millions of years later, this clock still synchronizes almost all life to the very spin of the planet." "From the depths of a steep-walled lagoon in the South Pacific island of Palau, a herd of underwater farmers rises to meet the dawn." "A swarm of jellyfish, tens of thousands strong." "Without eyes, the jellyfish do not use the light to see." "They need it to grow their food gardens of brown algae that flourish within their transparent bodies." "Denied sunshine, they would starve." "As the sun arcs overhead, shadows of the surrounding walls darken the surface of the lagoon." "Just below, the jellyfish ferry their microscopic passengers, keeping them always in the light." "When the sun sinks, so do the jellyfish, dropping down to the ocean floor where the algae can find their own nourishment." "Even without sight, the jellyfish will know when the sun returns again." "In the surface waters of the oceans most creatures take their cue to feed or rest from the rhythm of light and dark." "Now, members of the night shift hurry to take the stage." "Roused by light-sensitive cells that announce the return of darkness, these prickly browsers set out to graze." "Sea urchins find their prey and their way around by touch and by taste." "Each night clouds of plankton rise from the deep to feed drawing out the coral who fish the waters with feathery nets." "A few, sharp-eyed fish operate by sight in the dim light before dawn." "Like a cat in the dark, the lionfish can pick out its prey." "The lionfish will slip into a crevice to hide from the daytime;" "eyes sensitive enough for half light may be too delicate for bright sun." "Daybreak brings the morning rush hour to the reef." "Far more complex than jellyfish or sea urchins, most fish depend on sight to survive." "Without the sun they are virtually blind to navigate their world, to find their food, or signal to their kind." "A kaleidoscope of colors enhances the play of daylight on the reef." "For the fish, stripe and hue holds clues and communications, helping them to identify mates, predators, and prey in the busy rainbow of the reef." "Trailing twilight in its wake, a manta ray flies in, to harvest plankton when again they rise with evening." "Sunlight fades, taking with it the world of color, and the day shift streams off the reef for the safety of deeper water." "And once again, the great earth wheels round." "The line between light and darkness divides those that live by land as well as the creatures of the sea." "And even the land and sea themselves breathe with the rhythms of day and night." "Given off by day, water vapor now rises, cools, and condenses in the night air." "From earth, through plants, into the air, and back to the earth again the endless cycles of replenishment and renewal." "The plants of this Australian rain forest have been in tune with the rhythms of the sun for eons." "Here, an acacia tree wakes up and stretches for the dawn." "Like a sundial in the trees, the play of light and shadow across the forest floor marks the turning of the planet." "A shifting pool of light holds treasure for plants and animals alike." "Sunbathers under the leafy canopy, many plants collect much of their energy during brief interludes of light." "A boastful bird takes this spotlight for a stage." "In the dark, his finery is invisible, meaningless." "Only by day can the male riflebird capitalize on his gaudy attire." "His appearance, like a feathered, black-and-white rose, has been calculated by evolution to entice females to his side." "A vibrant, sunlit display, all about sex, as crisp as the snapping of a fan." "The last hours before sunset often inspire a flurry of movement." "Once the sun fails, most birds will lose their powers of sight and of flight." "They gorge in preparation for the fast to come." "Color and flair are an advertisement for plants too." "Their brightly hued fruit attracts birds, and with the feast the cycle of life and rebirth will continue." "For after eating, the birds will spread the seeds of new plants far and wide." "While most creatures of the air depend on the bright of day, others like fruit bats, are tuned to more nocturnal rhythms." "All day they had been invisible, sleeping in the shadows, saving their energy against the hot sun." "Now twilight signals to them, a silent summons." "The bats scramble and take control of the air the birds have left behind." "Millions crowd the sky, ever graceful, never colliding." "Foraging in darkness, the bats have turned to senses other than sight to find their way." "They navigate the night by sound, until they find a likely spot for a meal." "By moonlight, plants need a different lure to attract visitors' perfume." "Little is more savory to these bats than the scent of ripe blossoms and fruit." "And once they take their fill, like birds, they carry seeds everywhere they fly, assuring the future of their favorite foods." "The rising moon offers a gentle promise, cooling relief from the heat of the day." "And many creatures bide their time until the evening hours." "Other mammals have also learned to maneuver through the midnight air, like Australia's sugar gliders." "With their built-in parachute, a sugar glider can span the length of a football field." "It may seem a bold leap of faith, but they're only following family footsteps." "By smearing their scent upon the branches, they blaze invisible trails for their kin to follow." "Their search for insects, sap, and nectars carries the gliders into the night." "Like bats, they survey the dark with sensitive noses." "This evening harvest keeps these squirrel-like creatures safe from the predators of day." "Instinct warns them to be back in their nests by dawn, before sharp-eyed hawks and eagles take to the skies." "For millions of years, mammals were the masters of the night." "In prehistoric days dominated by dinosaurs, smaller, warm-blooded animals took advantage of the relative safety of the darker hours." "But the days when mammals were forced to hide from the coning of the light are long since over." "Now, in rain forests round the world, near the top of the evolutionary ladder, you'll find agile tree-toppers ready and willing to celebrate their place in the sun." "These proud primates, central American howler monkeys, inaugurate each day with a morning chorus, staking their claim to the trees and life at the top." "Higher still cling their smaller cousins, the spider monkeys." "With few natural enemies they rule the roost." "Grasping hands and feet give them confidence to live life out on a limb." "And evolution has given them a whole new point of view stereoscopic vision." "It gives them the ability to judge distance precisely an." "And invaluable skill when hurtling through the treetops 80 feet above the ground." "Somewhere deep in the prehistoric past, the human line diverged from that of monkeys and apes." "And even if we no longer get to work vine to vine, we still share common genes and heritage, and an attachment to the daytime hours." "It's programming imprinted on us both by the ever circling sun and its cold celestial partner." "Lunar rhythms cast long shadows over daily life on earth." "Though the mile-high tides of creation have shrunk to swells of mere feet, the rise and fall of the oceans still exerts a powerful force." "From 240,000 miles away, the moon's pull wields power enough to carve the coastline and buoy up the polar ice." "Four times a day, the sea scours the coast, always retreating, always returning." "It's a force both destructive and life-giving." "Many creatures thrive here, on the shifting boundary between sea and land." "On gentler shorelines, each time the tide retreats, it leaves behind a feeding ground replenished by the sea." "The lull between high tides sees a race for survival, a race against the lunar clock." "These scavengers must feed their fill now." "Sand-bubbler crabs pick food from the net of the sand, sorting out trapped particles of seaweed and other plants." "They leave behind delicate spheres of sand." "It's a temporary testament to their labors." "Combing the territory around their burrow, they scar the sand with their tracks, each lone scavenger attending to its own hunting ground." "Other creatures march boldly forward with the strength of numbers." "Soldier crabs sweeping the shore in battalions." "Mostly males, they work together by the hundreds, exhausting each plot of land before moving on." "An army of crabs, a living tide of hungry hunters." "But no army can defend against the moon, and they know it." "The crabs' parade grounds will be deserted by the time the tide marches back to claim it." "As water replaces land, those that can, take to the air." "Here the moon is mistress." "She sets the rhythm of life at all hours, low tide is time to eat;" "high tide, the time to rest." "Wading birds make the best of life at the shore." "Stilts for legs let them follow the waters' edge as it ebbs and flows." "Beyond the sandy shore, the tide floods up through the clutching fingers, the roots, of mangrove trees." "Here in the muddy flats, the fiddlers dig their wells, preparing for the tide's return." "For these engineers, the last act before the flood is to batten down the hatches with a fresh cut plug of mud." "They'll wait out the flood submerged in underground burrows." "Like wading birds, the mangroves will weather the waves on stilts." "The rhythm of the tides beats both night and day." "For whenever the tide is low, the shore's inhabitants will come out to feed, by sunlight, moonlight, or in the glimmer of the stars." "Behind this constant ebb and flow beats a second, slower tidal rhythm, a cadence that for many, spurs the times of mating and of birth." "This is the lunar cycle, the month-long dance of earth, satellite, and sun that paints the changing faces of the moon." "Twice each month, the sun and moon conspire to raise the level of the tides." "At the new moon and at the full, the gravity of both our star and our satellite aligns, lifting the tide to its greatest height." "In between, the tides are at their weakest." "This monthly cycle of tides touches creatures of the sea in a place deeper then the daily rhythms of feeding and rest." "A pair of male parrot fish swirl around each other, jockeying for supremacy." "Their competition is a sure sign that the full moon is on the rise." "This dance heralds the spawning season." "When the full moon tide begins to ebb, the females will release their eggs." "With the tug of the ebb tide, the mating frenzy begins." "Thousands of fish, male and female, dash through each others' wakes, casting clouds of eggs and sperm together into the tide." "One breed's spawn is another's feast." "Predators join the tumult, to feed their fill on eggs." "But the spawning fish know how to play the odds." "They have fertilized tens of millions of eggs." "Millions will escape, pulled out to deeper waters by the outgoing tide." "At high water, the surf storms back over the reef, sweeping schools of tiny fish into the lagoon." "A silvery cloud flashing on a watery wind." "For many, this will be the last moment in the sun." "Trapped in quiet, shallow waters, they make easy prey for hunters circling above the surface." "Moon, fish, and birds all whirling in their own perfect harmony." "This black-naped tern lives a life scored to the music of the tides." "On the shore, females have laid claim to nesting sites and some have already begun to lay eggs as well." "While one bird minds the nest, its mate fishes the shallows." "These seabirds time their breeding cycle to coincide with the easy prey washed into the lagoon by the full moon tides." "Now is the time to eat heartily." "Soon the chicks will hatch." "And soon the moon will come full circle, the tides again filling the shallows with tiny fish." "All in time to feed newly-hatched chicks." "Although barren herself, the moon prompts the sexual life of many animals, both above and below the surface." "Just after the full moon, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef begin to spawn." "In a week, the tides will reach their slackest point." "And over 200 different species of coral will launch their seed into a galaxy of eggs and sperm." "In the still water, there is time to drift and mix, time for eggs and sperm of the same species to mingle and create a new generation." "Sea worms, who live imbedded in the coral, cast off their tails, adding to the blizzard." "Writhing bags of sex cells, the castoffs dance among a veritable Milky Way of new life." "These celebrations are orchestrated by the music of the spheres, the distant dance of the solar system." "Like the moon, the sun also sings to us in rhythms slower than the everyday of rise and set." "Around this star journeys the earth at a stately, year-long pace, initiating the cycle of the seasons, ferrying winter and summer from south to north, and back again." "Even at the poles, the sun makes her mark with the shimmering aurora, the wake of the solar wind." "In the Antarctic, the cycle of the seasons becomes one with the rhythms of the day and night." "Here six months of sunlight are followed by six months of dark and dusk, summer followed by winter." "Even in the extremes of Antarctica, life is tenacious." "Throughout the dark of the polar night, each male emperor penguin guards a single precious egg." "Hardly moving, never hunting, they've not eaten since autumn." "In temperatures reaching 70 below, winds up to 50 miles an hour, they huddle together for warmth and protection, and wait for the sun." "In a land where evening lasts for six months, dawn can seem to take forever." "Finally the penguin chicks will hatch, and like their fathers, they will be desperate for food." "Males can lose nearly half their body weight during this incubation time." "But help is on the way." "Mother's coming." "For months, they have been feeding on the bounty of winter seas." "Nature's biological clock is at work here, too." "The females seem to sense the exact time to leave for the nesting grounds, for they have a huge trek across the ice to get here." "Even tired and hungry, the males may be slow to give up their chicks." "Temperatures on the ice can be killing." "Babies left exposed too long will die." "The guard successfully changed, males are free, at last, to head to the sea, and to feed." "The chicks will be fed by mother and kept warm until the sun climbs high into the sky." "Ever and always, the coming of summer depends on the swing of the earth as it circles the sun, and as it reels on its tilted axis." "As the earth spins through the year, the sun's strongest rays sweep across the globe, bringing change in its wake." "Near the equator, the angle of the sun's rays varies little through the year." "Still, it's enough to give the tropical regions their own seasonal rhythm, the cycle of drought and flood, the wet and the dry." "September in Australia." "The air above the baking northern plains rises with the heat." "With it comes cloud banks full of moisture, pulled inland from the coast." "The wheeling clouds bring drama, but no relief to a thirsty land." "They are not rainmakers, but sky painters." "The monsoons are still months away." "Even so, deep in their nature, plants and animals seem to feel the rains coming." "A new cloud stirs-plant suckers rising with the rhythms of the spring." "What looks like the bark of a tree breathes with life, a frill-necked lizard, waiting out the drought." "For months it rations energy, moving little, feeding less." "Wallabies are rainy day lovers." "While they wait for the wet season, males joust for the chance to mate." "Now even the plants take a chance that the drought is on the wane, greening with fresh leaves." "Soon, all their preparations will be rewarded." "The wet, the season of the rains is coming at last." "From deep in their shadowy castles, colonies of termites rouse to the reveille." "One storm brings another, a rain of flying termites." "They take to the air by the millions, in the quest to found new colonies in rain-softened soil." "And as always, the rhythms of one life mesh and turn with others." "Wide-eyed possums in the trees, and bandicoots on the ground below, end the fasting of the dry months with a welcome late-night feast." "At the end of their migration, termites shed their now useless wings." "Many will fail to ever find a mate and burrow safely underground." "With the coming of daylight, there will be others to join the feast." "Conservative no more, the frill-necked lizard becomes a glutton, storing up protein for the breeding time to come." "But it may face competition for the spoils." "Undaunted, the lizard takes his fill, working alone." "The green ants do it differently, working together in groups." "Both species tend to the harvest with a persistence that is single minded." "Little disturbs the teamwork of ants." "They scavenge night and day, dry or wet." "At the peak of the rainy season, the storms are now more than most animals might care to see." "But their only choice is to wait the cycle out." "Like the rhythm of the tides, the rolling seasons of wet and dry shape life for every plant and animal on this land." "Not one of them can stop the rain, or light the black of night, no more than the fish command the seas to rise and fall." "One creature only dares to fight the night" "the bold and restless dreamer hunter, builder, man." "But even in our cars and castles, we submit to the rhythms of the earth." "Dawn and the sun summons us to work." "We swarm like schools of fish to the cities, flashing to feed and mingle on the reef." "Beneath the canopy of urban forests, we hunt and gather what we need to live." "And dusk still calls us home again a flock of birds returning to the roost." "But over the millennia, we have learned how to fight the darkness with fires of our own design." "We strain against the boundaries, reshaping the border between night and day." "We create our own complex orbits, drawn to the sky and the distant heavens." "Yet finally, for all our powers and wisdom man is still just a player on a vast stage." "Hour by hour, year by year, the cosmic clock marks our time on earth." "Seasons turn." "Tides rise and fall." "One generation passes on to the next." "Nothing lasts forever, not even the stars themselves." "Night by night, over countless years, the earth will slow on its axis." "The moon will drift yet further away." "Days will lengthen, the tides grow quiet." "Billions of years from now, the seemingly endless cycles will come to a close as the fires of creation at last consume the sun." "Yet ours is but one small star, in one tiny galaxy, in a universe beyond measure." "Perhaps there are other rhythms of life, unseen by our eyes, yet as grand and majestic as our own." "By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, human explorers have navigated the earth and soared through the skies." "Yet one earthly realm remains silent and hostile." "The deep." "Its crushing pressures kill all who attempt to invade its forbidden darkness." "Then, in 1930, an adventurous scientist and a wealthy dreamer undertake a daring voyage in a tiny steel capsule, to a place no living man has ever gone." "Success will make them ocean science pioneers." "Failure will end in death." "Awaiting them-beckoning them- is a fantastic unexplored universe." "This is the story of these first intrepid descents into the abyss." "Earth is an ocean planet." "Water covers over seventy percent at an average depth of two miles." "Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century, almost nothing is known about the deep ocean." "Then, in 1925, a charismatic explorer and scientist turns his attention to the sea." "His name is William Beebe." "And his quest begins with a shallow dive in a crude copper helmet." "At 48, Beebe has spent his life bringing tales of jungle adventures home to the American public." "Now he is re-born into a new world." ""As I peered down I realized that I was looking toward a world of life almost as unknown as that of Mars or Venus." "William Beebe believes that the only way to study the sea is to explore it himself." "To date, few other scientists have ventured into the ocean and witnessed its wonders." "Modern oceanographic knowledge of deep-sea fish is comparable to the information of a student of African animals, who has trapped a small collection of rats and mice, but is still wholly unaware of antelope, elephants, lions and rhinos."" "Beebe is tantalized by the unknown world in the depths below- and the unseen creatures which live there." "Beebe is already a celebrity scientist." "He was the 25-year old prodigy named curator of Birds at the Bronx Zoo, today's Wildlife Conservation Society." "He is a gifted writer, and a restless traveler, popularizing scientific observation with a healthy dose of exotic adventure." "His friends include former President Theodore Roosevelt." "In what is believed to be his last letter before his death in 1919," "Roosevelt praises Beebe's work." "At age forty, he turns his attention and energy to the First World War and volunteers as a pilot, serving in skies over Europe." "When the war is over, William Beebe returns to his explorations- and in 1925, sets out on the ocean journey that will change his life." "Beebe's ship is Arcturus, donated to him by a wealthy patron." "A tireless promoter, Beebe knows how to use adventure to sell science." "Several Manhattan millionaires sponsor his expedition." "Beebe steers Arcturus for the Sargasso Sea, in search of the teeming aquatic life amidst the rafts of floating sargassum weed." "His team of fifteen scientists labor tirelessly, gathering fish and ocean animals, recording and cataloging their findings, and preserving specimens for more detailed study at the Bronx Zoo." "For 25 years, Beebe has scoured the continents." "Now, he opens his eyes to a new world, the living sea." "But does life exist in the deeper ocean?" "And if so, is it different?" "Arcturus is specially equipped to dredge the deep." "Beebe orders nets to be sent down over half a mile" "They return with hundreds of creatures, most are dead, many are alive, and most importantly, many species are completely unknown to science." "Beebe is astounded." ""When we realize the possibilities of deep-sea life still unknown to us, every haul of the dredge should be welcomed by an enthusiasm equaled only by the possible hope of communication with our sister planets."" "Beebe longs to know about life in this sunless place, where plants cannot grow." "How do creatures thrive in an animal world of total darkness?" "Beebe wants to see this alien ecosystem at work, with his own eyes." "Ocean life becomes Beebe's obsession." "He makes hundreds of descents, pushing his copper helmet- and his body-to its maximum depth." "At just over sixty feet, he reaches his limit." "Even obsession can take him no deeper." "Below him are chasms deeper than the Grand Canyon." "Barely beneath the surface, the reach of human exploration ends." "To dive much deeper is foolish, and deadly." ""I made my way to a steep precipice, balanced on the brink, and looked down, down into the green depths." "It would have been exceedingly unwise to go much farther." "At double the depth I had reached" "I would probably become insensible and unable to ascend."" "Ocean pressure can crush the unprotected human body at just three hundred feet." "Even submarines in Beebe's day can descend no deeper than four hundred." "Beebe is determined to descend into the darkness- and just as determined to return alive." "He needs radical new technology." "Beebe's well-publicized shallow dives make him an underwater icon- the brave explorer in the copper helmet is the Jacques Cousteau of the Roaring Twenties." "Back at the Bronx Zoo, Beebe sets his sights on the ocean depths- for two years, he draws up plan after plan for a deep-sea diving device." "He abandons them all as impractical." "In 1928, Beebe decides to move to the ocean to pursue his obsession." "His choice is Bermuda." "The Bermuda government donates a hospital on the outlying Island of Nonsuch." "Beebe knows that Bermuda is the perfect base for exploration of the deep Atlantic, one of the few places in the world where the sea floor plummets more than a mile deep, just off shore." "Attracted by the new science of oceanography, and by the dynamism of Beebe's character, the lab at Nonsuch draws young, talented researchers." "John Tee-Van, a New Yorker, has been Beebe's assistant since Teevan was nineteen" "Teevan is Beebe's personal planner- harness for Beebe's unstoppable energy." "Twenty-seven year old New Yorker Gloria Hollister joins Beebe's team." "Hollister is typical of the young, fashionable, and brilliant group." "The research team works long hours at varying jobs, but Bermuda life is comfortable, and the climate ideal for a mid-ocean outpost." "Beebe's boundless energy inspires the group in discovery after discovery." "Gloria Hollister experiments with Beebe's copper helmet, continuing research in the shallows, following Beebe's footsteps down into the living sea." "But William Beebe cannot shed his dreams of the deep waters just off shore-filled with creatures that he has only seen in nets." "He is three years into his quest, and he still has no idea how to reach the living deep." "The answer will come from a rich stranger." "His name is Otis Barton." "Barton is 29, the high-spirited heir of a New England retailer." "He has read about William Beebe's deep ocean dream in New York papers, and he has the money to make it come true." "He offers to finance the design and construction of a device that can be lowered to at least 3000 feet, on one condition:" "that he gets to ride along." "1929, In a New Jersey machine shop," "Barton's hopes and dreams for the world's first working deep- diving capsule start to take shape." "It is a hollow sphere of inch-and-a-half thick steel." "Its strength lies in its round design- withstanding the relentless ocean pressure by equalizing its assault." "No glass is strong enough for portholes." "Barton orders panes of fused quartz, three inches thick." "These tiny windows might allow man's first glimpse of the living deep- but they too, must withstand the pressure." "The factory work takes more than a year." "Beebe is within reach of his dream." "Word comes from New York." "The diving globe is ready." "For Otis Barton, the price tag of 12,000 dollars proves to be a sizeable chunk of his fortune." "In May, 1930, Barton arrives in Bermuda." "He has come with the vessel that, if it works, will transport two men to the unknown deep- making history, and changing science." "On the docks of Bermuda," "William Beebe inspects the bizarre deep-sea capsule." "He calls the invention a bathysphere- meaning "deep sea ball"." "Barton's plan is simple." "The bathysphere will descend on a 3500-foot steel cable." "The hatch is just 14 inches wide, sealed from the outside with a 400-pound steel door." "The bathysphere is unwieldy and untested, but it is Beebe's best and only prospect to get to the deep alive." "June 3, 1930." "The journey to deep waters begins." "Beebe and Barton hire a retired British warship, the Ready, to serve as mother ship for the bathysphere." "The Ready isn't ready for much." "The tired old hulk must be towed to the deep water site so Beebe can make his first descent." "Beebe cannibalizes the winch from his old research vessel Arcturus and bolts it to the Ready's deck." "It will have to support the bathysphere's two-and-a-half ton weight, plus two tons of steel cable." "If the cable snaps or snags, the bathysphere, and the men, will plummet to the ocean floor, with no hope of rescue." "Beebe chooses a place a few miles off shore, where waters are a mile and a half deep." "The Ready is halted." "First-an unmanned test-to see if the bathysphere performs as planned." "As the power winch lets out the steel cable, an additional rubber-coated electric line is deployed by hand." "This line will allow them to use a searchlight, and more importantly, to communicate with the mother ship." "In just forty minutes the steel ball dangles 2000 feet below the surface." "The simple test ends in disaster." "The vital electrical conduit has snaked itself around the top of the capsule no fewer than forty-five times." "Beebe fears that his adventure may be over, before it has even begun." "It looked as if we were to pay penalty at the very start for daring to attempt to delve into the forbidden depths." "Beebe has learned his first lesson in deep-ocean exploration." "Every attention must be paid to mechanical matters." "The ocean is not forgiving-the slightest miscalculation could kill." "It takes a full day to unravel the cable." "No damage is found." "Three days later, on June 6," "Beebe tries another unmanned test." "This time, the cables do not tangle." "But upon inspection," "Beebe and Barton discover a small pool of water in the sealed capsule." "All things considered, Beebe declares the test a success." "He'll risk his life-and Barton's- and attempt the decent." "Beebe and Barton outfit the capsule with oxygen tanks and purifying chemical trays:" "soda lime for clearing carbon monoxide, and calcium chloride for absorbing moisture." "Beebe hasn't forgotten his first lesson- he will concentrate solely on the mechanics of his mission- dive one is not for science, but survival." "At the moment Beebe has waited for and dreamed of- he finds himself at a loss for words." ""I looked around at the sea and sky, the boats and my friends, and not being able to think of any pithy saying which might echo down the ages," "I said nothing, crawled painfully over the steel bolts, fell inside and curled up on the cold, hard bottom of the sphere."" "On deck, John Teevan supervises the mission." "He has served William Beebe for half his life." "Now Beebe's life is in his hands." "Beebe and Barton are big men- both of them, six feet tall, crammed into a sphere less than five feet across." "Heavy hammers pound steel bolts tight, a deafening experience inside the sphere." "Gloria Hollister will communicate with Beebe by telephone- the first to record his observations, or to hear his final words in the event of a catastrophe." "The final bolt." "On deck, the team is tense, each person concentrating, hoping for the best, imagining the worst." "Nothing has been left to chance, yet no one has ever attempted anything like this before." "At one PM, on June 6, 1930, the bathysphere is swung over the side." "In less than a minute, they are sixty feet down, the range of Beebe's old copper helmet." "They are suspended by a thread of steel, with a mile and a half of ocean beneath them- and no hope of rescue if their equipment fails." "150 feet." "200, 250." "Barton closely monitors the oxygen supply." "Too little, and they will slowly suffocate." "Too much, and they can become disoriented." "At 600 feet, Beebe speaks from a place no living man has ever been." ""Only dead men have sunk below this."" "Beyond the tiny windows, the two ocean pioneers witness an eerie twilight." ""We were the first living men to look out at the strange illumination:" "an indefinable translucent blue."" "Then, at 800 feet, with all going well, Beebe suddenly calls off the descent." "His instincts tell him, stop." ""Some hunch-some mental warning which I have had at half a dozen critical times in my life, spelled bottom for this trip."" "At this depth, Beebe knows that the ocean pressure would kill them in a way much more terrifying than drowning." ""There was no possible chance of being drowned, for the first few drops would have shot through flesh and bone like steel bullets."" "He orders Teevan to haul them home." "Two strangers in a strange device have dived deeper than any living men in history." "Consumed by the operation of the sphere itself," "Beebe has paid little attention to the world of the deep" "but he has proven that humans can descend into the abyss and return alive." "His team greets him with congratulations, elation, and relief." "William Beebe and Otis Barton will descend again, deeper - not just for adventure, but for science." "Their journey has only begun." "The unlikely partnership of William Beebe and Otis Barton has created an entirely new field of science- manned exploration of the deep ocean." "They know they can get there- but what's down there?" "Now the real work of scientific observation begins." "On June 11, 1930, they are lowered again into the Bermuda chasm" "more than three thousand tons of water pressure assaults the steel hull, but again it holds firm- and offers Beebe and Barton a first look at the creatures of the ocean abyss." "Beyond the windows, the strange animals that had perished in the nets of Arcturus now move majestically in the deep darkness." ""When I came again to examine the deep-sea treasures in my nets," "I would feel as an astronomer might who looks through his telescope after having rocketed to Mars and back, or like a paleontologist who could suddenly annihilate time and see his fossils alive."" "The animals Beebe describes, such as shimmering jellyfish, appear fragile- yet they are superbly adapted to the pressure, the cold, and the darkness." "It is a scientific revelation in a realm of constant peril." "Each square inch of the quartz windows holds back 650 pounds of water" " stresses that no submarine or diving suit has ever withstood." "They reach a depth of 1426 feet- and come home alive." "On June 13, 1930, in a telegram to the NY Times, the scientist and the inventor announce to the world that they have joined the ranks of history's great explorers." "Armed with confidence in the bathysphere's safety," "Beebe permits John Tee-Van and Gloria Hollister to dive to 400 feet." "Hollister sets a new depth record for women." "In the weeks to come, the bathysphere is taken on repeated dives, testing its capabilities." "The impressionable Barton, in an act of generosity, grants William Beebe ownership of the bathysphere, on the condition that he be called back for future dives." "In October, the coming winter puts an end to field work off Bermuda." "The bathysphere is put in storage." "It is time for Beebe to return to the Bronx Zoo and write his reports." "But Beebe knows that writing reports is not the way to keep the public informed and the money flowing." "In newspaper interviews, magazine articles and a lecture tour," "William Beebe promotes oceanography in a popular and accessible way." "He likens his dives to visiting outer space-without leaving the Earth." "Beebe enlists an artist, Else Bostelmann, to illustrate the haunting images of the creatures seen from the bathysphere." "Bizarre marine animals that, at the time, no one but William Beebe has seen alive in the deep." "Beebe joins the ranks of the great explorers of his era, household names such as Charles Lindbergh and Richard Byrd, heroes of the skies." "Beebe believes his ocean exploration is of greater value." "The concrete intellectual returns from aviation are most superficial... but adventuring under sea is an unearthly experience, and we are actually entering a new world."" "In the press, it is 'Beebe and his Bathysphere.'" "The man who built it-and paid for it- Otis Barton-is rarely mentioned." "Barton is stung." "In Spring, 1931, despite the devastation of the Great Depression, the resourceful Beebe raises enough funding for a scaled-down year of ocean research off Bermuda." "He returns to methods perfected on Arcturus six years earlier- deep-ocean dragging with nets." "As before, specimens are retrieved- creatures Beebe has seen alive from the bathysphere." "Nonsuch Island hums with activity." "But the bathysphere remains in storage, while Beebe writes another book to further promote his ocean science." "The year passes into another." "Then, Beebe makes a decision that makes headlines." "He and Otis Barton will attempt to descend to a depth of half a mile- and his communication with Gloria Hollister will be broadcast live on NBC Radio and on affiliate stations around the world." "Beebe is determined that his bathysphere adventure not to go down in history as a stunt." "He must go back, and deeper, seeking a major discovery in the name of science- even if it means risking his own life." "September, 1932." "Storms lash Bermuda." "A bad omen for events to come." "Otis Barton decides to install a new window in the diving ball to permit better photography, despite Beebe's fears that any modification to the quartz ports would be dangerous." "The decrepit barge, Ready has been replaced by a tugboat called Freedom." "But the new mother-ship leaks and wallows under its heavy load, and on one occasion almost sinks." "Waiting for weather to clear, they make an unmanned test of the new design, sending it down to 3000 feet." "But the bathysphere is unusually heavy, straining at its fragile lifeline." "When the capsule surfaces, it is filled with an explosive cocktail of hyper-pressurized water and air." "Anyone in the bolt's path would have been decapitated." "Anyone inside would have been pulverized into a liquid." "It is a sober reminder of the brutal power of the deep." "For two weeks, Atlantic storms ground the world's first deep sea explorers." "Beebe and Barton remove the leaking window of the bathysphere and fit the hole with a heavy steel plug." "For the journalists Beebe has invited to witness his historic dive, there's nothing to report." "On September 22, Beebe decides to give the press their story." "He will risk his life, and Otis Barton's, on a perilous dive." "These are the worst conditions in which they have ever attempted a descent" "Again, Beebe and Barton endure the painful climb across the steel bolts, squeeze through the narrow hatchway, and tumble onto the capsule's hard steel floor." "Beebe has set a goal of half a mile- almost twice as deep as they have gone before." "He is willing to dive dangerously deep to give the press what he's promised- the discovery of new forms of life, broadcast live." "Beebe and Barton pass 1400 feet, shattering their previous record, and continue down." "At 1700 feet, they are enveloped in eternal darkness-a new milestone." "Beebe has reached a realm where no light has ever shone." ""I was beyond sunlight as far as the human eye could tell, and from here down, for two billion years there had been no day or night, no summer or winter, no passing of time until we came to record it."" "He is rewarded for the risk he has taken." "At 2200 feet, thousands of pinpoints of light appear out of the blackness." "Strange creatures, thriving in the black, cold ocean depths." "Beebe witnesses these amazing animals in a flood of bioluminescence." "The number of creatures illumined, and the strength and color of these lights- all these have been far beyond all my expectations." "He broadcasts his fantastic discovery to the radio audience." "The world listens to this first-hand account of life at 2200 feet below." "But on the surface, the Freedom pitches and rolls, threatening to sever the capsule's lifeline." "Beebe calls off the dive, short of his half-mile goal." "On the return to the surface," "Beebe announces the most extraordinary sight of all- a 6-foot-long predator with vicious, glowing fangs- he names it the "Untouchable bathysphere fish."" "Beebe's sighting remains, to this day, the one and only." "In a lifetime of well-publicized adventures, this is Beebe's finest hour." "He has broken his own depth record- described creatures never seen before- and broadcast the entire event to the world." "The achievement and William Beebe make front-page news- a triumph Beebe hopes will translate into dollars." "At the age of 55, Beebe's energy is inexhaustible, and his ambition unfettered." "He decides to make one more expedition to smash the half-mile barrier which has eluded him." "But the Great Depression has made private money scarce." "Beebe works for over a year, seeking funding." "Finally, the National Geographic Society agrees to finance a series of dives in summer, 1934." "Otis Barton has not been as fortunate." "A victim of hard times, he is scrambling to make a living for the first time in his life." "Barton launches a career as a movie producer, and spends 1933 filming an underwater adventure." "The film is a flop." "But William Beebe has not forgotten the man who has helped make him an international luminary." "In 1934, he remembers his pledge to include Barton on his bathysphere dives, and invites Barton to join him." "For four years," "Barton has slipped into the shadows as Beebe's star has risen." "Despite his grievances, Barton agrees to join Beebe once again." "John Tee-Van and Gloria Hollister also return for what is to be the bathysphere's most dangerous descent." "After countless hours at deep-ocean pressures, the capsule needs an costly overhaul." "The price tag includes new quartz windows, a new oxygen purifier, and improved communication lines." "On August 7, 1934, an unmanned test reaches 3,020 feet." "The refitted capsule performs perfectly." "Satisfied, Beebe and Barton squirm into the steel chamber." "While Beebe's personal goal is to break the half-mile barrier, he will continues to relay his observations, convinced that the deeper he goes the more he'll discover." "And Beebe delivers." "He announces his discovery of three more new creatures- and gives them fanciful names." "Pallid Sailfin" "Three-Starred Anglerfish" "Five Lined-Constellation Fish" "And once again, no one since has seen these fish." "Barton attempts to document the sights outside the sphere, but his movie film shows only faint, blurred images." "Only Beebe's descriptions endure." "The dive drops Beebe and Barton to 2,510 feet, shattering all old records, but still short of the half-mile goal." "Then, eight days later on August 15," "Beebe pushes the ball to its absolute limit." "It comes to a rest at a depth of 3,028 feet." "The spool of cable has nearly run out." "One more revolution could send the capsule in an unstoppable death plunge to the ocean floor." "At this depth, the bathysphere's steel and quartz withstands more than a thousand pounds per square inch of pressure." "Steel and quartz hold firm." "William Beebe and Otis Barton pause at a depth no explorer before them has ever reached, for a moment of contemplation." ""The only other place comparable to these marvelous nether regions, must surely be naked space itself, where the blackness of space must really be closely akin to the world of life as it appears to the eyes of an awed human being," "in the open ocean, one half mile down."" "Even after his record-breaking descent," "William Beebe remains obsessed with the deep ocean." "But by the mid-30s the Depression has claimed too many victims, and privately funded exploration fades into memory." "Beebe must abandon his Bermuda headquarters in 1937." "Beebe returns to jungle research for the Bronx Zoo, now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society." "He spends the last years of his life in Trinidad, and never loses the love for action that once made him a household name." "But his fame slips away as years pass, and Beebe dies quietly, far from the limelight, in 1962, aged 85." "Otis Barton leaps from one scheme to another." "In 1948, he returns to the ocean in an improved bathysphere- and breaks his own record by descending alone to 4,500 feet." "But the world takes little notice- Barton dies in 1992, aged 93, and five people attend his funeral." "Barton's record endures until 1960, when the US Navy submersible Trieste descends to 35,000 feet- more than six miles." "That record stands." "Today, most of Beebe's discoveries have been verified." "The risks he took opened up a new era of exploration." "His gift to us is a new way of looking at the ocean, that thrives today as the modern science of oceanography." "In a crude copper helmet- in a primitive steel ball" "William Beebe dared to challenge the ignorance of the ages, to search for life in a dark and hostile world." "His legacy is one of adventure and knowledge- a pioneer and a wanderer in the living sea." "A lonely outpost of coral and sand." "A thousand miles from anywhere." "Yet here, on a blue morning in June, 1942," "America and Japan fought for control of the Pacific and changed the history of the world." "It was one of the greatest Naval battles of all time, a turning point in the Second World War in the Pacific" "Midway." "Here in a few bloody hours, thousands of young men sacrificed their lives." "Now to the shadowy waters off Midway comes Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the Titanic." "Ballard's quest is to find the American and Japanese aircraft carriers that were sunk in the battle, including the U.S.S. Yorktown." "But the ships are lost more than three miles down unseen, untouched on the ocean floor" "the final resting place of many young men." "A story of martyrs and heroes, admirals and airmen... of secret codes and lucky hunches of lost chances and the painful cost of victory all in one monumental day." "Tragedy and Triumph." "The battle for Midway." "Midway." "It is hard to ignore the archeology of war in this place." "Nearly a lifetime after the clash at Midway, four former soldiers walk the island's white coral sands." "Two Americans, Bill Surgi and Harry Ferrier, and two Japanese, Haruo Yoshino and Yuji Akamatsu all veterans of the battle." "The last time the veterans were here, they came as enemies." "Now, as respectful comrades, they will explore the meaning of their ordeal." "I met the two Japanese gentlemen, aviators, and, so I've made my peace." "And I have no animosity toward them." "They were warriors, like we were, just doing their job." "Welcome aboard." "All in their 70s now, the survivors have traveled thousands of miles to join undersea explorer Robert Ballard in the search for the five aircraft carriers lost at Midway." "Ballard's quest, sponsored by National Geographic, is to find Bill Surgi's ship, the Yorktown, and Yuji and Haruo's carrier, the Kaga" "It will be the voyage of a lifetime for the vets." "May, 1942." "The United States and Japan are at war" "It is five months since the devastating sneak attack on the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii." "Now Japan is poised for total domination of East Asia and the Pacific." "Pearl Harbor." "In a dingy basement beneath command headquarters," "Navy code breakers have pulled off the greatest intelligence coup of the Pacific War." "Out of coded enemy radio transmissions they have teased out the secret plans for the next major Japanese attack." "A huge Japanese task force is preparing to strike a crippling blow against the already weakened U.S. Navy." "It will happen at Midway, as early as June 3rd-less than a month away." "Yet now the U.S. knows what's coming." "And the Americans will lie in wait, hoping to ambush the Japanese fleet." "Day one of the Ballard expedition." "To begin their exploration of the past the veterans travel with Ballard 180 miles from Midway to the place where Ballard thinks the Yorktown went down." "There is no X to mark this spot, just blue water and the occasional gooney bird." "But below the waves, Ballard believes he will discover history." "For here, young men came to fight and to die." "I mean, to be at the very spot, you know, this is where the battle took place." "This is like going to Gettysburg, this is like going to Bull Run, this is like going to Normandy." "This is where a great chapter in human history, tragic in many ways, was played out on the stage, and we're on the stage right now." "While Ballard studies the terrain, the veterans explore their own landscape of memory and loss." "This is what I looked like back then." "This was taken before the Pearl Harbor attack." "I think this is what saved my life." "This is the hat I was wearing at the time." "Very brave, very brave." "A little older, a little wiser." "Pearl Harbor, 1942." "Yorktown sailor Bill Surgi hears they are headed for a place called Midway." "The word Midway was a mystique, mystery, an awesome word to banter about." "We were not fully aware of what actually was going on there." "So all we knew was that we needed help at Midway." "Yorktown will rendezvous with her sister ships," "Hornet and Enterprise, at a point approximately 325 miles northeast of Midway." "Their mission: to ambush the Japanese." "At the same time, four Japanese carriers," "Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, under the command of Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, are steaming for Midway." "These are the same machines and men who bombed Pearl Harbor." "The Japanese know nothing of the American trap awaiting them." "Many of the American airmen and sailors headed toward Midway have never faced enemy fire including Yorktown radioman and gunner Lloyd Childers." "Childers was attached to a torpedo bomber squadron." "He can't forget an intelligence briefing he attended with other crews." "They said, if a 15-plane squadron of TBD's makes torpedo runs against a determined Japanese fleet if three of you get through to deliver torpedoes, you will have considered that you have accomplished your mission." "I immediately became alarmed, because the odds were not good." "Lloyd Childers will soon find out just how bad the odds really are." "It's the seventh day of the expedition" "Time to part the waves and take the first glimpse of the bottom three miles down." "Ballard's eyes will be the U.S. Navy's remotely operated robot explorer called ATV equipped with lights and video cameras" "Will Ballard finally, after years of planning and enormous effort, be able to find the downed Yorktown?" "For the veterans, the ATV is a time machine carrying them back to a distant world of fury and fire." "All stations, deploying the vehicle into the water now." "I remember walking up and down those decks and 56 years after the fact," "I'm gonna look at those decks again." "And it'll bring back memories." "The ATV has now traveled over two miles and almost five decades." "The ocean bottom is getting close." "Twelve thousand feet The depth Ballard found Titanic." "All stations..." "past the one-five-thousand feet." "Passing one-five thousand feet, aye." "Approaching 16,000, the depth Ballard found the battleship Bismarck." "Nearing the sea floor, deeper than Ballard has ever gone before." "Under the relentless pressure of the ocean depths, key equipment on the ATV has imploded." "It has collapsed into itself, reducing metal and glass to rubble." "The ATV is crippled." "Just how badly no one yet knows." "It's a disaster that may mean the end of the expedition." "June 3, 1942" "The white sands of Midway are now heavily defended by hundreds of young American servicemen" "and dozens of bombers, fighters, torpedo planes." "The battle is less than 24 hours away." "Among those waiting is a small six-plane torpedo bomber squadron." "Both the planes and their young crews are untested in combat, but the young pilots are eager to face the Japanese." "Seventeen-year-old Harry Ferrier served as a radioman and gunner." "You don't think about the fact that people do get killed, you know, as a teenager, which I really was." "You think you're immortal." "And we had what we thought were the best airplanes that the Navy had come up with and we would really give the Japanese the hell," "I guess you'd say, and come back." "And it didn't work that way." "Dawn, June 4th nearly six months to the day since Pearl Harbor." "Two hundred-forty miles from Midway," "Admiral Chuichi Nagumo readies his attack." "He is supremely confident of the final outcome and utterly unaware of the American aircraft carriers slowly closing in." "My spirits were, well, up to then, we had won ever battle we fought, so we thought we would win again." "Now is the moment of attack." "Six a.m." "With Japanese aircraft bearing down, the American planes on Midway scramble into the air." "With them is the torpedo bomber carrying Harry Ferrier," "Bert Earnest and the third member of their crew," "Jay Manning, the turret gunner." "They're going after the Japanese carriers." "Earnest, Ferrier and Manning clear the island just minutes before enemy planes hit Midway." "The Americans fight back with everything they've got." "Less than half an hour later, the first Japanese strike is over." "But if the enemy aircraft carriers are not stopped soon, Midway may fall." "Six-fifty a.m. June 4, 1942." "A hundred-and-sixty miles from a battle-torn Midway, the torpedo bomber carrying Ferrier," "Earnest and Manning head straight at the Japanese fleet." "As they near the carriers, the Japanese fighter attack becomes more intense." "And tragically effective." "But very shortly, Manning had stopped firing, and so I looked back over my shoulder to see what was going on, and he was just hanging down in his harness in the turret and obviously had been killed." "And then, really, the next thing I remember was waking up with my head hanging down and blood pouring off my head." "Their plane is shot up." "Their controls and compass out of commission." "Their comrade Jay Manning is dead." "But Ferrier and Earnest are still alive and now they have to find their way home." "I decided to climb up above the clouds and see if I could see anything, and I did." "And when I got up there," "I saw a great big plume of smoke over to the east." "...and realized that probably was Midway, which had been attacked." "They manage to land safely in a plane that is literally shot to pieces." "After getting patched up at a field hospital," "Harry Ferrier waits for the return of the other five planes in his squadron." "He waits in vain." "But it was afternoon, you know, early afternoon, and it became obvious that our airplane was the only one that had come back, that the other five did not, and we eventually just had to accept the fact that they" "all five were shot down." "It is day eight of the expedition." "Ballard's robot explorer, the ATV, is still crippled." "And the Navy doesn't know if they can get it up and fully running again." "They need more time, the one thing Ballard can't spare." "Fortunately, the sonar is still going strong." "Instead of just waiting," "Ballard leaves the phantom Yorktown behind to look for Japanese carriers at a site 170 miles away." "The Japanese veterans have not seen these waters in 56 years not since the death of their ship, the Kaga." "Yet here, time is erased." "My heart is racing in anticipation of seeing the ship." "I keep remembering the image of the sinking carrier." "I hope it is found soon." "After all the frustration and delay, the ATV makes it to the bottom of the sea." "But all too soon, Ballard realizes the bottom is barren" "no carrier, no planes just rocks and mud." "No excuses." "I just didn't find it." "Period." "Round one." "To Kaga." "I'll get to Yorktown." "I really want the Yorktown." "That's where I'm headed." "But one unspoken question is inescapable." "If the sonar was wrong about finding the Kaga, is it also wrong about the location of the Yorktown?" "Seven a.m. The waters off Midway." "Japanese commander, Admiral Nagumo, is still completely in the dark about the trap awaiting him." "Eight-twenty a.m." "Admiral Nagumo receives truly startling news." "His scout planes sight the one thing they never expected to see an American carrier." "Nagumo is shocked to discover he has a real fight on his hands." "Now he must decide on his next step." "Should he launch a limited strike immediately?" "Or regroup, refuel, and rearm all of his forces and then obliterate what he believes to be the one American carrier?" "He decides to wait." "It is a decision that will change the course of the entire war." "While Nagumo waits, the American pilots wing their way towards his carriers." "Yet very quickly, many of the American squadrons get separated from each other." "Most of the torpedo bombers find themselves on their own without fighter protection from the fast, lethal Japanese Zeros." "One after another, the young torpedo bomber crews attack just as they have been taught stead on low, straight at the target" "directly into murderous enemy fire." "And one after another, they are blown out of the sky." "The Enterprise torpedo squadron 18 out of 28 men killed." "The Yorktown's 21 out of 24." "And of the 30 from Hornet's torpedo squad, only one man makes it back." "Yet not a single torpedo makes a single successful strike against any of the Japanese carriers." "Despite all the sacrifice, the Americans are losing the battle." "America is facing defeat at Midway." "And the enemy commander, Admiral Nagumo, is set to launch a massive attack against the American carriers." "Nagumo's crews work feverishly to get nearly a hundred warplanes into the air." "Abandoning all caution, they leave explosives and gasoline strewn everywhere." "The decks are a disaster waiting to happen." "Less than a hundred miles away, 19,000 feet up, is the last American hope, the dive bombers." "But none of them can find the enemy." "The Japanese have taken a 90 degree turn northward to engage the U.S. ships." "Then Enterprise's dive bombing squadron plays a hunch and changes course." "And in their sights appear the four Japanese carriers" "Kaga, Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu." "And there is not a Japanese fighter anywhere to be seen." "The enemy fighters are still too busy defending their carriers against the last of the American torpedo planes to stop the dive bombers high above." "It's a sight Lt. Dick Best has been longing for." "I was amazed to see that a, the deck was a bright yellow, because our decks had been stained a north Pacific blue ever since the start of the war." "And in addition to the deck being a bright yellow, the big rising sun up forward of the elevator, it was glowing red, like a tremendous advertisement." "Here we are, we are the Japanese Navy." "He dives toward the rising sun." "And releases his bomb as does the rest of his group onto Japanese decks now crowded with torpedoes, bombs, gasoline, planes-and men." "She was a mass of flames from bow to stern, with tremendous eruptions coming up every four to five seconds as a bomb must've hit." "Japanese survivors float hour after hour in the water, in silence with the dead and dying as Kaga burns." "Most are rescued by other Japanese ships but not all." "We were fortunate to have been rescued so quickly." "But there were still men left swimming and they committed suicide." "In five short minutes Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu have been devastated scores of planes destroyed, many hundreds of young men killed." "Many of the Japanese airmen are caught in the sky above their burning ships with nowhere to land." "In just five minutes, the cream of the Japanese Navy is finished." "But the battle is far from over." "At first, I would like to read a letter to my friends here." "Ballard's search for the Japanese carriers has failed." "And the two Japanese veterans will soon leave the Laney Chouest." "But the voyage to Midway allows Haruo and Yuji the opportunity to bid their fallen comrades one last farewell and to remember all the young men who died in battle." "We believe that the innumerable spirits who sacrificed their lives for their country should be forever honored for their distinguished service." "We are honored to have fought alongside you in battle." "Veterans from both countries have overcome past animosities and have pledged a renewed peace." "Spirits, please rest in peace." "Yes, I was thinking, as Haruo and Yuji were paying homage to their shipmates, that I, too, lost 45 shipmates at this very spot." "As all the planes in my squadron, except the one I was in, were actually shot down here among the Japanese battle force, so this was a very solemn moment for me as well as for them." "Eleven a.m. on June 4th." "Admiral Nagumo regroups his surviving planes on the deck of Hiryu the only carrier to escape American bombs." "There is still a chance to emerge victorious." "The Japanese pilots take off, heading for the closest American carrier" "Yorktown." "The enemy dive bombers score three hits killing more than a dozen men." "But, unlike the Japanese carriers, there are no bombs, torpedoes or fuel on deck, waiting to explode." "For all the smoke and fire, Yorktown is still afloat." "Two hours later, as the Yorktown continues to patch herself up, a second wave of enemy planes target the carrier." "Yorktown's fighter pilots scramble eager to engage the enemy." "Down goes one Japanese torpedo bomber after another." "But still the enemy comes." "I look out there and here's this torpedo coming, and it looks like a brand new nickel just come shining through the water, right beneath us." "And I said, Oh, my God, this is it." "And it goes off." "One American carrier is down." "The Japanese carrier Hiryu must be stopped-fast." "When they find it, Lt. Dick Best is right there, once again." "And I did look back when I was far enough out to the west to turn, and she was aflame, and burning just the way the ones in the morning had been." "I felt myself to be the Lord of creation at the time, the sense of accomplishment, and fulfillment of revenge is so sweet that" "I don't think I ever felt anything as intensely again in all my life." "Caught in the inferno on the Hiryu is Taisuke Maruyama, one of the torpedo pilots who had just crippled the Yorktown." "The maintenance crews and emergency crews who had tried to extinguish the fire were injured by the explosion, and many lost their legs and hands." "The military doctor was operating on them on the deck, soaked in blood." "The troops were burnt black, dead bodies strewn across the deck." "Hiryu, Soryu, Akagi, Kaga." "By the end of the day, all four Japanese carriers have been destroyed." "Hundreds of young men dead, maimed, burned, or left to drown." "Twenty-four hours later, the injured Yorktown is still afloat and headed home escorted by the destroyer Hammann." "What nobody sees is the enemy submarine below the surface with two sitting ducks in her sights." "Japanese torpedoes split the Hammann in two, taking 81 men to the bottom." "And mortally wound Yorktown." "For nearly a day, the carrier lingers on the surface, refusing to die." "Yorktown Radioman Lloyd Childers is in sick bay, on a nearby ship, with serious wounds to both legs." "He watches his carrier go down." "This huge ship slowly sank below the water, the waves, until it disappeared and we watched it until it was completely gone." "It's very brutal business." "My other thoughts were that it's a terrible thing that so called civilized nations could do things like that to each other," "convincing me that we're not really civilized yet." "It is Day 19 of the expedition." "It has been hours since Robert Ballard sent a robot vehicle down nearly 17,000 feet to find the USS Yorktown." "And half a century since Bill Surgi has seen his carrier." "Ballard has only a left to find the Yorktown." "After six long hours, the ATV finally reaches bottom, over three miles deep." "All they see are rocks that have probably rested here undisturbed for a thousand years." "I wanna keep looking to the left." "Yet within a few moments of touching down, they see something something that shouldn't be there." "A smooth patch of ground clear of rock as though something had swept across the bottom." "Something unnatural, something man-made." "They follow the trail." "Bingo, bingo, bingo." "Suddenly a glint a shiny metallic glint catches the video eye." "Dead ahead, range 150 feet." "Keep it nice and high." "I want him to look down and away." "And now the sonar on the ATV itself is announcing something big and oddly beautiful dead ahead." "There it is." "Stop, stop, stop, stop." "Contact." "It's definitely Yorktown." "There's no question about that." "The Yorktown at last exactly where Ballard thought it would be." "Hold that, hold that still." "Try to hold that." "I'm lookin' up my ready room right now this under the bridge on the island, on the flight deck." "Too much, too much, all the people that did their jobs." "I can see them doin' them now." "Keep coming up." "Oh, Yorktown, you're beautiful." "Okay, now I want to pivot to the right to zero-nine-zero." "The Yorktown-1,100 miles from Hawaii, 3,000 from Japan, over 3 miles below the surface." "Her 19,000 tons sunk halfway into the mud; her bow crushed." "Yet Yorktown is still intact." "The bridge." "The flight deck." "The pilot house." "She is nearly untouched by time, her guns still pointing skyward, to fend off the final attack." "I walked across the deck and I still got it." "Thanks again for finding it." "My pleasure." "And on behalf of the crew, I'm glad to be here." "Me too." "That's the boat." "I got to see my ready room." "Maybe next time I'll get to see where I got all this banging at." "Well, we'll be back." "That's right." "It ain't gettin' away now" "Thank you." "How does it feel, Bill?" "I'm here, they're not." "So I'm representing the crew and I did my job." "June 4th, 1942." "America has won the battle for Midway and stopped Japan cold." "The Japanese Navy would never recover from its losses." "For the Japanese pilots, the defeat at Midway and the death of their comrades is just the first agony." "They will return home to find themselves kept in isolation, in silence." "They treated us like prisoners of war." "We were shut away from outside contact since they were afraid we might leak information." "You see the veterans who've come back, whether they're Japanese and Americans" "And we brought them here to this spot, and it spoke to them." "Every one of them cried." "They didn't laugh." "They didn't celebrate." "They all cried." "They're hurting." "And this is a half a century later." "So it's their story and what they're telling us is, don't do this." "This is not fun." "It's not wonderful." "Comrades in arms who sleep in darkness at the bottom of the ocean for 50 years after the end of the war, thank you for your sacrifice." "I've brought a tribute, flowers from Japan, chrysanthemums, which I've placed on your grave." "My heart is full!" "Thank you." "It's difficult, you think how many people gave up their lives that day and they call George Gay and they call eventually Bert and I, you know, you're heroes, but you know, I've said" "and I'll always go to my grave believing that the real heroes died that day." "They earned a victory." "In a century riddled with unrest," "World War Two remains the epic tale... an event of unparalleled impact." "Even now, we are uncovering new information." "about secret weapons... and villainous tactics," "about extraordinary heroism... and boundless shame;" "about a time when one life or one bullet, or one bomb separated infamy and glory... defeat and victory... tyranny and freedom... untold stories of World War II." "On the 16th of July, 1945... a bomb exploded in the American desert a very different kind of bomb." "The furious energy of the atom had been unleashed." "That power might have landed in the wrong hands, had a few brave men not waged a secret war against Germany's atomic program." "At the height of the Second World War," "Germany's Nazi Party marched toward global domination, led by its ambitious, remorseless leader." "Adolph Hitler had the will to conquer the world." "All he needed was the weapon." "And he had found the means to make one in the most unlikely place." "It was here, in the snow-packed mountains of Norway, that a handful of soldiers on skis fought to stop Hitler's dream of possessing the ultimate weapon." "Old men now, they remember how they risked their young lives for the cause of liberty." "They would stop at nothing in order to conquer the world." "So the feeling that they had to be stopped became very, very strong." "We were quite certain that if we are caught by Germans, we would all have been executed." "It would take three daring attempts before they succeeded." "April 9, 1940." "German warships penetrated Oslo Fjord." "The blitzkrieg had come to Norway." "Within two months, the besieged nation was forced to surrender." "Well, it took some time to realize it, actually." "But when Autumn 1940 came, and the darkness came in over Norway, you certainly realized that it was not the same Norway you had the year before" "To understand it, you need to have the experience of being occupied." "To live in an occupied country is the most distressing thing you can do." "A vast occupying army flooded the country." "The Nazis now controlled all aspects of Norwegian life." "No actually war between each Norwegian and each German." "We had to do the best out of it." "I think that was the common opinion." "Inside, of course, most Norwegians hated them." "They introduced Gestapo in Norway, when they understood that resistance was coming" "started arresting people, torturing people, killing people, et cetera et cetera." "And then we certainly understood what an occupation meant to people." "Hitler's grasp extended into every corner of the country." "In this remote Norwegian valley, the Germans seized a very special prize the Norsk Hydro factory." "Surrounded by mountains, the factory had been built on the face of a cliff overlooking a deep and impassable gorge." "For the Nazis, it was an ideal location for a wartime project difficult to bomb and easy to defend." "But, to the generals in Berlin, Norsk Hydro offered even more." "In 1940, it was the only hydroelectric plant in the world producing large amounts of an extremely rare substance:" "deuterium oxide, also known as heavy water." "As soon as they took control of the plant, production went into high gear." "When word reached Great Britain, a powerful sense of foreboding swept through the allies." "As the most likely target for a German A-bomb," "Britain faced the greatest peril." "Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?" "Winston Churchill's spirited defiance of the Nazis became a rallying point for resistance fighters from all over conquered Europe." "Young Norwegians eager for combat joined the army of exiles gathering in Britain." "There was no sacrifice that was too big to try to get the Germans out." "The British created a secret organization the Special Operations Executive to fan the fires of resistance." "You volunteered and you were trained by the British to go back to Norway and work behind the lines on sabotage instruction, reporting radio information, wireless operating, and that sort of thing." "A few young resistance fighters would return to Norway undercover, armed with a plan to destroy the heavy-water factory." "They were country boys and city kids, engineers and outdoorsmen, university students and career soldiers." "Shock troops in a clandestine war against Hitler's a-bomb, they would become legends in their homeland." "And some of them would even star in this 1948 movie chronicling their real-life exploits." "Scenes from this film give a revealing glimpse of the daring mission." "October, 18, 1942" "Four of the men returned home in dangerous night parachute jump." "Their mission:" "to guide a British explosives team to the heavy-water plant." "When we were leaving for the dropping zone, you felt that some of the people sending you didn't expect to see you once more, so we had to more or less cheer them up and say," "It's not that this easy to get rid of us." "We'll be back." "Just wait and see." "Our target is the heavy-water production." "That was all." "They said it's important and we have to destroy it." "I knew that the heavy water was important for the Germans' weapon production, but in which way I had no idea." "The commandos' first objective was to establish a secret landing field on the Hardangervidda, a huge plateau north of the factory." "Crossing that bleak expanse, the Norwegians took over an empty cabin and made radio contact with England." "The operation could begin." "For the first sortie, the British sent a force in gliders towed by bombers a plan that needed clear weather." "But over Norway, clouds, winds, and snow had cut visibility to near zero." "For the Norwegians on the ground... the flight had become a disaster waiting to happen." "I tried to get a connection with England and warn them that at that time it wasn't possible." "And then, suddenly," "I heard interference in my headphones and I knew they were not far away." "And shortly after, we also heard the engines on the aircraft, and it came dead on us, passed over us and disappeared." "After about half an hour, the next plane with a guide glider came and it came right to us correctly, turned, and went away." "The British troops never arrived at the rendezvous point." "We got a message from London that both gliders and one of the Halifaxes had crashed in the mountains." "That was the end of the Freshman operation." "It was a complete disaster." "The soldiers who survived the crash were rounded up and executed." "The Allies' secret war against the heavy-water factory was now exposed." "To avoid detection, the commandos withdrew deeper into the Hardangervidda." "For weeks, perhaps months, they would have to live off a land where little existed but snow and ice." "When this mission of the gliders failed, we had actually no supplies for further stay in the mountains." "So we were dependent upon reindeer, but at that moment, there were few or no reindeer at all in our area, because of the wind directions." "It was so very difficult to get the reindeers, but the day before Christmas, Jens, he shot a reindeer." "Jens learned that if you take the stomach of a reindeer, you get vitamins from the reindeer moss." "So we cut up the stomach and took out the reindeer moss, the contents, and mixed it with blood and everything, and made a nice porridge mixed with brain." "And we were eating it and it probably saved our lives." "So on Christmas Eve... we had a real fun party." "We chatted; we had a good time at Christmas Eve." "I remember well." "You know your comrades outside and inside." "You know what he is going to say before he opens his mouth." "They had endurance, they had the will to hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to hold on." "They would have to hold on through the darkest months of winter." "But each day the Nazis' supply of heavy water was growing, drop by precious drop." "London had to make a move." "A second Norwegian squad, specially trained in explosives, would drop onto the Hardangervidda and join their comrades in an assault on the heavy-water plant" "February, 16, 1943 under cover of night the six new men landed." "Now the commandos were ready to strike a blow against Hitler's A bomb if they could penetrate the factory's formidable and deadly defenses." "To the commandos, the heavy-water plant appeared impervious to attack." "To reach the factory, the saboteurs had to cross a deep, narrow gorge." "There was only one road in." "over a suspension bridge." "And the bridge was patrolled 24 hours a day by German soldiers." "Any direct assault would be doomed." "But the chasm itself, with its steep, icy wall, lay unguarded." "Someone said he thought it was rather impossible to cross that gorge." "But it was decided that one should go down in daylight and find out." "In daylight, I went down into the valley." "I climbed down the gorge, crossed the river, and started climbing up on the other side." "And then the same way back up to my friends up in the mountains... and told the fact that was possible to cross the gorge." "You felt that this may be serious, very serious for you, and you accepted that you might not come through." "We climbed down the river and up on the other side, and our plan was to get in position for the attack by 11:30, because at 12 o'clock at night, there was guards down at the suspension bridge." "We wanted to see the German guards being relived, coming up in the factory area, and enter the barracks, before we went inside." "We all thought we would be discovered when we forced the gate." "But nothing happened." "Two of us carried a full set of charges, in case one should be shot, there should always be a reserve." "The task for the demolition team:" "To attach explosives to the heavy-water cells, located in a basement room." "Meanwhile, their comrades on lookout waited." "Each passing moment increased the chance of discovery." "If we had been discovered," "I knew that during such circumstances you have to act." "Do I shoot?" "A shot would, of course, maybe spoil the whole operation." "Inside, they overpowered a Norwegian workman." "Holding him at gunpoint, the saboteurs placed their charges, pausing only to decide how much time they would need to escape before the blast." "Suddenly, they were interrupted by their captive." "He broke in and said, It's all right, you may blow the factory, that's all right." "But may I have my glasses?" "Because it's hopeless to get new glasses in Norway today." "And you would have thought that you probably said, Damn your glasses!" "We have no time for looking for glasses!" "But instead, you dropped what you were doing and you searched all around the room and you found you found the-the holster for his glasses and gave him and he said, thank you very much, and so we went on with taping the fuses." "So far, they had beaten the odds." "Now the commandos had only seconds to make their escape." "And after a few minutes one minute, maybe two minutes they were there, with us on the railway line." "And we ran the same way back as we had come in." "The road conditions and the snow condition were excellent... because on the railway, quite a lot of the snow had blown away on the other side, and that was frozen solid ground, and we didn't put a mark." "So everything was actually on our side" "With determination, skill, and daring, the saboteurs had dealt a crippling blow to their enemy without losing a man." "But heavy water had become a German priority, and within six months, the factory was back in operation." "The Allies had to assume the worst:" "Nazi scientists were close than ever to building a bomb." "Another attack on the factory was set in motion this time, from the air." "In a bold noonday raid, 176 American bombers hurled destruction at the plant." "The raid damaged factory buildings and killed civilians in a nearby shelter." "But the heavy water, secured in the basement, went untouched." "With production halted, the Germans decided to move the operation to the safety of the Fatherland, and inadvertently gave the commandos one last chance to destroy it forever." "We had got information from London that the Germans." "had planned to take down the remaining heavy water." "Team members secretly scouted the route." "The heavy water would be loaded onto railway cars and taken by train to Lake Tinnsjo." "Here, the cars would go aboard a passenger ferry for the two-hour trip across the lake." "A well-placed charge could sink the ferry, and with it all the heavy water" "But sinking a public ferry meant paying a terrible price." "Our conclusion was that the sinking of the ferry was about the only possible solution." "It would have to be civilian sabotage, which was naturally a very serious thing to deal with." "There was no doubt in our mind that there were going to be human lives taken, and furthermore, it could be anybody." "And Rjukan was a small town, and it was really almost like all family." "Fearing neighbors and friends might die, the Norwegians sent an urgent message to London." "The British reply was immediate and uncompromising." "It has been talked over and the conclusion is they heavy water has to be-to be destroyed." "Good luck and when you get such a message from London, you have to do it" "Not to be." "They were sad." "But everyone in my family was scared to what they hear." "I couldn't do anything about it." "The Germans never put any guards on the ferry." "They were watching their barrels on the railway." "But the ferryboat itself was not guarded at all." "At ten o'clock on a quiet Sunday morning, the ferry men cast off from the dock on schedule." "Forty-five minutes later, at the appointed spot, a blast tore through the bottom of the boat." "It was a very, very bad blow, and the ferry rapidly rose, and the cargo on the ferry-there were railway wagons, you see so they rushed down and tilted the ferry still more." "Within moments, the mortally damaged ferry had sunk beneath the surface, carrying with it innocent passengers and Nazi Germany's atomic ambitions." "And the heavy water being on board went down with the ship and it's still on the bottom of the Tinnsjo Lake." "Later, the Allies would learn that the Nazis were never close to an atomic breakthrough." "The U.S. won the A-bomb race." "Within months of the German defeat, America dropped the first atomic bomb." "But in the Allies hands, the bomb helped to win a war, not perpetuate one." "If Hitler had the bomb, he might have used it to devastate the world." "The Norwegian resistance fighters did their part to stop him." "Their mission was one of the greatest feats of sabotage in military history something that had to be done, at all costs, and was." "You have to fight for your freedom and for peace." "It's not something that you have every day." "You have to fight for it every day, to keep it." "It's like a glass bowl;" "it's very easy to break." "It's easy to lose." "Half a world away, on December 7, 1941" "American learned the cost of freedom, when Japan devastated Pearl Harbor." "That sneak attack included the stealth weapons of their day midget submarines" "They were sleek, deadly, and, until now, consigned to history." "The National Park Service and the U.S. Navy have searched for the wreck of a Japanese midget submarine." "An hour before the Japanese savaged Pearl Harbor, a U.S. destroyer sank the tiny vessel." "The encounter could have warned American forces that bombs and torpedoes were about to rain on Battleship Row." "But it did not." "Marine archeologist Dan Lenihan directed the hunt for the midget sub." "Jim Delgado was the project's historian" "Their collaboration grew out of earlier research below the surface of Pearl Harbor." "They searched for evidence of a bygone conflict a battle waged underwater by five midget submarines." "One sub played a special role." "It was particularly exciting about the midget sub that's outside the entrance" "It would have represented the first exchange of hostilities between the United States and Japan in World War II." "And, because, remember, that this sub was sunk an hour before the planes attacked Pearl Harbor." "An incredibly important, significant find if we could do it." "The search for the midget sub focused on a square mile of debris-laden bottom." "The area is a graveyard of war relics, like this old Navy plane." "A thousand feet down, in the darkness, everything begins to resemble a sub." "But what they're looking for is eighty feet long and six feet across." "It carried two torpedoes and was manned by an officer and a navigator." "They were going to come on in, sit, and wait." "And then, when the attack occurred, when the planes came in, when all hell broke loose in Pearl Harbor, they would surface, fire their torpedoes, and wreak as much havoc as they could, swing around Ford Island," "head back on out, and rendezvous with their mother subs to be taken back to Japan." "The mother ships moved into position off Diamond Head before midnight," "December 6, 1941." "They arrived ahead of the Imperial Navy task force." "Each mother ship had a midget sub strapped to its hull." "The larger craft would release the midgets before dawn and retrieve them after the attack." "But the tiny vessels would never return from the battle a clash of giants that had been brewing for years." "From Manchuria to French Indochina in less than a decade," "Japan had rolled up a long list of conquests across Asia." "Despite an Allied embargo on war materials, she was growing stronger." "By late 1941, the vast resources of Southeast Asia lay before the "Rising Sun"." "Their only protection:" "a scattering of British and Dutch outposts and the U.S. Pacific Fleet." "I think there was a general sense that war would break out." "I don't think anybody expected that it would take place here at Pearl Harbor." "Successfully surprising an island fortress four thousand miles away also seemed impossible to Japanese leaders." "But admiral Isoroku Yamamoto convinced them this daring raid was the only way to disarm the "sleeping giant"." "Japan had to smash American's Pacific Fleet, even if that meant attacking its home base in Oahu's natural harbor." "Japanese pilots trained hard through the fall of 1941." "So did the crews handpicked to pilot the midget subs, the fastest boats of their kind." "Soon they would have their chance for glory." "In Washington," "Japanese diplomats continued to seek peace through negotiation until the final hour." "Not even Japan's ambassador knew of the coming attack." "December 7, 1941." "As Oahu slept, the Japanese task force brought 350 attack planes into striking distance of Pearl Harbor just two hundred miles away." "In Washington, military intelligence teams had broken Japan's diplomatic code." "They knew an armada was somewhere in the Pacific." "But they did not know its destination." "Near diamond Head, dawn was approaching." "The Japanese mother subs surfaced to release the midget submarines." "But something went wrong." "At 6:30 a.m., a seaplane pilot and a freighter crew reported a strange sub approaching Pearl Harbor" "The captain of a nearby destroyer, the U.S.S. Ward, realized intruders were trying to penetrate the fleet's defenses." "His gunners opened fire." "The midget sub began sinking in a thousand feet of water." "Depth charges finished her off." "The Ward reported the sinking twice." "But before notifying Pacific Fleet commander Husband E. Kimmel, district headquarters waited thirty minutes." "The delay was all the attackers needed" "News of the sub might have prevented what happened next." "Well, the message was radioed in that they fired on and depth-charged this sub." "It didn't reach Admiral Kimmel." "It wasn't until just a few minutes before the attack commenced in earnest with the planes coming in, that the admiral was finally phoned and told, look, we got this message in from the commander of the Ward saying that he's fired upon a sub" "operating in the defensive zone." "Kimmel says, Why wasn't I told about this?" "He's putting his uniform on, he's heading out, and that moment the planes come screaming in overhead, the bombs start dropping." "At five minutes to eight, forty torpedo planes roared over Ford Island bearing the mark of the Rising Sun." "Accompanying them were fifty-one dive bombers, forty-nine high-level bombers, and forty-three fighters." "American sailors thought they were seeing a practice drill." "Bombs and bullets found them eating breakfast, ironing uniforms, or staring into the fatal sky." "Arizon..." "Oklahoma..." "California." "One by one, great ships sank." "The West Virginia alone took six torpedoes and countless bombs." "Pearl Harbor's air defense burned on the runways." "Only a handful of pilots managed to scramble into a sky thick with enemy planes." "The midget subs' moment had come." "But one had been sunk by the Ward." "A second was depth-charged outside the harbor." "Of the three that remained, two posed a threat to Battleship Row." "Between waves of attacking planes, Sub Three fired a torpedo and missed." "Moments later, it was rammed and depth-charged by a destroyer making for the open sea" "Sub and crew hit bottom." "Overhead, the Japanese continued their assault." "But now smoke and anti-aircraft fire obscured their targets." "The "sleeping giant" had awakened." "Ripped by a bomb that set off an ammunition magazine, battleship Arizona blazed toward her doom." "Survivors staggered into waters aflame with burning oil." "Japan's brilliant, relentless attack had killed more than 2,400." "Americans and crippled most of the U.S. battleships in the Pacific" "For the midget subs, though, the battle was not as glorious." "Two still roamed Hawaiian waters." "Number Four, which may have fired at Battleship Row, radioed news of Japan's victory to the fleet that evening." "Then she disappeared, never to be heard from again." "The subs may not have seen resounding success..." "But Japan needed heroes, so the propaganda machine reincarnated their crews as the nine young gods of Pearl Harbor" "This wartime Japanese feature told their story with luxurious exaggeration." "In truth, quarters were cramped, and reeked of battery fumes." "The midget subs helped create confusion at Pearl Harbor, but didn't affect the war's outcome." "And what of the last midget sub at Pearl Harbor?" "Commanded by ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, it suffered a fate worse than sinking." "On December 8, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for war," "Sakamaki's sub washed up on the far shore of Oahu, undone by a faulty gyroscope." "The submarine wouldn't function right." "So he drifted all the way around the island to the opposite end and then went ashore on the morning of December 8 at Bellows, where he and his crewman assigned to the sub tried to blow the ship up." "It didn't work." "They jumped into the water." "The crewman then drowned, but Sakamaki washed ashore and become the first washed ashore and became the first prisoner of war that the U.S. captured in the Pacific:" "P.O.W. Number One." "Sakamaki spent the war in prison." "His sub toured the U.S., helping to sell war bonds a souvenir of dark days." "At war's end, after throwing its all at U.S. forces," "Japan let slip a new weapon of terror." "For decades, the scars left by kamikaze attacks enforced a silence on both sides." "But the men who fought those battles will never forget them." "Nineteen forty-four." "Japan, its back to the wall, makes a final, fanatic effort to stave off defeat." "In an act incomprehensible to Americans the empire orders thousands of men to certain death." "Before an attack, pilots drink a toast of sake a warrior's welcome to the death that awaited." "They were kamikazes named for a typhoon that saved Japan from Mongol invaders." "Some were veteran pilots, many were idealistic students eager to die for their nation's glory." "Kamikazes inflicted awful punishment on their enemies." "More than three thousand fliers dove to their deaths." "They sank fifty-seven ships and damaged more than three hundred others" "Their attacks killed at least three thousand Americans and wounded more than six thousand." "The kamikazes were the deadliest weapon ever launched against the U.S. Navy so frighteningly effective that their existence was initially kept secret from the American public." "On April 16th, 1945, kamikazes knocked the U.S.S. Laffey out of the war." "The Laffey was rebuilt;" "she now is a museum ship in Charleston North Carolina." "Today, she's receiving visitors her skipper and four crew members from World War II." "The sight of their ship raises a tide of memories for these comrades-in-arms" "Rear Admiral F. Julian Becton, who died in 1995, was 81 when he gave this interview." "He commanded the Laffey during the invasions of Normandy and the Philippines." "Steaming toward Okinawa, he knew what perils lay ahead." "The kamikazes were the most effective weapon that the Japanese developed during the war." "And it was a desperate effort on their part to do it, but they were terribly they had a terrible effect on our ships out there" "Ensign James Townley would win a Silver Star for his valor aboard the Laffey." "My opinion of the kamikazes were that they were misguided people." "Then we learned more about them." "We found out that, yes, they were the "Sons of the Divine wind", or whatever they chose to call them." "We called them "One-Way Charlies"." "And we were really scared to death of them, because no matter what you did, unless you could shoot them out of the air, they were coming in." "Gunner's Mate Second Class Lawrence Delewski would earn a Bronze Star before his 21st, birthday." "Everybody has their own way of thinking and their own way of thinking, and their own ideas." "And their ways didn't suit us." "There was-I certainly didn't feel as complacent as I feel now, 45 years later." "At that point, I was ready to kill them all." "In Japan, another group of old comrades gathers for a reunion." "These men were once the elite of the Japanese Kamikaze Corps-the Thunder God" "They should be long dead, but they survived some because they flew fighter cover, others because seniority kept them out of combat to await American's invasion of the homeland." "Now largely forgotten, they once made up an awesome attack force." "Their weapon was the okha, which meant "exploding cherry blossom"." "But Americans gave it the code name baka, meaning "fool"." "The weapons were another type of kamikaze attack, a baka bomb captured on Okinawa." "It's a two-and-a-half-ton flying bomb, dropped from a mother plane and carrying a suicide pilot." "Three rocket propulsion units are set off on approaching the target, giving a maximum level speed of 535 miles per hour." "The baka's punch is an armor piercing 2,600lb." "Warhead." "It's the first weapon specially designed for the Kamikaze Flying Corps." "Reserve Lieutenant Hachiro Hosokawa was a senior member of an okha squadron" "There is a Japanese word, inujini "to die like a dog", meaning to die in vain." "It is a wasteful death without honor." "When I became a pilot, this situation was already so bad that fighting in an ordinary way was no use." "We were chosen as elite pilots." "Each of us received a headband and a dagger." "We thought it was a privilege granted only to the members of the Human torpedo Unit, the elite Okha Corps, and that we would die gloriously." "These were the Thunder Gods." "All had volunteered;" "all were ready to die." "Each year, they gather to pray for their fallen comrades." "Commander Kunihiro Iwaki was Vice Commander of the Corps." "The war situation was going so badly for Japan at that time that we realized that any semblance of normal military tactics could not possibly succeed." "And we had to do the unthinkable or the incomprehensible in terms of the military acts in last ditch attempt to primarily get the American aircraft carriers." "Given that situation, the men realized they had to become one with the bomb in that last, final struggle." "Lieutenant Morimasa Yunokawa commander on okha squadron." "The thought of my death crossed my mind only for a fraction of a second." "I was then thinking of only to serve." "No matter how you try to understand how things were then, now in this peace time, I don't think you can." "A kamikaze could send a ship to its grave but each flier only had one chance for success." "Pilots were supposed to aim for battleships and aircraft carriers, but destroyers and their radar gear also were targets." "Aboard the Laffey, nervous sailors repeated tales of picket ships breaking in half and sinking immediately." "The crew would always debate where is the safest place to be." "That was always the big talk." "Is it safer to be below, or is it safer to be on deck, or in the bridge, or wherever." "They all had their own theories about where was the safest place." "Of course, there was no safe place." "In April 1945, the noose was tightening on Japan." "As the Battle of Okinawa began, destroyers patrolled fifty miles closer to Japan tempting kamikazes taking off from the mainland." "Suicide attackers had sunk several destroyers on this battle station now it was the Laffey's turn to stand watch." "On April 16th, the ship began its third day on the perimeter." "The mood aboard was tense." "At 8:27 a.m., the Laffey's number came up." "Well, the first ones were just they sorta circled around out pretty far, maybe, oh eight, ten thousand yards." "And then all of a sudden, it's like some sort of a signal, they started coming in." "And first they just came in one or two at a time, and you just couldn't take them all under fire." "So that's when we started getting hit." "For eighty minutes, the Laffey's crew fought off the heaviest kamikaze attack ever on a single ship." "Our closest call was a plane coming in on the starboard beam, and it was, when I first saw it, was low on the water, about ten thousand yards out." "I figured it was about eight seconds away from certain death," "Unless our gunners got it." "And our Mount 52, which was just forward of the bridge, was firing at it, and firing fast." "I noticed that the bursts were just off just missing him." "So I just moved it, and the next one went right into his hit him right in the nose, and just blew him up." "And that one is the one that would have gotten us all." "And it just literally disintegrated, and everybody heaved a big sigh of relief." "And just after that, then there came one in out of the sky on the port side, and one came in low on the water on the port quarter, and we were at it all over again." "On the morning of April 16th, we had a suicide plane hit us right about here." "It hit with enough impact so that this gun was blown up, canted upward at more than a 45 degree angle." "The motor of that plane skidded along the inside of this left hand gun and wound up at the hatchway in the back of the gun on this side." "And when he hit over there, I was blown up the deck about fifteen feet." "When I regained consciousness, that's where I was." "Ripped from stem to stern by the attacks of Jap suicide pilots at Okinawa, the destroyer U.S.S. Laffey comes home the Laffey was struck by everything in the Jap book." "In the savage attempt to finish her off, 22 suicide pilots roared over her." "Seven bomb-loaded planes crashed on her decks." "the final score was:" "nine enemy planes shot down by the Laffey, but 32 of her brave men were dead or missing, and 60 were wounded." "In the worlds of her skipper, Commander Becton, she was truly "the ship that would not die"." "Flying conventional aircraft, kamikaze pilots caused terrible damage but the okha Corps never really got a chance to affect the war's outcome." "The bombers that carried the okhas were slow, and American fighter pilots shot down most of them before they could release their deadly cargo." "By war's end, Hosokawa was his unit's only surviving officer." "He found the transition to peacetime troubling." "All of a sudden, the war was over, and I had the feeling of someone who had been in the eye of a typhoon." "And suddenly the typhoon is gone, the weather is clear and beautiful." "No one, nothing is left but myself, and the feeling is, why?" "It's a very strange feeling that I cannot understand why the typhoon spared me." "They were doing what they felt was right, just as we were doing what we felt was right." "It had to be." "How else could you put your life on the line for something you didn't believe in?" "1914." "The Panama Canal is completed." "The Atlantic and the Pacific are joined." "The most ambitious construction project since the great pyramids of Egypt." "The work has spanned nearly half a century, and claimed the lives of 25 thousand men and women." "Now it is finished and the world is suddenly smaller." "But behind this epic tale, there is another story of two unsung heroes." "One is an engineer from the Rockies with the vision to move mountains." "The other, a soft-spoken Alabama physician whose enemies are ignorance, disease and death." "Together, they take on a wilderness that had defeated the best engineers in the world." "Without either one, the Panama Canal could not be built." "And yet, one of these visionaries will suddenly and mysteriously walk away before the canal is finished." "And take the secret of his departure to his grave." "The Republic of Panama, Central America." "A barricade between two oceans." "With a blanket of jungle." "And a spine of mountains." "Today, 14,000 ships sail through these peaks and forests each year." "Their miracle highway is the Panama Canal." "50 miles long." "One of the wonders of the modern world." "A miracle that, on a rain-soaked day in July, 1905, no one in Panama would have believed possible." "At the port of Colon, a new American field boss has arrived to take control of a dying dream." "At age 52, John Stevens has built more miles of railroad than any other engineer in the world." "The Rocky Mountains have been his home." "And spanning them his greatest challenge... until now." "In Panama, yellow fever has killed hundreds of workers, most of them from the West Indies, and terrified the rest." "The men call it The Great Scare." "But his orders come directly from the President of the United States." "In his first address to Congress" "Roosevelt vows to chop the Isthmus of Panama in half and complete The Big Ditch." ""We must build the Isthmian Canal..." "No single great material work which remains to be undertaken on this continent is of such consequence to the American people."" "Roosevelt's motives are patriotic, economic and military." "A canal would trim nearly a month from the travel time between New York and San Francisco." "Making the shortest path between the oceans a superhighway of American commerce and the lifeline of the nation's burgeoning two-ocean Navy." "Roosevelt inspires thousands of young American laborers to set off for Panama." "But they disembark in a steaming hell." "Soaring heat... punishing rains... ancient jungles." "Temperatures top 130° and it can rain daily for eight months." "In the unbroken forests, lethal predators await the innocent arrivals." "But the most mortal dangers are too small to see" "Confused, chaotic, and deadly." "Teddy Roosevelt's Big Ditch Project is a quagmire sucking up millions of dollars, and hundreds of lives." "To slice through the bureaucratic nightmare," "Roosevelt authorizes John Stevens to ignore any orders that do not come directly from the White House." "Stevens agrees." "And he advises the much younger president to keep his promise." "I'm to have a free hand." "I'm not to be hampered or handicapped by anyone high or low." "And I'm to stay on the Isthmus only until success is assured." "It is no accident that Stevens has been recruited." "For the Canal to succeed, it must find a way through the mountains of the Continental Divide, the backbone connecting North and South America." "Roosevelt hopes America's greatest railway man can save his Canal - and ensure his political future." "Stevens is a railroad man, not a Washington insider." "Day after day he tramps through the construction zone, focused on every detail of the job." "His cigars are so enormous that the men call him "The Big Smoke."" "But they respect him immediately." "Finally, they have a boss who will listen." ""Mr. Stevens did not talk much but asked questions and could that man ask questions!" "He found out everything I knew." "He turned me inside out and shook out the last drop of information."" "Frank Maltby, Division Head" "After decades of back-breaking labor, workers have slashed a route through the jungle that the canal is to follow." "By 1905, excavation is concentrated in a mountainous area of the Continental Divide." "Stevens is appalled at what he finds." "Trains lie rusting off their tracks." "Steam shovels lay idle." "Workers have no blueprints, no guidance, no hope." ""I believe I faced about as discouraging a proposition as was ever presented to a construction engineer." "I found no organization..." "no answerable heads..." "Nobody was working but the ants and the typists."" "In Panama, it has been this way for more than 30 years." "For the Americans now;" "for the French in the 1880s." "Having succeeded at linking Europe and the Orient by building the great Suez canal in Egypt, the French try to repeat their success in Central America." "They believe that slender Panama should be an easy target." "It is a fatal miscalculation." "Disease, accidents, and exhaustion take the lives of 22,000 laborers." "One man must succeed where the world's best have failed." "Workers tell The Big Smoke that their greatest worry is the treacherous Culebra Cut, the mountain pass where the French lost the most men." "At Culebra, they must dig out a man-made Grand Canyon." "A twisting, nine mile, water-filled chasm as deep as a 25 story building." "Like the French, the Americans don't know what to do with the staggering amount of dirt that is being dug out of Culebra." "It is simply dumped wherever space can be found." "Creating unstable mountains of debris that crumble in the continual rains." "At Culebra, the Spanish word for snake," "John Stevens, the great American engineer is stymied." "Here, the French finally surrendered." "Here, John Stevens must find a way through." "Topography is only half the problem." "In the work camps, where three quarters of the work force are impoverished West Indians, the human toll is appalling." "Even Roosevelt's eager American volunteers, in their segregated barracks, are barely surviving on rations of crackers and sardines." "Crammed into hovels with no toilets or running water." "Tormented by dysentery, parasites and fear of yellow fever" " The Great Scare." "Desperate to defeat The Great Scare - to restore the spirits of his frightened workers " "Stevens visits Dr. William Gorgas, chief medical officer of the canal." "In the yellow fever ward of the Ancon hospital," "Dr. Gorgas introduces the victims of this horrible plague." "Like Stevens, Gorgas has been hand-picked by the President." "At 49 years-old, he is a light-hearted Southerner plunged into a nightmare of tropical sickness." "In Cuba, newly freed from Spanish rule by Roosevelt and his Rough Riders," "Gorgas has succeeded in virtually eliminating yellow fever." "Panama has proved to be a far more difficult assignment." ""When the United States took possession in 1904 the Isthmus was generally looked on as ...the most unhealthy spot in the world" "Probably it would not be extreme to say that there is no other place that has as bad a reputation."" "He has been in Panama for more than 13 months when John Stevens joins him." "For Dr. William Crawford Gorgas, it has been a year of anguish." "At Ancon, he relates the toll - 47 men dead of yellow fever in the past few months." "Hundreds of other lives claimed by malaria, pneumonia, chronic dysentery, and, even, Bubonic plague." "John Stevens knows that his canal cannot be built without human labor." "Stevens has to act quickly." "He has come to build a canal but must fix a disaster." "In Panama less than a week, he knows what he must do." "It is a decision that will shock everyone." "With undiminished energy despite the heat and rain," "John Stevens spends seven grueling days inspecting every inch of the biggest excavation in human history." "The men expect Stevens to order them to speed up their work on the President's Big Ditch." "Instead, he commands them to lay down their tools." "Hundreds of workers and technicians are shipped home to America." "John Stevens tells them that the Panama Canal is unfit for further labor." "In Washington, the new President waits anxiously for progress reports from his new chief engineer." "But the news from Panama is stunning." "The project has been shut down!" ""Regardless of the clamor of criticism... as long as I am in charge of the work... and I am confident that if this policy is adhered to, the future will show its absolute wisdom."" "Stevens understands that the canal's fatal problem is not the mountains, but the men." "Disease and fear sap their souls before they raise a shovel." "Stevens turns to Dr. William Gorgas for help." "Like the French before them, the Americans live in morbid terror of catching the disease they call Yellow Eyes, Yellow Jack, or The Great Scare." "A horrifying disease." "Delirium and death can follow within eight hours of infection." "Yellow fever patients first complain of crippling muscle pain." "As the aches intensify, body temperature rises steeply." "The skin and eyes turn yellow, thirst becomes unquenchable" "and patients lose consciousness." "Spasms of black vomit signal the final crisis." "Fewer than 50 percent of patients survive." "Gorgas believes in a new theory that explains the cause of yellow fever - mosquitoes." "In 1901, scientists have discovered that the Stegomyia mosquito carries the yellow fever virus from person to person." "In Panama, only Gorgas understands the mosquito's deadly secret." "Dr. Gorgas finds that yellow fever mosquitoes live in towns, not jungles." "To destroy them, he will need to fumigate every puddle and rain barrel on the Isthmus." "He envisions the largest, most costly public sanitation campaign the world has ever seen." "It is not a vision shared by the canal bureaucracy." "For eighteen months, officials scoff at the mosquito theory and turn down all of Dr. Gorgas's requests for funds and supplies." "But John Stevens listens." "Only a healthy work force can rescue Teddy Roosevelt's dream." "He will withdraw his men from the mountains, and send them to war against the mosquito." "But Stevens does not ignore the other war he faces." "The battle against Panama's impassable geography." "Somehow, he must find a route beyond Culebra." "Through the jagged jungles to the sea." "He studies the French plans and realizes that the millions of tons of dirt and rock must be not only excavated, but removed entirely." "Simply piling the spoil at the side of the cut is an invitation to landslides and disaster." ""Efficient transportation is nearly always the key to success in construction." "If dirt is to fly, there must be a smooth and uninterrupted movement of trains."" "Stevens conceives a radical new plan for disposing of the dirt." "He draws on his experience with railways in the Rockies." "Instead of hauling men, in Panama, the trains will be used to cart the dirt away." "But to do it, the entire rail system must be revamped to handle such a heavy load - exactly the kind of thing Stevens does best." ""There is no element of mystery involved." "The most important stage in any great undertaking is the preparatory stage." "The digging is the least thing of all."" "While Stevens attacks the Continental Divide," "Dr. Gorgas sends out his own battalions." "Fumigation brigades burn sulfur, clean up sewage, and seal windows." ""It would be impossible to fumigate more extensively than we did... in 1905." "We had about 400 men engaged in this work, and they went over the whole town three times, fumigating every house in the town, besides fumigating every block each time a case of yellow fever occurred in that block."" "Screens are installed and water barrels are covered." "Ditches where mosquitoes breed are drained." "Quarantined clinics treat 900 patients a day and keep them in mandatory isolation." "Stylish, sleepless and impervious to the heat," "Gorgas works around the clock." "He stretches Roosevelt's promise of an unlimited budget to the breaking point, importing 120 tons of insect powder," "America's entire output for a year." "He orders $90,000 dollars worth of copper screening in a single shipment." "Nearly double his previous yearly budget." "It is the largest and most expensive - war ever waged against tropical disease." "Meanwhile, John Stevens fights his own battle." "He dismisses the existing rail line as" ""two streaks of rust and a right of way."" "Using his legendary status as a drawing card," "Stevens lures the best railroad men in America to the Isthmus." "Within six months of his arrival, he triples the work force to 24,000." "Stevens constructs the most durable railway in history." "Double-sided tracks of the heaviest rails on earth allow the world's heaviest freight cars to travel in both directions," "24 hours a day." "Track-shifting machinery moves huge sections of rail line faster and easier." "A telegraph system, new bridges and massive locomotive sheds take shape." "Stevens thinks big, and buys big." "He has decided that the French suffered because their machinery was too small." "He will not repeat their mistake." "Every weapon in his arsenal is enormous." "His coal-burning steam shovels weigh 45 tons each." "Mechanical dinosaurs." "Three times larger than anything used by the Parisians." ""Now I would like that [French] plant to a modern one as baby carriages to automobiles." "This is no reflection of the French, but I cannot conceive how they did the work they did with the plant they had."" "But Stevens has learned another lesson on the railroads." "That morale is more valuable than machines." "And the best way to restore morale is to keep workers clean and dry." "There are three diseases in Panama." "They are yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet;" "and the greatest of these is cold feet." "The labor camps built during the French regime have tumbled into misery." "Unpaved streets are ankle-deep in mud." "Waste is emptied onto passerby from second story windows." "Stevens wades in like a Wild West sheriff." "Closing brothels, demolishing decrepit barracks, building a new city of paved streets and sanitary dwellings." "The Canal line begins to look like a continuous city under construction from one end of the zone to the other." "As 1906 begins, five months after being in Panama, he feels he has made Panama livable." "He is ready to begin digging at Culebra again." "A few months later," "Dr. William Gorgas declares victory over The Great Scare." ""Take a good look at this man, boys." "For it's the last case of yellow fever you will ever see." "There will never be any more deaths from this cause in Panama."" "Panama is busy again - healthy... and fearless." "Along the entire length of the Canal corridor, the racket of hammers and saws and the roar of engines can be heard." "President Roosevelt's dream of splitting a continent is being brought to life again." "As a new railway is pushed through the jungles of Panama," "John Stevens rarely rests." "It is the summer of 1906, Stevens drives himself to exhaustion- and expects his men to do the same." ""I gauge everybody by myself." "I work from 14 to 18 hours." "You may make mistakes but there is only one mistake you can make that will be fatal with me, and that is to do nothing."" "Stevens believes his workers are safe from the Great Scare." "But yellow fever has been relatively easy to eradicate." "Now a far more formidable enemy must be confronted... malaria." ""If we can control malaria," "I feel very little anxiety about other diseases." "If we do not control malaria our mortality is going to be heavy."" "The Anopheles mosquito that transmits malaria is not the same insect that carries yellow fever." "It is an entirely different species and far more difficult to control." "She lives longer, flies further, and thrives in the stagnant waters of the Panamanian forests." "Right where John Stevens's new railway is being built." "The latest arrivals from North America and the West Indies are in gravest danger from being bitten." "Most Panamanians, as Gorgas knows, develop a natural immunity to malaria in childhood." "But nearly every new comer-including Dr. Gorgas and his entire medical staff- become infected within months- enduring recurring episodes of fever, chills, depression, and intense pain." "Gorgas warns Stevens that the new settlements he is building along his railway are placing thousands of American workers at risk." ""I suppose it is no exaggeration to say that any man who spends a night in one of these villages will contract malaria."" "John Stevens knows the danger of malaria." "But also knows that work must continue if the canal is to be built." "All along the line, the pace of construction intensifies." "Laborers from North America, Europe, the Orient and the West Indies arrive." "Many bring their families, building a new life in a new country." "Feeding the masses is an enormous job." "Bakeries turn out 40,000 loaves of bread a day." "Stevens builds laundries, and recreation halls for the men and their families." "An amazing ice house brings the loudest cheers." "The very idea of ice-cream in the jungle delights the crews." "Music fills the air." "They begin to call Culebra "Stevens City."" "But the deadly plague of malaria is never far away." "Dr. Gorgas and his fumigation brigades keep ahead of the track gangs." "Cleansing the new villages." "Pushing deep into the wilderness." "They drain swamps and spray oil on cesspools to prevent eggs from hatching." "Stagnant water is routinely tested for the presence of larvae." "A modern running-water system as good as in an American city is installed and acres of brush are burned." "Daily doses of quinine- made from the bark of a tropical tree - are part of each man's diet." "They call the bitter-tasting drink a "Panama cocktail."" "As Dr. Gorgas battles the mosquito, John Stevens battles the mountain." "This is the ultimate roadblock- the Continental Divide." "Stevens calculates that he must dig a channel nine miles long and 272 feet deep through solid volcanic rock." "It will require that man and machines move enough dirt to build the Great Pyramids of Cheops 63 times." "John Stevens has been given command of the grandest construction project in four thousand years." ""Even with the finances of the most powerful nation on earth, we are contending with Nature's forces." "When we speak of a hundred million yards of a single cut not to exceed nine miles in length, we are facing a proposition greater than was ever undertaken in the engineering history of the world."" "Making a sea-level canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific means cutting deep into the mountain range." "The French spent nine years trying, and failed." "Now Stevens wonders how he will conquer Culebra." "The problem is water." "The tropical rainy season arrives in April." "Massive flooding, daily down pours and the constant risk of deadly landslides." "Stevens has never faced anything like this in the Rocky Mountains." "He realizes that to build a sea-level canal here will be a deadly undertaking that could take twice as long as anticipated." "And there is another enemy." "When the rain comes, the placid Chagres River swells with anger, rising 20 feet in just one day." "The floods will inundate any canal Stevens tries to dig through it." "Even if he moves the mountains, he cannot stop the rains." ""The one great problem in the construction of [the] canal is the control of the Chagres River." "That overshadows everything else."" "Stevens now realizes that a sea-level canal is not possible." "The mountain is too big." "To dig it all the way down to sea-level and transport it away is beyond their current technological capabilities." "There is, however, another way, one that will use the geography of Panama rather than conquer it." "It is a plan that will change the course of history." "But first he needs to convince the President." "To sell his revolutionary new plan to the President of the United States," "John Stevens must sail to Washington." "For a man who is chronically sea-sick, the voyage is as forbidding as the destination." "At the White House, Stevens unveils his amazing new blueprint." "He intends to lift the world's largest ships up one side of the Continental Divide, then down the other." "He will dam the Chagres River to create a huge artificial lake." "And build a series of mammoth locks to conquer the steep spine of Panama." "In essence, the mountain won't be cut down to sea-level." "The ships will be floated up to the mountain and sailed across a bridge of water." "It is an audacious plan." "A clear statement that Stevens believes that the French struggled for nine years and lost the lives of 16,000 men to a doomed dream." "But in 1906 no-one knows if Stevens's plan will work either." "Theodore Roosevelt has promised Stevens his unconditional support." "Now he proves it." "In February of 1906, Roosevelt signs a Presidential sanction authorizing the construction of Stevens' new high-lake lock plan." "Fifteen months after taking charge of Panama," "Stevens is finally ready to build the President his dream." "Roosevelt must convince Americans that John Stevens and William Gorgas can conquer nature and geography." "Convince skeptics that a canal can be built." "To prove his faith, the President decides to stage one of the 20th century's first media events." "He and the First Lady will visit the Big Ditch themselves." "It is a decision that captivates the nation." "No American president has ever visited foreign soil while in office." "To grasp first-hand the difficulties of the project," "Roosevelt insists on being in Panama during the rainy season." "On the second day of his visit, three inches of rain fall in two hours." "One inch falling in 15 minutes." "It is the worst downpour in Panama in fifteen years." "With photographers never far away, the young President strolls through construction camps, dines in a mess hall with the men and shares meals with John Stevens." "He visits the Culebra Cut, and delivers stirring prep talks in the jungle, telling workers that they are soldiers fighting a glorious war for America's destiny." "The laborers are impressed and honored." "Their applause rivals the thunder in the tropical skies." ""You, here, who do your work well in bringing to completion this great enterprise, will stand exactly as the soldiers of a few, and only a few, of the most famous armies of all the nations stand in history."" "With his signature showmanship, the President, in his famous white suit and Panama hat, leaps aboard one of the mighty 95- ton Bucyrus shovels." "The men cheer this icon of American know-how, a reminder that, for Americans, there is no obstacle too formidable." "But another war is being won, far from the spotlight." "On the second day of his tour, Roosevelt quietly slips away from the cameras and the secret service to pay Dr. Gorgas an unannounced visit." "The two men walk through an almost deserted ward." "It is a quiet moment of proud victory." "Stunning evidence that the Alabama doctor has brought health and sanitation to deadly Panama." "The Great Scare is over." "Roosevelt reciprocates with the public praise Gorgas has hungered for since he first arrived in Panama." "When Roosevelt praises the miracle in Panama and cites Stevens and Gorgas by name, they become celebrities across America." ""They are doing something which will redound immeasurable to the credit of America, which will benefit all the world, and which will last for ages to come." "Under Mr. Stevens and Dr. Gorgas this work has started with every omen of good fortune."" "While the President boasts and bellows, the mountains of Panama remain unconquered." "Stevens has devised an ambitious plan, but it remains no more than a blueprint." "To make the plan a reality," "Stevens will begin with the damming of the Chagres River, creating the largest man-made lake in the world." "Dozens of villages must be evacuated, their residents relocated to higher ground." "A new city, called Gatun, must be built from scratch." "Surveying parties outline the contours of a body of water that will cover 164 square miles." "The entire region must be clear-cut by hand." "This job alone will take almost five years to complete." "And with this new plan will come massive concrete and electrical work- unlike anything the world has ever seen." "Things that John Stevens has little experience working with." "Such a massive construction project will also invite bureaucratic red-tape, and increased political interference from Washington." "The very things that John Stevens has fought against all his life." "Meanwhile dynamite crews risk their lives and begin blasting into Culebra to loosen the mountain from its ancient domain." "Stevens continues his daily routine of surveying the work in Culebra for himself." "96 million cubic yards of dirt will be moved by train, along hundreds of miles of new track." "Enough dirt to fill enough hopper cars to circle the globe four times." "The work force healthy and excavation well under way," "Gorgas and Stevens have finally set in motion a plan to bring down the mountain." "It is a plan that will prove Stevens right - and finally get the Canal built." "But there is one more surprise." "One of these men will walk away." "Less than three months after President Roosevelt's confidence-boosting visit," "John Stevens quits the project and leaves Panama." "It is a mysterious gesture." "He offers no reason to his workers, to Dr. Gorgas, or his own family." "Not even the President." "Theodore Roosevelt is deeply angered." "Publicly, he conceals his anger, telling friends that Stevens is unable to withstand the punishing Panamanian climate - that he has become ill and sleepless." "But privately the president feels betrayed." "Others believe that the solitary mountain man could not endure the massive bureaucracy of the canal commission or the contract system that was forced upon him." "It is a secret he takes to his grave." ""The reasons for the resignation were purely personal." "I have never declared these reasons and probably never will, as they are private."" "Nearly a century later, no one knows why the greatest civil engineer of his era abandoned the most important project of his lifetime." "Suddenly and without warning." "Perhaps he sensed that the hardest work was already behind him." "That history had anointed him to plan the canal, then move on while others built it." "In eighteen months, John Stevens succeeded where others had labored in vain for generations." "He provided decent housing and food for his loyal workers." "And pushed through a jungle railroad network to move huge quantities of earth." "Perhaps most important of all, he cast the weight of his prestige behind Dr. Gorgas." "Understanding that fear, not mountains, blocked the path between the seas." "In 1914, seven years after Stevens's departure," "Dr. Gorgas silently paddles a small wooden canoe through the freshly-cut canal." "He is the first to travel voyage through the Canal." "The official opening of the canal won't happen for three more months." "All around him is evidence of John Stevens' vision." "A magnificent bridge of water that lifts ships out of the ocean and sails them smoothly across the Isthmus of Panama." "After 30 years and the loss of thousands of lives, the dream of Columbus, has been achieved." "The union of the oceans." "And the shrinking of the world." "It has taken seven years to complete the Canal." "The President asks the Army to finish the job." "And though it would be wider and deeper, it would resemble almost perfectly the lock system that John Stevens had convinced" "Teddy Roosevelt to build across the Isthmus." "And it is a spectacular vision." "The locks at both ends are the largest in the world." "Over 80 feet high, they are five blocks long and stand as tall as a six story building." "Monstrous T-shaped cantilever cranes that can be seen from miles away float plates of steel through the air." "More concrete- four and a half million barrels- than has ever been used in history is poured into the locks." "Six million rivets are needed to build the lock gates." "Gatun Lake, at 164 square miles, would be the largest man-made lake in the world." "And Gatun dam, made from the spoil of the Culebra Cut, is the largest in the world to be made of earth." "It is a mile and a half long and half a mile wide at its base." "The Canal is the work of more than 100,000 laborers from 97 different countries." "Most would not live to sail through it." "The final bill." "Over $600 million dollars." "In an age when a worker was fortunate to earn a dollar a day." "The single greatest engineering undertaking in American history." "Teddy Roosevelt never returns to the Big Ditch to see his dream brought to life." "He leaves office in 1909 and dies in 1919, seven months before America's Pacific Fleet first passes through the Canal." "John Stevens finds another mountain and another railway." "In 1917 he is sent to Russia by President Woodrow Wilson to reorganize the Trans-Siberian Railway." "Not until 1937, at age 83, does he return to Panama to gaze upon his masterpiece." "He dies in North Carolina six years later at age 90." "Only Dr. William Crawford Gorgas sees America's work in Panama through from start to end." "By the time he returns to the United States, he has completely eradicated Yellow Fever from the Canal Zone and reduced malarial infection to rates lower than most American cities at the time." "The physician's work in Panama brings him great public acclaim." "He is appointed Surgeon General, a supreme honor for a country doctor from Alabama." "He leads the American Medical Services Corps to Europe during the First World War." "In 1920 he dies a hero and is given a state funeral." "One man battled mountains." "The other, the tiny bearers of death." "This is their monument." "The bridging of a continent." "The union of the seas." "It was the largest and most celebrated passenger airship ever built." "But like another legendary transatlantic liner, the Hindenburg was doomed." "Get this, Scotty!" "Get this Scotty!" "I looked out the window and saw the fire, and my only concern was to get out." "I thought to myself," ""This is the end." "I can't survive the end."" "4,5 hundred feet into the sky." "It's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen." "The smoke and the flames and the plane is crashing to the ground," "Oh, the humanity." "I guess it looked like hell." "It was like hell on fire." "It was something that will stay with you for the rest of your life." "Some said it was only a tragic accident." "Others blamed a murderous act of sabotage." "But what really destroyed the Hindenburg?" "Now, after more than half a century, a former NASA engineer may have uncovered the real answer to the mystery." "What I found was the fact that they knew that there was a problem." "It was a problem that would destroy the Hindenburg and bring to an abrupt and tragic end the golden age of passenger airships." "It was, by every account, simply magnificent- the largest object that had ever been lofted into the air." "And wherever it touched down on its transatlantic crossings, the Hindenburg was sure to draw a crowd." "At the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, New Jersey, thousands would stand in line for hours just to get a closer look." "This was perhaps the most beautiful flying machine ever built-stately, streamlined, poised to rule the skies." "Today, Lakehurst is a much quieter place, but it's still haunted by echoes from the airships' glory days." "John Lannacone remembers that time." "He was part of the Hindenburg's ground crew." "Now he's one of the few visitors to the giant hangar that once sheltered it." "I was 18 years old when I got here." "And I saw this tremendous building in there." "I always say it's one of the biggest buildings in the world." "We put it in a hangar the first time it came here." "And it just about fit." "The Germans, when they designed it, it was supposed to be 814 feet long." "Then they realized that this hangar's only 806 feet long, so they cut ten feet off." "There was a one-foot clearance on each end." "It just fit in here and we closed the doors." "It's sad, I mean, because it's not being utilized for what it should be utilized." "I mean, it looks like it's nothing but a warehouse and junk." "That's what it looks like to me." "Airships have had their place and their time." "And it's gone." "I don't think airships will ever come back." "History's first successful manned flight was in a hot-air balloon launched by the Montgolfier brothers into the skies over France in 1783." "But balloons move at the mercy of the wind, with no way to control their direction or speed." "Some dreamed of a method of directed flight." "The design for these so called dirigibles were certainly imaginative." "But even the ones that could fly weren't very practical." "The biggest challenge was building a dirigible big enough to carry passengers and cargo." "One of the pioneers was Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin." "He first encountered manned balloons in the United States as a German military observer of the Civil War and he even flew in one." "Back in Germany, Zeppelin set to work, designing a large dirigible with a rigid framework covered by a skin of fabric." "It would be lifted not by hot air, but by hydrogen." "In 1900, his creation would finally fly." "Within a decade, there were tourist flights, and even regular passenger service between German cities." "Count von Zeppelin was building the world's first airline." "But airships had other uses besides carrying passengers." "And with the beginning of World War One, airship construction became a military priority." "Nothing gets developed as fast as what things do during a war." "Okay, we experience it even today." "So the First World War definitely saw a dramatic size increase." "The airships went from something like 700,000 cubic square feet to two-and-a-half million just within the span of four years." "The Zeppelins were soon transformed into weapons of war, first as observation platforms, then in a new role:" "as the world's first strategic bomber fleet." "But they demonstrated their vulnerability as well:" "high-flying fighter planes brought down dozens of Zeppelins in fiery explosions, fueled by hydrogen." "In the years after the war, airship technology would find champions around the world." "In the U.S., the Navy developed its own military airships." "The way the Navy used these big airships was the way the Germans had used them in World War I." "And this was to send the airship itself out to scout." "Well, an airship is an easy thing to see, and it can easily be shot down." "Partly to protect their airships, the Navy transformed them into flying aircraft carriers, outfitting them with small fighter-reconnaissance biplanes." "They put a trapeze on the underside of the airship." "And the airplane would come up and land on it by hooking the hook on a bar at the end of this trapeze, which would then pull the airplane up to a hangar inside the ship." "They made the hangar large enough to accommodate five small fighters." "But there would be problems:" "the Navy's American-built airships were plagued by freakish accidents and three of them met tragic ends." "The first, the Shenandoah, broke apart in a thunderstorm and crashed in 1925, leaving a third of its crew dead, and its remains scattered across the Ohio countryside." "In 1932, during a routine landing of the USS Akron, three members of her ground crew were dragged into the air when the Akron suddenly lurched upward." "The helpless sailors clung to the line in desperation until first one, and then another tumbled hundreds of feet to their deaths." "The third managed to hang on for more than an hour before he was finally hauled on board." "Less than a year later, the Akron crashed off the New Jersey coast, killing 73 of her 76 crewmen." "The last big airship that the U.S. Navy had was the Macon." "It was lost February 12, 1935 in squally weather off Point Sur, California." "There were 83 on board and, in this particular accident, only 2 people were lost in it." "And there it lay, its exact location unknown for over 50 years." "Finally, in the early 1990s, an expedition covered by National Geographic Magazine found and photographed the remains of the Macon." "A Navy submersible located the Macon in nearly 1,500 feet of water." "Her tangled skeleton still harbored the remains of her fighter planes." "It was a sad reminder of the Navy's brief, disastrous flirtation with rigid airships." "Elsewhere, airships would meet with greater success." "In Germany, the civilian airship industry was reborn after the war, under the leadership of Hugo Eckener, a charismatic successor to the late Count von Zeppelin." "Eckener had the experience, the personality, and the entrepreneurial spirit to realize Zeppelin's vision of a fleet of passenger liners." "He gathered together the best and brightest engineers and designers to build the greatest airship yet, which he named after his mentor." "When the Graf Zeppelin was launched in 1928, she was hailed as the most advanced airship ever." "But Eckener was eager to build on this success." "So he came up with an unprecedented scheme:" "to fly his creation around the world." "If he could pull it off, it would be a technological triumph- and a publicity bonanza." "This is very much like the Lindbergh flight if you will." "It's one of the big events that people had been waiting for to happen." "Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst saw the potential and paid the Zeppelin Company $100,000 for the rights to cover the flight." "And look at the size of the Graf Zeppelin, which looks big even with Atlantic Ocean under it." "This is first leg of long globe-circling glide of giant ship, destined to set a record for round the world travel." "In August, 1929, with the eyes of the world focused on the Graf Zeppelin," "Eckener piloted the airship across continents and oceans, flying thousands of miles on each leg of his journey." "Oscar Fink was the helmsman on many of the Graf Zeppelin's flights." "Well, it really was a great time then, an experience that didn't exist before-riding in an airship." "You would see something of the world- not like today in an airplane, which flies at a height of 10,000 meters." "It was practically a sea ship in the air." "In the end, the Graf Zeppelin circled the globe in less than 300 hours of flying time, a little more than 12 days." "Her triumphant achievement would make a lasting impression on those who saw her." "I remember going up with my mother and father to the rooftop of the apartment house- we lived in New York City, just to go see the Graf." "The country was seized by what was called Zeppelin fever." "Hugo Eckener had proven what airships could do." "When he landed at the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, he received a hero's welcome." "It was an achievement in technology and it was an adventure that had succeeded." "Eckener was the toast of the town, treated to a ticker tape parade along Broadway just as Charles Lindbergh had been only two years before." "Eckener was probably the most recognized face in modern civilization." "He's very much like Neil Armstrong from that point of view." "He's a world figure of world renown and if his name comes up in a conversation, it's like everybody knows who you're talking about." "Hugo Eckener and his airship had captured the world's imagination." "The record-breaking flight was even commemorated in a children's board game" "The Graf Zeppelin soon embarked on a regular route between Europe and the Americas." "It was history's first regular transatlantic airliner." "But back in Germany, a more sinister figure was rising to prominence." "Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers enjoyed growing support." "In a few years, they would transform Germany and push Europe toward war." "But for now, the head of the Zeppelin Company enjoyed the freedom to pursue a new dream:" "Hugo Eckener envisioned a new airship much bigger than any of its predecessors." "This would be the Hindenburg." "It would feature the latest advances in engineering and it would carry 50 passengers in safety and comfort." "It would truly be a luxury liner in the sky." "At 804 feet, Hindenburg would dwarf today's jumbo jets." "It would be almost as long as the Titanic- the largest passenger liner of its day." "Building something this huge and being certain that it could fly was an enormous challenge for Zeppelin's designers and engineers." "As with all dirigibles, the heart of this leviathan and the secret of its flight was its lifting gas." "Along its central axis, enormous gas cells would rest end to end, taking up almost its entire volume." "They would be filled with seven million cubic feet of hydrogen." "A rigid framework would be needed to support them." "It would have to be strong, but lightweight." "The material of choice:" "an aluminum alloy." "To separate the gas cells:" "gigantic O-Rings, some more than a hundred feet in diameter, as big as a carnival ferris wheel." "Now the pieces can be assembled, in a custom-built construction shed." "After more than three years of work, the giant airship is beginning to take shape." "Around the frame: her outer surface is covered with 750,000 square feet of fabric, painstakingly stitched together." "To protect the cotton cloth from corrosion by saltwater and wind, and to reflect the sun's heat, it's painted with a metallic doping compound." "It's an incendiary mixture, but it's standard procedure in airship construction." "Finally, the gas cells can be filled." "Eckener's first choice is nonflammable helium, but the Americans have a monopoly on helium, and refuse to sell this strategic resource to a potential enemy." "So he is forced to fill the Hindenburg with hydrogen." "March 1936:" "The new airship is ready for her maiden flight." "With her first public appearances, it was clear that there had never been anything quite like the Hindenburg." "Streamlined and elegant, she was a technical marvel and a masterpiece of design." "As she floated gracefully off the ground," "Hugo Eckener basked in the glory." "The Nazis would view his new airship as a stunning symbol of German might." "Though Eckener himself was no friend of the Nazi government, one of Hindenburg's first flights was ordered up by" "Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels himself:" "an aerial tour of the country's largest cities." "But the Hindenburg's primary function was to transport passengers, and within days of her maiden flight, she made her debut in the transatlantic airship service." "One of her crewmen was Werner Franz, who was hired as a cabin boy." "I was 14 years old the first time I saw the ship." "When I entered the hangar, I didn't know where the ship was." "All I could see was a grey wall." "I looked left and right, until it became clear to me that" "I was standing right in front of it." "I saw only a part of the ship." "You had to walk to the front and the back just to take in the whole thing." "Of course, I walked through every inch of the ship when I wasn't working." "My favorite spot, when I had the time, was all the way in the front, in the bow." "There was a little area with a table and some small benches and a window where I could see the whole panorama in front of me." "That was my favorite spot." "I couldn't pull myself away from the window." "I was sorry when I had to do some work." "A cabin boy could appreciate the thrill of flying on the Hindenburg, but the best views were from the passengers' deck, inside the hull of the airship." "One of the youngest passengers was Elizabeth Kotter." "I was 11 years old when I was fortunate enough to fly to Germany on the Hindenburg." "That was an overwhelming experience, to enter into this big ship, and to sail away into the clouds." "It was immense." "It was enormous." "And it was somewhat overwhelming, especially for a child." "And one would get caught up in the general euphoria." "Life on board was just like daily life at home." "Breakfast would be served very nicely, just like in a big hotel." "The meals were very good, and you would look forward to what was on the menu." "The Hindenburg's chefs turned out gourmet meals served on fine china, and accompanied by French and German wines." "Alfred Grozinger recalls the time he spent working in the airship's kitchen." "When I got onto the Hindenburg I was 19 years old and, as a cook," "I made all the voyages from the first to the last." "We did our utmost to make everybody happy." "Whether it was the crew or the passengers, we did what we could, and I would contend that none of the passengers had anything to complain about." "They were very satisfied with the food." "They were only worried that they'd gained too much weight during their trip." "After dinner, passengers could enjoy drinks in the lounge and musical entertainment around its specially-designed piano constructed of aluminum to save weight." "Next door to the lounge was the reading and writing room, where passengers could enjoy a quiet hour with a book." "There was a typewriter for the inevitable reporters and private desks where travelers could write to their loved ones back home." "Mail could even be posted from the Hindenburg, which maintained a working post office in flight." "The Hindenburg rivaled the best ocean liners in comfort and amenities." "Most of the passenger rooms were doubles- efficient, but comfortable." "And if you were willing to pay a premium, you could enjoy the luxury of a private stateroom." "But luxury didn't come cheap." "A ticket on the Hindenburg cost $400 each way- more than $4,000 in today's currency." "Amazingly, despite the proximity of millions of cubic feet of flammable hydrogen, the Hindenburg also featured a smoking room-isolated by an airlock and equipped with a single electric lighter." "But for most passengers, it was the observation windows on the promenade deck that provided the greatest attraction." "Coasting along at 80 miles an hour, less than 800 feet up, the views were incredible." "There was always something new to look at." "You could see fishes or an ocean liner." "That was a major event." "Edith Dieckmann was married to a Zeppelin Company physicist." "She and her husband joined Hugo Eckener on the Hindenburg's first transatlantic crossing and she recalls an unusual encounter with a passing ship." "The captain of the ocean liner made contact with Dr. Eckener, and asked him if he would deviate from the route in order to fly over the ship, and Dr. Captain Eckener, of course, agreed." "He even lowered a bottle of champagne down to the ship, and the first one broke, but the second time he tried it, it worked." "For the crew, the thrill of flying on the Hindenburg was matched by the excitement of visiting ports of call like New York." "I was just fascinated by the skyscrapers." "The European cities, compared to New York, were really just provincial cities." "This was something completely different." "Eugen Bentele was a mechanic on the Hindenburg." "He and his fellow crew members were treated like heroes wherever they went." "Bentele remembers one occasion when he hitched a ride to New York City and ran into a little trouble." "Just before we got to Holland Tunnels, my driver must have made a wrong turn." "There was this whistling sound-uh-oh, the police." "And we pulled over, and the policeman was all ready to write us out a ticket." "Then the driver said to him, "I have a man from the Hindenburg,"" "and he waved us off." "And I would imagine that perhaps only the astronauts, who flew around the world in 90 minutes, could have had a stronger impression." "It was a wonderful way of traveling." "And I have to say, it was the most beautiful way of traveling that I ever experienced in my life." "Besides being beautiful, the Hindenburg was promoted as being perfectly safe." "I am convinced that under all weather conditions, even the most unfavorable, we will be able to make the flight in all regularity and safety." "Thank you." "By the spring of 1937, as Hitler continued his military buildup and aggressive foreign policy, many Europeans were becoming increasingly nervous about the possibility of war." "That may explain why ticket sales for the Hindenburg were down from the year before." "There had also been a series of bomb threats in recent days." "Nevertheless, on May 3, the inaugural flight of the Hindenburg's second season proceeded on schedule." "Hugo Eckener wasn't on board, but his heir apparent, Ernst Lehmann, was." "It promised to be a routine flight." "The airship took off with 97 people aboard, including 36 passengers." "One of them was Burtis Dolan, a perfume company executive, returning home to his wife Mildred, after a four-month buying trip." "Anxious about his flying on the Hindenburg, she had urged him to sail." "So he wrote to her, apologizing for ignoring her wishes." "Not that I fear in any respect the safety of the journey." "There is less risk than ordinary flying." "Of course, Precious, none of us know the lord's will, and if anything should happen to me en route, it will be too late to regret." "The crossing was uneventful, except for unusually strong headwinds." "By the afternoon of May 6th, the airship was 12 hours late." "One of those who remembers its approach is Alice Taylor." "I had taken my mother to Asbury Park, that was a seaside resort, to shop for a birthday present." "It was almost time for the store to close, it was nearly 6:00, and Mother and I stopped." "When we looked out the window, to our surprise, we saw coming directly toward us through the clouds, the Hindenburg." "That sight I'll never, never forget." "I remember saying to my mother," ""Oh, I would love to give you a ride on her for your birthday present."" "She laughed and said, "Oh, but those on that ship are the rich and the famous." "But that's a beautiful thought." "I'll dream about it."" "The Hindenburg had been scheduled to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey at 4:00." "But her landing would be delayed further." "It was a completely ordinary trip." "Just like always, sometimes there was bad weather, sometimes good weather." "But when we arrived at the airfield, the entire area was filled with thunderstorms." "We were going to have to fly around in circles for about two hours," "I think, before we would be allowed to land." "Verna Thomas lived just a few miles from the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst." "All day long, this was all you heard on the radio- about the Hindenburg being still delayed." "Around evening, when the word had come through that the ship was gonna come into Lakehurst, my husband, he says," ""Let's go up and get into the station and see it for good."" "On the ground, crowds had gathered as usual." "Print reporters and newsreel cameramen were standing by." "Even a radio announcer was covering the event." "We're greeting you now from the Naval Air Base at Lakehurst, New Jersey, from which point we're going to bring you a description of the landing of the mammoth airship, Hindenburg." "It was 7:15 p.m." "The storms had all but ended and the Hindenburg was cleared for its final approach." "Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen, and what a great sight it is." "A thrilling one, it's a marvelous sight, coming down out of the sky, pointed directly toward us and toward the mooring mast." "Her mighty motors just roared and throwing it back into a gyre-like whirlpool." "All of a sudden, there came a call:" "Six men to the front, because the ship was too light at the front." "I stayed halfway between the pilot's cabin and the bow." "There was a hole somewhere there." "And I thought, "Well, I'll just lie down here on the support beam and I'll watch the landing."" "During the landing maneuver, I was busy at the motor, so I could observe everything exactly as it happened." "And I thought perhaps they had brought the ship down too hard, too fast, and that something was torn or ripped." "And so I looked out, and I saw that the ship from the stern back to the first motor was on fire." "It burst into flames." "Get this Scotty, get this, Scotty." "It's terrible." "Oh, my!" "Get out of the way, please!" "My father said, "My God, it's on fire." "Run!" We watched it burn." "We could see people jumping out." "It didn't look like anybody could possibly survive." "I can't really remember the collision, so I know that the ship must have hit the ground with a very hard jolt." "I regained consciousness and then I quickly began to run away from the side of the motor." "But there was a stream of heat coming from the enormous flames above the ship." "Then, while I was running away, I thought my clothes were on fire." "I put my hand up to my neck to try and protect it, and instead of my neck getting burned, my hand was burned." "I thought to myself: "Now this is the end." "I can't survive the end."" "And then it happened like this:" "I came down nearly perpendicular with my legs and landed in some sandy soil." "But almost immediately, I got up again and I ran away." "I was lucky, because I was running against the wind, so none of the flames from the fire were behind me." "And the thing that impressed me was the intense noise created by the collapsing of the fabric covering and the roar of the flames was just a horrendous noise." "In front of me, maybe I was lucky, a water tank exploded, and perhaps it was the water that protected me from the heat." "Now I could make my way to the door and I kicked it open." "I could already see the ground coming towards me and I jumped out." "I didn't think about anything." "My mind didn't start working again until I was back on the ground and I started running." "And then after awhile it came to me:" "And I lost my nerve and I cried." "I wailed like a baby." "I didn't know what to do until a couple of crew members came up to me and shook me to my senses and said, "Get a hold of yourself." "Try to help somebody." But there was no one left to help." "It's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen." "The smoke and the flames, and the plane is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast." "Oh, the humanity and all the passengers." "I don't..." "I have people and friends out there." "It's..." "I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen..." "Honestly, it's like mess..." "It started from the tail end between the two fins, and went into the middle and the forward section." "Within five seconds, it was all on fire." "The explosion was so bad and the fire was so heavy at that particular time." "I guess it looked like hell;" "it was like hell on fire." "The ground crew and the people that did dare to go back, they were helping to pull bodies out." "Two American Navy soldiers grabbed me and they took me to an ambulance." "And then little by little, five or six more people came." "One of them was Max Pruss." "He had no nose anymore-nothing there, no eyebrows, no ears." "Everything was burned off." "He was burned." "When I arrived there, the dirigible was still burning." "Raymond Taylor was one of the first doctors to reach the crash site." "I tried to identify some of the corpses right away, but some of them could not be immediately identified because they were so badly burned." "Also, a Jewish doctor, Dr. Adolf Tobin, asked me if he could take care of" "Captain Lehmann, who was in charge of the ship." "His reason for wanting to take care of him, because he wanted to show Hitler and the German people, that he was very friendly toward them and that the German people should be aware that the Jews were taking care of the injured," "and they should appreciate it." "But no doctor could save Captain Lehmann." "He would die of his injuries." "And so would Burtis Dolan." "In Dolan's pocket, they found the charred letter he had written to his wife, but never had a chance to mail." "It had taken just half a minute from the first signs of trouble to the fiery crash." "Now, 36 passengers and crew members were dead or dying mostly from burns and smoke inhalation." "Miraculously, two-thirds of those on board survived." "My view of it all was entirely different from the destruction." "Mine was that beautiful thing in the air and that's what I like to remember." "I've seen the other ships, but this was sort of the first cause of excitement like that." "Maybe it was made more so because of the tragedy." "The next morning," "Americans awoke to screaming headlines and terrifying photographs." "For the first time, every detail of a disaster was recorded as it happened, and relayed to a shocked public." "Adolf Hitler sent a personal telegram to President Roosevelt, thanking him and the American people for their help in dealing with the casualties." "In New York, the German ambassador made hasty arrangements for the bodies of his countrymen to be returned to the Fatherland." "Their flag-draped coffins would lie in state on a Manhattan pier, as local German citizens paid their respects." "Then the dead were shipped home on board the liner Hamburg." "But back in Berlin, the government faced more than an aircraft disaster." "This was a public relations catastrophe." "The Nazis saw it as a slap in the face of German technology, and so it didn't enter the newspapers." "It was sort of like on the bottom of the page:" ""There was a crash of the airship Hindenburg." "And so many people died." "And here's the survivor's list." That was about it." "Even the film footage was not allowed to be shown in Germany to the public, and most people didn't get to see it until after the war." "Besides the shock of the tragedy, and the embarrassment, there were questions waiting to be answered, about what could have caused this disaster." "German airships had carried thousands of passengers more than a million miles-in perfect safety." "Was the Hindenburg brought down by an act of sabotage?" "As a symbol of the Nazi regime, it may have been a tempting target for opponents of Hitler." "Some have even suggested that" "Hitler may have ordered the airship's destruction himself, perhaps in retaliation for Hugo Eckener's anti-Nazi statements." "But no solid evidence was ever found to support either of these notions." "Just four days after the crash, the Commerce Department convened a hearing at Lakehurst, to examine the evidence." "Hugo Eckener headed the German delegation." "In the end, the Commission concluded that the crash was an unfortunate accident, caused by a discharge of static electricity, igniting a leak from one of the airship's gas cells, and touching off an explosive hydrogen fire." "But decades later, a new theory would emerge to challenge these findings." "Addison Bain is a retired engineer, the former head of Hydrogen Programs for NASA." "His expertise led him to question prevailing ideas about the Hindenburg disaster." "Well, with my experience with hydrogen over the years, starting in about 1960, and designing systems and writing safety manuals and that type of thing." "And I'd keep hearing about the Hindenburg, what about the Hindenburg, the hydrogen exploded." "Well, it didn't." "To Addison Bain's trained eye, the evidence was there all along, in the photographs of the disaster:" "The enormous fireball that consumed the airship could not have been produced by burning hydrogen." "It was very apparent that it was a very brilliant fire." "Again, that set my suspicions into motion because hydrogen generally burns with an invisible flame." "Perhaps something else had fueled the Hindenburg fire." "Why did this fire burn so hot and so fast?" "And fire investigators go off and look for so-called accelerants or chemicals and that kind of thing that may have contributed to this." "And that's why I led off into the chemistry of the airship design, particularly the outer coating." "To find out what might have fed the flames," "Bain went to Germany and visited the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen." "There, in the archives, among files of documents and blueprints, he found the construction diagrams for another airship-and an important clue." "When I arrived and started going through drawings on the Hindenburg," "I also found drawings on the LZ130, the sister ship of the Hindenburg- the Hindenburg, was LZ129." "But the LZ130 had flown after the Hindenburg and it was exactly the same size." "I came across one particular drawing that outlined the fabric covering of the hull." "Now following down through the notes on the left hand side of this drawing," "I come across notes on the doping process." "They started off with a coat of iron oxide, very similar to the Hindenburg doping process, but then the next steps were coatings of powdered aluminum bronze, not just plain aluminum powder." "I thought, "Ah-ha, this is interesting."" "To Addison Bain, it indicated that the airship's designers had serious questions about the doping compound used on the outer covering." "They knew a number of problems." "They did a number of modifications to their design, all because of the Hindenburg accident." "But hydrogen had been blamed for the disaster, so why did Zeppelin company engineers focus instead on the fabric- struggling to make it more fire-resistant, and less likely to build up static electricity?" "Did they know more than they let on?" "To find out what was really responsible for the fire," "Addison Bain would head into the laboratory." "He had managed to secure some rare artifacts:" "actual shreds of the Hindenburg's skin." "Placing a sample in an infrared spectrograph," "Bain could analyze the doping compound on its surface." "And when I discovered that the doping process that was used on airships, in general, uses a cellulose nitrate type compound, which was basically gunpowder, and then used a combination of powdered aluminum in the dopant process." "And I said, "Well, you know, powdered aluminum is the fuel used on the space shuttle."" "So, here we have rocket fuel, we've got gunpowder." "And I said to myself, "Well, there's gotta be more to this." "They must have introduced some other chemicals to reduce the flammability characteristics."" "With a scanning electron microscope," "Bain could inspect the skin at the molecular level." "He found nothing that would have retarded the Hindenburg's flammability." "But he did manage to learn exactly what the fabric was composed of and recreate it." "With this new sample, he could find out what would happen if a flame or a spark made contact with the fabric." "What I'm gonna do is burn a piece of the lab sample that I prepared earlier." "First thing you'll notice, it doesn't self-extinguish, and it starts moving quite rapidly." "Notice the colorization of it- typical carbon fire." "And another feature that's very interesting is the effect of the aluminum against the iron oxide forms little balls of thermite- very highly reactive combination." "Those thermite balls get up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit." "Very simply, I believe that the cause of the Hindenburg fire was static electricity that was built up on the envelope." "It found a path towards the frame, across the panels, and ignited the very, very sensitive aluminum powder." "That, in combination with the iron oxide and other chemicals, was just a rapid chemical fire." "If Addison Bain is right, then in spite of the official report, the fire that consumed the Hindenburg wasn't just an explosion of hydrogen." "It was actually fueled by the flammable skin of the airship itself." "But even if hydrogen wasn't entirely to blame, the Hindenburg disaster sounded the death knell for passenger airships." "With the outbreak of war," "Germany's last remaining airships were reduced to scrap." "As for Hugo Eckener, his glory days were over, too." "One of the world's most celebrated figures would quietly fade into history." "Today, a subsidiary of the same company that built the Hindenburg is once again creating an airship." "In a hangar at Friedrichshafen, the Zeppelin NT is taking shape." "That shape may be familiar, but the technology is brand new." "Scott Dannekar is testing this high-tech dirigible." "The Hindenburg is like an albatross that has been thrown around our neck and we've been wearing it for the last 62 years." "We have to overcome the stigma of the disaster and the failures of the past." "We have to prove what an airship is capable of and we have to prove its success." "And once we do that, then I think we're well on our way to restoring airships to the prominence that they used to have years ago." "This is a very different kind of airship:" "It features electronic controls and computerized steering." "Its semirigid design sets it apart from the familiar blimps we see at sporting events, but it's less than a third the size of the Hindenburg." "And it's filled with helium, not hydrogen." "If all goes well, the new Zeppelin will be used for tourist flights and scientific research-and perhaps as a vehicle for transporting passengers." "Flying an airplane for me is a job." "It's something that you have to do." "Flying an airship is a joy." "There's magic with these things." "I think it's just the idea of a giant silver- or in this case white- airship just floating serenely above the countryside." "There's just a magic there that for me is just personally indescribable." "Is the Zeppelin NT the wave of the future or just a nostalgic daydream, a bid to recapture an elegant era?" "The golden age of airships may be long gone, but magnificent giants like the Hindenburg won't be forgotten." "They'll fly on forever, floating majestically across the landscape of memory." "I think everyone who ever worked with airships would really like to see one of those huge objects in the sky again." "There's nothing more beautiful than flying in an airship." "It's page one in the book of dreams." "Ten... nine..." "I think it is human destiny to expand into outer space." "In the new race to space it's just a physical urge built, sept..." "Some will go for adventure." "If you go and you ask people why do want to go into space, the answer is the same." "I want to experience zero g." "And then you want to just float around for several minutes and just enjoy this." "And I want to see the view." "...six... five..." "Some will find that every dream is shadowed by a nightmare." "Space is a hostile, dangerous place." "Because I was expecting a major breach of the station," "I mean, where the air would just rush out." "Others will seek their fortunes." "What we really need are filling stations in space." "...quatre... trois..." "And yet others will search for answers to where we fit in the universe." "We get signals all the time here," "I mean we've got this huge antenna out the window here, we've got this very sophisticated receiver, of course we pick up signals all the time." "Every couple of seconds, another signal." "...two... one..." "At the dawn of a new century, the thrill of space is back." "I think today we are entering the golden era of space travel." "I want to see the moon of course..." "Space..." "And I'd like to look down on the earth..." "What's coming next may be the greatest journey of all time." "Destination Space" "In July of 1969, half a million people of all races and ages gather from around the globe." "Some trek for days and camp out to witness an event that was almost unimaginable only ten years before." "It isn't a march to protest the war in Vietnam... or a rock concert in upstate New York." "It is Apollo 11." "On a small strip of the Florida Coast... three astronauts prepare to reach for the moon." "They are only minutes from attempting the greatest venture in human history." "But as Apollo 11 tears itself from the launch pad and thunders into space, no one is certain if the mission will end in triumph or tragedy." "Every step of the voyage is fraught with danger." "But most harrowing is the stage never before attempted-landing on the moon." "So risky is this venture, President Nixon has a eulogy prepared in case the lunar lander crashes or is stranded." "Altitude 4,200." "Go for landing, over." "As Armstrong and Aldrin approach the moon's surface, they realize the flight computer is steering them toward a boulder field." "Armstrong seizes control, guiding the lander to a new spot, more than 1,000 feet away." "Picking up some dust..." "two-and-a-half down turn to the right a little another half ...30 seconds... contact light okay, engine stopped." "We copy you down, Eagle." "Only seconds of fuel remain in the lander's tank." "Tranquility Base here." "The Eagle has landed." "In the history of humanity, a few, rare moments are so transcendent as to unite us all." "Okay Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now." "On July 20, 1969, 600 million people-a sixth of the planet's population- watch transfixed as the first human being steps onto an alien world." "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." "These were the glory days of space exploration." "Nothing was easier to imagine than a succession of further triumphs." "But then something changed." "We lost interest." "Just nine months after the first lunar landing, television networks broadcast soap operas instead of Apollo 13." "It took an explosion onboard and a life-and-death drama to grab our attention." "Houston, we have a problem." "Standby 13, we're looking at it." "The space program again seemed to fade from public view after Apollo 13 returned safely." "In 1986, NASA tried to rekindle America's passion for space by demonstrating that it was open to anyone." "They flew Christa McAuliffe, high school teacher and mother of two, aboard the shuttle Challenger." "And lift-off of the 25th space shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower." "Much of the nation, including McAuliffe's family and students, watched in horror as the disaster played out on television." "Go ahead." "RSO reports vehicle exploded" "Okay, are there any forces headed out that way?" "Yes, sir, DOD also reports that all forces have been scrambled and they are on their way." "The world began to wonder if space was worth the risk of human life." "Now, at the turn of the 21st century, we find ourselves clinging to a small outpost on the fringe of space." "And it's a tired, tattered one." "The Russian space station Mir was built to last five years, but has been made to serve more than twice as long." "Mir has aged into a balky old vehicle." "Systems switch on and off without warning." "As American astronauts would discover, Mir was not only quirky, it had become downright dangerous." "Some are drawn to space because they want to learn what lies beyond- others crave the raw experience." "Children from all walks share this dream of reaching space, but few have the persistence and talent to make it a reality." "This is a moment that takes me back to when I was about six years old and I first decided that I wanted to be an astronaut." "This is looking up at your rocket." "This sends shivers down my spine every time I think about it." "NASA astronaut Michael Foale grew up in England, the son of a royal air force pilot and an American mother." "While on a childhood visit to the states," "Foale saw John Glenn's capsule on a national tour." "From that moment, he wanted to soar into the sky." "Foale was accepted into the astronaut class of 1987." "He stood out even among this elite corps." "On his third shuttle mission," "Foale and his crewmates circled the Russian space station Mir." "Foale instantly felt its allure." "At that time I can remember seeing Yelena Kondakova in the window there, and she would wave and say, "Hey, we want you to come and have tea."" "And, I said, "With pleasure,"" "and that was about the limit of my Russian and, uh, unfortunately we couldn't stop and have tea." "We had to back away." "And I said, "Some other time."" "Mir has its grip on Foale." "In two years he will return, the fifth American to live aboard the station." "In his more than four months onboard," "Michael Foale will learn that Mir is a place where dreams collide with reality." "He will experience the terror of space as well as the wonder." "The great attraction of space is that that is sort of the incubator of everything." "And the mysteries of existence, the origins of the universe, the presence of, call it a god, resides out there." "And I think one of the motives for going into space or studying space is trying to understand our place in the cosmos." "One astronomer's obsession with our place in the heavens drives him to the remote hills of Puerto Rico." "Twice a year, Seth Shostak travels to an enormous radio telescope to listen for signs of extraterrestrial life." "Sharp cuts in funding and years of hearing only false alarms have done nothing to deter Shostak." "For him, the search itself is irresistible." "You know, it's like that carrot in front of you, because that carrot seems to be getting bigger." "Every year we do this, the equipment is a little better, we can check out a few more star systems, and, you know," "I wouldn't do it if I didn't think there was some reasonable hope that within my lifetime we're gonna pick up that signal that tells us what we want to know." "Are we alone?" "Who, or what, is out there?" "Are they like us?" "Every previous generation wondered about this." "They looked up and they wondered if there was anybody looking down." "I can be a member of that first generation that can actually look back up and maybe find out if there's something up there." "Built by Cornell University and the United States Air Force in the 1960s, the 1,000-foot diameter Arecibo radio telescope is one of the most sensitive on earth." "For Shostak, it's like a huge hearing aid tuned to the murmurings of the cosmos." "This little speck of metal is picking up signals that might be coming from hundreds of trillions of miles." "It's like a tin can with a string that runs up a hundred trillion miles." "We could hear a cellphone on Jupiter, if there were any." "That's how sensitive this system is." "What we're listening for is not so much the aliens per se, but their equipment, if you will." "We're listening for a transmitter." "We're not asking of the aliens that they build huge interstellar transports ala the star ship Enterprise and go from world to world." "We're only asking that they build a simple transmitter that any teenager could put together on a table top and use a decent size antenna." "Two years after seeing Mir for the first time," "Foale joins its Russian crew for a four-and-a-half month mission." "He is replacing American Jerry Linenger, who appears eager to leave." "Hi, Mike, welcome to your new home." "Foale knows that a fire broke out during Linenger's stay, and that the ship's cooling system leaks toxic anti-freeze." "The hatch closed, and I thought, "Well, here I am on Mir."" "And at that very moment, Vasily turned towards me and said, in Russian, because they didn't speak English at all," ""Well, Mike, now we are going to beat you."" "And so began my time on Mir." "A joke by commander Vasily Tsibliyev, meant to both welcome and caution Foale." "The Russians understand Mir's problems, and they want to know if this rookie can handle the challenge." "It proves a fair warning." "Foale has embarked on one of the most harrowing missions in the history of exploration." "In space, it is a narrow margin that separates life from death." "Orbiting 250 miles above earth, Mir is a pioneering craft, a frontier port where men and women have shattered space endurance records." "But records aren't broken without risk and pain." "Mike Foale's first weeks on Mir pass without incident." "But one month into the mission, Foale's Russian crewmates, engineer Sasha Lazutkin and commander Vasily Tsibliyev, prepare to test a manual docking system." "Vasily will use a remote steering system and a camera to guide this supply ship of the Progress class to Mir." "But as the eight-ton vessel draws closer, it becomes more difficult to track." "Vasily is flying blind." "He calls to his crewmates, telling them to look for the Progress through Mir's windows." "Foale and Sasha can't see the incoming vessel anywhere." "Vasily fears the Progress is approaching too fast." "He applies reverse thrusters." "But to no avail." "Seconds pass." "Then suddenly, the Progress looms into view." "It's out of control and headed right at them." "Sasha orders Foale to the Soyuz-Mir's lifeboat." "So I flew through the air from the back of the baseblock to the Soyuz." "I felt this big kathump." "Air starts to rush out of Mir." "I then felt the pressure falling in my ears." "I thought, "Ah, this is a pretty serious leak."" "The adrenaline was very, very strong, because I was expecting a major breach of the station," "I mean, where the air would just rush out like, you know, if you get sucked out of it, basically." "My immediate thought was, "We are leaving the station." "We have all got to get into the Soyuz and that's it."" "Mir's pressure alarm blares." "If they can't seal the breach in 30 minutes," "Foale and his crewmates will have to evacuate." "Throughout history, explorers and pioneers have had to face terrible dangers." "Vasco da Gama, Columbus and Magellan put their lives at risk to blaze trails into the unknown." "On the heels of heroes come entrepreneurs." "Companies are now chasing profits as satellite communication is woven into the fabric of everyday life." "Getting these satellites into orbit is a competitive and risky enterprise." "In the race for money, the space business is spreading to unlikely places around the globe." "When it comes to launches, French Guiana is hot, hot, hot." "Built in 1968, a space center has electrified this once quiet country." "The space center is not only playing the role of sending satellites into the orbit, but it's playing also the role in human relations." "Because here is a melting pot of all races." "The space center has given an economic boost to the economy of Guiana." "From the coastal jungle, a French-led company called Arianespace has carved out one of the most advanced launch sites in the world." "We are situated here in French Guiana simply because this is the best site in the world for launching commercial satellites." "Competitors who launch farther from the equator need more fuel to lift their payloads into coveted orbits over the equator." "From Kourou, French Guiana, a satellite has a shorter and cheaper path into equatorial orbit." "We have the most reliable launcher five years without a failure." "We launch every month, about 12 launches a year." "And demand just keeps growing." "It will take several years for Arianespace to work through its backlog of launches." "While we are signing a contract in New York, a satellite is being shipped at the same time to Kourou." "The launcher for that satellite is ready to go." "And while we are readying that launcher, another launcher is being assembled, and a third launcher is being shipped in pieces from Europe to Kourou." "So it's a permanent year-long 24-hour launch activity." "We bring your own customers here in Kourou to actually see the launch, we bring your engineers to process the satellites, and we do the full service from earth to space." "That's our business." "The customer comes first in the new race for space." "So, Arianespace has mastered the art of wining and dining." "Jungle boat cruise, anyone?" "After a day of sightseeing, it's time for the real business at hand-placing a communications satellite worth hundreds of millions of dollars at just the right spot 22,000 miles above the equator." "The night of the launch, clients assemble at a safe distance where they can relax and enjoy the show." "Bienvenue a Kourou..." "Greetings everybody wherever you may be and welcome to Kourou, the home of Ariane for tonight's live broadcast of Ariane Spaceflight #126... launching... for Panam Sat... this evening..." "first launch of the new year." "The show's gonna be a good one." "We hope you'll stay with us." "The ground crew is under pressure to maintain its long string of successes." "And I have to say it's a very, very exciting business when you have once a month this huge thing flying into space and all these people working on it." "Another successful launch." "And so the party begins in earnest." "Being on the equator for launching satellites is such a tremendous advantage that our competitors are desperately trying to find an equatorial site." "To compete with Arianespace, a secretive rival will journey to one of the most remote places on earth." "Using extraordinary gear that belongs in a James Bond movie, they will create their own equatorial launch site in the middle of the Pacific Ocean." "In Long Beach, California a company called Sea Launch has assembled a dream team of scientists and mariners." "Their mission: to launch satellites from a platform at sea." "Mission Director Steve Thelin marvels at the talent Sea Launch has assembled." "I mean, who ever thought I'd be out here launching Western-style spacecraft on a Russian rocket on a Norwegian platform out in the middle of the Pacific." "I mean, this is really cool." "Sea Launch uses a rocket originally designed to fire nuclear warheads at the United States." "Today, it carries a payload more in tune with the times- a telecommunications satellite." "Sea Launch will journey across the Pacific Ocean, to a spot on the equator 1,400 miles south of Hawaii." "Two vessels will make the expedition." "One is an oil platform, converted into a self-propelled launch pad." "The other-a specially built command ship that will carry 200 Russian," "Ukrainian and American engineers and scientists on the three-week trip." "Relations are good on this international team." "The Russians are just such professionals." "It's just an honor to be working with them." "Some of the best rocket scientists in the world, basically." "It's neat to see the past come forward to the future of space." "The state-of-the-art mission command center is actually two control rooms in one." "Russian-speaking specialists will work on one side" "English-speaking Americans on the other." "Coordination must be seamless for the launch to succeed." "A similar collaboration was put to a sharper test onboard Mir." "With air pressure dropping because of a collision, the two Russians and one American have only minutes to close off a punctured module or abandon ship." "But cables block a hatchway that must be sealed." "These cables now that were being disconnected, there's about 18 of them, were like big snakes, and they just kind of got in the way." "So Sasha'd pass the cable to me and I'd tie it off." "With the passageway finally cleared, the two struggle to seal the hatch." "As soon as it went into place, without doing any latches, it kind of went "pfffp" and sucked in." "And at that point I really felt the pressure stop falling." "They've closed off the leaking module, but Mir is now crippled as they approach the dark side of earth." "Now the station, which was tumbling, hadn't been able to orient its solar arrays to the sun and we had basically used up all the battery power that was left." "And so all of the lights started to go off, the fans went off that moved the air around, and we lost communications with the ground." "Foale and his crewmates face a desperate situation." "Without power they have no heaters, no computers, no oxygen generators." "For the first time, Mir becomes deathly quiet." "Really, ironically, it was some of the most beautiful, memorable experience I ever had on the Mir, because we were passing over the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego, towards Antarctica and there were extraordinary curtains of green and red" "shimmering across the curve of the earth and we kind of would just float there in front of the window, mostly saying nothing." "Russians and Americans at Sea Launch are preoccupied with safety." "Already fueled, the satellite payload is added to the rocket." "Then, the Sea Launch crew" "Cautiously transfers the rocket to the launch platform." "The Russians insisted on the twin ship plan because of its extra margin of safety." "All personnel will evacuate the launch platform for lift-off." "The rocket is safely cradled in the launch platform hangar." "Sea Launch is now ready for the 3,000-mile journey to the equator." "In the age-old sea-faring tradition," "Sea Launch's voyage to the equator begins with a farewell party on the dock." "Future rocket scientist!" "Friends and loved ones come to see the Sea Launch crew off." "Steve Thelin will be away from his family for almost a month." "The two Sea Launch vessels set out for the equator." "At sea, Russians, Norwegians, and Americans tend to live and play apart." "The dining room offers a multi-ethnic cuisine." "And each nationality gravitates to its own tables." "The Norwegian captain, Tormod Hansen, was initially skeptical of this international undertaking." "When I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke." "I didn't really believe it." "Russian rockets being launched with American satellites?" "The combination of American and Russian scientists, and a Norwegian marine?" "I thought it was a little bit unreal." "But after 10 days at sea, everything is going without a hitch." "Sea Launch is nearing its destination." "Everyone is of one mind-all are totally focused on blasting their rocket into orbit." "The launch platform now sits exactly at the equator." "There is no more efficient launch location for reaching equatorial orbit." "We have such accurate station keeping ability." "The platform is right on the equator." "You can literally come out here and straddle the equator-walk from one end of the ship to the other end of the ship and cross the equator." "Huge pumps flood the platform's pontoons and pylons with 19,000 tons of seawater." "It settles 70 feet into the sea, stabilized in the swell." "The crew rolls the rocket out of its hangar onto the deck of the launch platform." "They slowly erect the 200-foot rocket." "A bridge connects the two ships." "The crew from the launch platform can now evacuate in preparation for the nighttime blast off." "The command ship sails three miles away in case the rocket explodes on the pad." "As liftoff time nears, a rare spectacle at sea unfolds." "The captain of the launch platform leaves his ship." "Steve Thelin and his international team check, then double check, every system." "Op support." "Marine operations." "Sea Launch has a one-second window for launch if they're to place the satellite in exactly the right orbit." "Months of preparation and thousands of hours of work now come down to this:" "Can the team do everything perfectly- without even a second of leeway?" "It's a very high level of intensity." "Basically I focus on what's going on, what potential problems could come up." "The concentration it takes, the butterflies you get in your stomach prior to launch." "Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five..." "four... three... two... one..." "We have a lift-off." "All looks good at blast-off." "But then something goes terribly wrong." "One hundred and forty miles above earth, the rocket shuts down prematurely- the satellite fails to reach orbit." "A software glitch may have caused a single valve to stay open, dooming the mission." "It's a costly set back, but Sea Launch is already planning its next launch." "Nothing about rockets is easy." "Defying gravity remains an exasperating challenge." "Many are pursuing radically new ideas about how to reach space." "Just a few months ago," "I got all these proposals by physicists proposing wacky, crazy mechanisms for one of NASAs advanced propulsion systems that may one day take us to nearby stars." "I laughed to myself a bit." "There are serious physicists making serious proposals, making a shot in the dark because that's what it may take for us to go to the distant planets." "Like others who hope to revolutionize space travel, propulsion physicist Leik Myrabo was inspired early in life." "Sputnik and also Echo flew about the same year." "My grandmother got me up out of bed in the middle of the night and brought me outside and actually showed me one of these first satellites flying overhead." "And it was just astounding." "It was an amazing experience." "With NASA backing, Myrabo has traveled to Wright Patterson Air Force Base." "Here, he will test whether a laser beam can be used to push specially made fabrics through space." "Science fiction writers have been writing about laser sails-huge, ultra thin sails, like spiderwebs covered with reflective surfaces kilometers in diameter." "We're actually testing five new laser sail materials." "Now the sails aren't very big." "They're only about a couple of inches across, two inches across." "But what we're doing is we're flooding that with 10 to 100,000 watts of laser energy." "This is a ferocious environment frankly, we don't know how well these will survive." "And until you actually do tests like this, you don't know where you stand." "And that's what these tests are about." "So it's incredibly exciting." "Yeah, this is brand new." "The weight of these sail materials has to be nothing." "I mean, we're talking about butterfly wings." "Will it burn up?" "You know, will it just turn into ashes and fall to the bottom of the vacuum tank?" "We don't know." "But we are simulating a space environment." "It's evacuated to an incredibly low pressure that simulates space." "If these delicate prototypes can withstand the burst of light," "Myrabo's dream of a starship carried by a large laser sail will be one step closer to reality." "Run number one." "Pendulum number one." "Ready to arm... four... three... two... one..." "Incredibly, it works." "The force of light alone has pushed the miniature sail without incinerating it." "This is good." "Very good." "I'm happy." "A real laser sailcraft would require a colossal building project." "Much of the work might take place on a future lunar colony." "Thousands of solar-powered lasers would have to be built." "Each laser would be rolled out to a runway where it would be packaged for the quick trip to earth orbit." "A railway lined with powerful magnets would accelerate the laser to escape the moon's gravity." "The laser slows as it approaches a gargantuan array of lasers under construction." "A worker fits the new laser into place." "Nearby, in earth orbit, a laser sail unfurls." "Half a mile across, it might carry a robot craft for exploring distant worlds." "When the laser array is complete, 100 billion watts of light will strike the sail." "Bouncing off the sail, the light beam inches it forward." "The craft gradually picks up speed." "It passes Jupiter, and, after years of travel it could approach another star at close to the speed of light." "Near the end of its mission, a smaller sail carrying the probe would separate." "The small sail slows, perhaps to enter orbit around a planet to search for alien life." "But we are decades away from mastering the technology that Leik Myrabo is pioneering." "Today, it's still an overwhelming task to maintain and power a craft like Mir." "After sealing the punctured module on Mir, the top priority for Michael Foale and his crewmates is restoring power." "Vasily fires thrusters to stabilize Mir." "He points the station's solar panels toward the sun in order to recharge its batteries." "But time and again, computer crashes cause Mir to tumble." "Nothing is easy in space." "Space is a hostile, dangerous place- more dangerous than anyplace we've ever ventured on earth." "And there are a lot of places on earth that have killed people, ascending Mount Everest." "There's a lot one has to overcome." "When Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he just had storms to worry about." "Astronauts have radiation storms to worry about, micrometeorites that can pierce the hull of their system." "They're going to be facing all sorts of unknown dangers." "On Mir, the crew grows exhausted." "They seem cursed." "Each time they resolve one crisis, another arises." "Sasha accidentally unplugs the computer, sending Mir tumbling again." "Russian ground controllers decide it's time to cut back on the workload." "And we kind of did really relax." "We actually watched one or two movies." "We watched Apollo 13 in the airlock together, which I translated for them." "But as his tour on Mir draws to an end, Foale still isn't free from worry." "On September 27, 1997, he watches the shuttle Atlantis approach." "Even though I should be relaxing and just looking forward to the arrival," "I was starting to become quite tense that the shuttle wouldn't be able to dock and take me off because of one of these computer problems." "I saw this beautiful sight rising up from the blue of the earth towards us- so slowly compared to the Progress, so controlled compared to the Progress," "with hardly any immediate motion noted for about ten seconds between each change that they made in their flight profile- join up perfectly to our docking port." "And this enormous relief gushed out of me." "And at that point, I knew I was home." "Home." "As he pulls away from Mir," "Foale takes what may be a last glimpse of his second home." "After more than four harrowing months in space that challenged his stamina and courage," "Foale now hopes for a trouble-free ride to earth." "He returns to a vibrant world, one filled with color and life-a sharp contrast to Mir." "In the middle of the Mojave Desert lives a man who may well profit from space travel." "His name is Burt Rutan." "That's a dog." "How about a duck?" "Cat?" "Can you do a cat?" "Rutan thinks-and lives- outside the box." "Rutan's edge designs have made aviation history." "And he's enjoying the ride." "Work?" "I haven't worked since 1974." "This is all play." "A simple concept, actually." "People have fun, they're very productive." "Rutan runs Scaled Composites, a company that designs and builds cutting-edge aircraft." "One of Rutan's latest projects embodies his philosophy:" "First, throw out the rulebook." "The result is his plane Proteus." "This spindly craft can carry a one- ton payload to the stratosphere- 11 miles into the air." "Proteus might one day lift a manned rocket capsule." "When the aircraft reaches altitude, the capsule would detach, blast into orbit under its own power, then glide back to earth." "It's looking good." "Powers are great." "I'm going to leave the power set there." "Controls are alive, feeling good." "Okay, rotating." "Gears coming... 110 would be a good speed to hold." "If your ambition is to do a sub-orbital flight, you want to go to altitude, to show whoever wants to go up there, and I want to go too, what it looks like from orbit." "And then you want to just float around for several minutes and just enjoy this-weightless." "You know, bring your house cat or your lover or whatever you want to do for this time while you're weightless." "You know, you just can't do that on earth, baby." "But if you're single or cat-free, what would you do in orbit?" "Who wants to be the first to see the earth from orbit while they're sipping a martini- r maybe there are people out there who will do this?" "I don't have enough money to do it." "Perhaps if I did, then I would certainly do it." "But the question is not whether some people have enough money, but there's enough interest to keep it sustained and to drive the industry to invent the technology in the first place." "Remember the people used to ask the same questions about air travel." "Why in God's name would you want to do that?" "How practical could that possibly be?" "This whole notion of space tourism is really a chance to get the economics going a business where there are thousands of launches, money coming back in, people designing new vehicles, bringing the price down." "And we go from sub-orbital flights to orbital flights onto hotels and onto the moon, and it's a tremendous opportunity." "Hi, guys." "Good morning, my name is Peter Diamandis," "I'm the chairman of the X-Prize." "Peter Diamandis is offering an incentive to the potential Lindberghs of the 21st century." "So, we're looking for a new generation of rocket scientists out there who can go and build launch vehicles that will carry us into space." "We're trying to make this on top of here, with the parachute in here and put this up..." "He is holding out a prize to any kid who can design a water rocket that will safely return its fragile passenger-a raw egg-to Mother Earth." "What we're trying to do here is to give kids a chance to get hands on and feel the competitive spirit and learn how to build these rockets and get into it so that they can relate." "It's really neat to look at the designs and, in particular, to know that the teachers here aren't giving them the answers." "Everything they've designed here is coming out of experiment or their own imagination and to see the way that they're getting their egg to survive is pretty awesome." "You're going to put your cup in there, the whole nine yards?" "They gotta design this vehicle that can have the egg safely survive- and they get the idea that when it cracks, that egg is dead." "Across town, students from another school build their own rockets for the upcoming competition." "One, Jaqui Rogers, has done her homework." "The thing that surprised me about space that I have learned is about the moon." "And it was fascinating to me, because I learned that there was no wind on the moon, that Neil Armstrong's footprints are still up there." "And I learned about the craters and how they got there." "Destiny Voyager is now complete." "Launch day arrives." "What we're going to do is we're going to give you guys a chance to put your eggstranauts in your rockets." "And you should be done doing that by the time we get ready to launch with these guys." "The pad and fuel prepared..." "Yeah." "Everybody's got an eggstranaut?" "Yeah." "Everybody's got fuel?" "Yeah." "And the future rocket cadre tries to look nonchalant." "There you go." "Unusual designs create their own unique set of snafus." "This happens at NASA all the time, you guys." "In fact, the shuttle was delayed the other day because they had a bunch of strings tangled up." "Rocket is secure on the pad." "All systems are go." "The launch director receives the green light." "Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five..." "four... three... two... one." "Launching these rockets is easy." "Open up, open up..." "It's the landing that's hard." "Sorry guys." "Today's lesson?" "To become a rocket scientist, you've got to crack a few eggs." "Excellent." "Parachutes opened." "Any one of these students could grow up to design rockets or spacecraft." "Some may get the chance to leave earth- or even to walk on another world." "Whatever it is in our nature that drove us to the moon can be found in these kids... and will continue to spur humanity upward and outward." "Jaqui Rogers." "If I could go up into space, I would want to gaze up on the sun." "I would like to look down on the earth." "And Mars." "I would like to find new things that have never been found." "I want to see the moon, of course." "And the first thing that I would search for was where Neil Armstrong left the flag, and his footprints, and that's the main thing that I'd be searching for." "In terms of exploration," "I think in 50 to 100 years we will have most definitely facilities on the moon." "We'll have factories there." "We'll have people who are living there." "We'll have hotels there, of course." "We'll have the first real self- sufficient and vibrant colonies on Mars." "But what makes me excited are going to be actual independent societies, off planet, in free space colonies." "I think it will be very much like it was in the 14 and 1500s, where there were different groups who were going off exploring and fantasizing about where the best trails are, where the best next new worlds are." "And that's the future I'm building towards." "I'm one of those explorers who can't wait to go off, you know, towards that star over there." "To travel to distant stars and establish colonies seems fantastic today- but we're not even close to reaching the limit of what'" "Oh, in my day... to think of going up and breaking the sound barrier, well that was out, out of the question period." "No we'd never break the sound barrier." "So you see how things are, can change." "And then, would anybody ever go to the moon?" "Well, that was ridiculous." "Well, we've gone to the moon." "Is it our destiny to cross the galaxy?" "If it was once inconceivable to reach the moon." "What vaulting ambitions could become reality tomorrow?" "We have already begun an amazing journey that will carry us beyond the reach of our imaginations." "We are entering an era that will unfetter even dreamers." "The cosmic perspective is inextricably bound to our growing awareness of how tiny we are in this universe, how frail we are in this universe, combined with simply how big and grand the universe is." "Now, that might sound depressing." "For me, it's only momentarily depressing." "With that knowledge, we can all participate in this journey, in this quest, to reach the edge of the universe and then perhaps see what's on the other side." "I am the place with only three colors- blue of sky," "white of snow, black of rock." "I am the place where the temperature is often very cold." "...and where the air is uncomfortably thin..." "I am the place where life, ALL Life, is very fragile." "I am the mountain so high that no bird can fly over me although many have tried." "To the Tibetans, I am Chomolungma goddess mother of the earth." "To the Nepalese I am Sagarmatha goddess mother of the sky." "And to the rest of the world, I am Mt." "Everest." "9 American mountaineers depart the United States bound for the Kingdom of Nepal to join the Inventa Everest 2000 Environmental Expedition." "They will team up with the largest contingent of Sherpas ever assembled for a clean-up operation." "Their goal is to unburden Mt." "Everest of over 40 years of expedition garbage and to summit the world's highest peak." "Here the Westerners meet their Eastern guides and make their final preparations." "Bob Hoffman, a former airline manager, is the expedition leader and mastermind behind the half-million dollar clean-up operation." "Apa Sherpa is responsible for managing all Sherpas on the expedition and overseeing the climbing logistics." "Pemba Nurbu will help coordinate a team of 22 clean-up Sherpas." "Professional mountain guide Jim Williams, along with Apa, will lead the 9 member climbing team..." "Each member has paid their way for a chance to summit Everest." "Sometimes called "Mr. Everest" for reaching the top in his 10 previous climbs," "Apa will climb this year for a world record 11th summit." "Apa combs the back alleys of Kathmandu in search of materials for the Base Camp Puja ceremony." "Rice, incense, kata scarves, and prayer flags are all on the shopping list." "The prayer flags are gonna go over our complete camp area... and we'll have 5 lines of prayer flags going out." "I still have mine from the '98 expedition." "Prayer flags are thought to bring good luck in Buddhist cultures..." "The blue is the sky..." "The white is the... clouds..." "clouds, yeah..." "The red is for fire..." "The red is fire..." "The green is earth..." "Yellow." "And the yellow is water." "And also each one has a prayer on it, and the Lung-la horse is the fast-carrier of the prayers to the heavens ...and it's believed that each time the wind blows the flags are sending those prayers for safety to heaven... so that's the significance of them." "Before the expedition can set out for Base Camp," "Apa must bring the ceremony items to a Rimopche to be blessed." "However, Rimpoches are not always easy to find in the bustle of Kathmandu." "Finally, after many turns, they find him." "Rimpoches are Buddhist holy men considered to be the reincarnates of former high lamas." "The traditional tea is served, and the puja offerings are blessed." "63 year-old Sherman Bull accompanies Hoffman on a dawn run at the Monkey Temple." "Should the surgeon from Connecticut succeed in this summit bid, he will be the oldest human being to do so." "This will be his 4th attempt." "Having completed their preparations, the team embarks on the last air leg the one-hour flight into the Khumbu Valley and the beginning of the trek to base camp." "Coupled with gusty winds and a very short landing strip that requires good brakes Lukla airstrip gives even the most experienced Khumbu pilots reservations about landing here..." "That was some ride..." "Our pilot kept saying" ""Holy shit, holy shit, it's a holy shit"" "From here they will walk the rest of the way to Base Camp." "Porters and yaks shoulder much of the load..." "Each porter carries up to 70-pounds everything is instinctively weighed simply by touch..." "Mt." "Everest lies on the border between Tibet and Nepal, in the Sagarmatha National Park." "The word "Sherpa" does not mean "mountain porter,"" "as it is often mistranslated in the West." "It simply means "People from the East"... referring to the neighboring region of Tibet..." "The Sherpa people have been migrating to the high reaches of the Himalaya from Tibet for over 500 years..." "With a population of 1000," "Namche Bazar is the largest village in the Khumbu region." "Even today, Tibetans come weekly to this Sherpa capital to ply their wares at the Saturday market." "The team will return here at the end of the expedition, carrying all the collected refuse to be recycled or incinerated..." "Canadian, Jamie Ross is the environmental director of the expedition." "Ross was also a member of Hoffman's 1998 expedition." "We are working with a group here called the Sagamatha Pollution control committee, and they are a group organized to oversee environmental issues in this park which is the Sagamatha national park." "The most important thing to come out of this expedition is have a major impact on the clean-up up at Base Camp and on the mountain..." "Get a lot of trash off..." "and raise awareness of what we're doing, so that other people will do the same." "The SPCC will work with the 17 teams climbing MT." "Everest this season." "Each team must provide accurate counts of equipment going to Base Camp." "The government requires that teams must pack out expedition garbage or lose a 4000 dollar deposit." "By current Himalayan standards, this Expedition is a massive operation." "It will utilize 200 yaks... to carry 7 tons of equipment and climbing gear... and 1 ton of food to sustain the entire team for 8 weeks..." "The Tengboche monastery lies approximately half-way between Lukla and Base Camp." "The Monastery was established in 1916, and is one of the more renowned Monasteries in the Khumbu region." "Here the team rests and receives a blessing." "The team awakens to an un-seasonal snowfall." "The presence of snow at this elevation can mean an early Monsoon season." "On the tenth and final day of the trek, and just eight hours walking distance from Base Camp, the team reaches the Sherpa Memorial..." "It is a very significant place, to, you know, just come and visit them because this is very special place for... for the climber... the climber who died on Everest and other mountain... and," "as part of the Buddhist religion, once the people died, we have to cremate on mountain, on the top of the mountain, which you can see the whole mountains..." "and the river... running river... that feels..." "that will take you to the heaven... we believe in that..." "Do You Have friends here?" "sure..." "Yeah..." "It's very spiritual..." "I just love the sound of the wind..." "It's a chance to reflect..." "It's at this point for me the expedition becomes very real." "Seems to be a gateway for me..." "Where the trek finally ends and now we are starting into thinking about climbing the mountain..." "This is a very solemn place..." "It's where our humanity meets the top of the world and the heavens... because all these stonework's that represent that lost their lives on the mountain shows the effort and the loss..." "Well, this is a mostly..." "you'll see Sherpa climbers here..." "But these days, they are sharing with the Westerners, too..." "I knew Scott Fischer a little..." "He was one of the toughest mountaineers I ever knew..." "When you think he and Rob Hall could die on Everest, it means that anybody could die on Everest..." "It reminds us of our mortality and reminds us that we have to know when it's time to turn back, and try and always make the right judgment calls..." "Not go beyond our capabilities..." "Everest is worth climbing, but not worth dying for, that's for sure..." "There is a young Sherpa boy..." "He was on another team..." "There was only three teams in 95 on the mountain..." "And we were going on up to Camp 3 and we were at the bottom of the Lhotse Face and he was getting nearer to the camp and he didn't clip into the fixed line..." "And he fell, and we watched him fall, all the way down the mountain..." "Leaving a trail of blood..." "By the time he hit the bottom of the mountain he was already dead..." "And it was the first time we had seen anyone die on the mountain..." "And it always reminds us just how dangerous that Lhotse Face is..." "I always just come up here and just spend a minute..." "There's too many up here... too many..." "While certainly no 5 star hotel and after 10 days on the trail," "Base Camp is a virtual Shangri" " La." "Home sweet Home..." "Located on the Northwestern edge of the Khumbu Glacier and situated against the West shoulder of Everest, this piece of communal real estate is free of avalanches, rock- slides and falling ice seracs..." "Apa." "I'm save arrived..." "Sun's out it's a gorgeous day..." "Be a hell of a lot better if you didn't show up." "I was having a good time..." "I hope my bags unpacked you son of a bitch..." "We told them to take it back down the Khumbu..." "Too much weight it killed about 3 yaks trying to get all your stuff in..." "I was expecting to have my tent up by now..." "I don't see my tent..." "Uh, Bob, where's my tent?" "Each climbing season, Base Camp must be built from scratch." "The only materials used are the rocks and boulders that are churned out by the ever-shifting glacial moraine..." "While comparatively safe, life on the lateral moraine of a glacier does have its challenges," "It's hard, it's cold and it moves." "A 5 foot per day glacial flow slowly agitates years of biological waste deposited at the upper camps." "A continual contamination of ground water is a constant health hazard for the people living at Base Camp during the climbing seasons." "The human waste problem at Base Camp is hard to distinguish from the animal waste problem at Base Camp." "What we've found so far is that the water supplies in some places are showing moderate contamination with fecal coliform." "And fecal coliform is an indication of contamination by biological waste." "Whether it's by humans or yaks, we don't know, we can't tell that here." "But what we are finding is that some areas that people use for water sources are actually contaminated, and that makes us, obviously, change our water sources, be more careful with the water that we're drinking." "And, uh, trying to make sure that any human waste that's generated here is definitely contained and treated" "so that we're not contributing to that problem..." "At this elevation the amount of oxygen in the air is half of what it is at sea level, which makes the actual act of cleaning-up more difficult." "The Sherpas live at elevation some as high as 14,000 feet, which naturally allows them to physically accomplish what many people from sea level cannot." "We've hired an additional 22 high-altitude Sherpas to concentrate on the clean-up effort." "Our plan for camp 2, once we get it established is to have the Sherpas clean up as much of the exposed garbage as possible." "So far reports from the teams who have gotten in there have indicated that we have a very high snow and ice level up there." "It's going make finding this garbage and removing it a very difficult task." "The Sherpas will then continue up to camp 4 to remove some of the hundreds of oxygen bottles that are still up there as well as tent poles and general trash." "Before proceeding beyond Base Camp, each expedition conducts a puja ceremony." "The puja asks the spirits for understanding and tolerance of Human activities..." "Asks for luck, health, fair weather, and permission to climb the mountain..." "The puja is conducted by a monk or Lama." "The alter is built of stone and is part of the Base Camp set-up." "This is the heart of the worship site or Lhap- so..." "The climbing gear is laid near the fire." "This is so the smoke from the burning juniper branches may purify the crampons, ice axes and ropes so vital for the days ahead..." "On the morning of the puja, Sherpas and the westerners alike bring the sacramental offerings to the lap-so..." "Rice, incense,  beer, are traditional gifts to the spirits." "Near the end of the day-long ceremony, and with prayer flags in place, the center pole is raised to embrace the camp with good luck." "Finally everyone chants together while holding handfuls of flour..." ""Go up, may good fortune arise."" "hang which is a rice beer, is shared by all members of the expedition as a way of closing the ceremony." "Tomorrow the team will venture into the Khumbu Icefall and begin a week- long acclimatization at the higher camps." "Avalanches, falling ice seracs the size of houses, and aluminum ladders precariously balanced over crevasses- are all hazards in this lumbering river of ice." "More climbers have perished in the Khumbu icefall than on any other part of the mountain..." "Even the summit." "Human beings do not perform well at this elevation due to the lack of oxygen." "An acclimatization-process is necessary to adapt the body to the thin air of this new environment." "Time spent at the higher camps enable red blood cells to multiply which in turn will carry more oxygen." "The climbing team continue their acclimatization while the Sherpas push up to Camp 4 to begin the cleanup operation." "Although the Khumbu icefall is regarded as the most dangerous leg of the climb, the Lhotse face is no casual walk in the park." "It is a 4000 foot near-vertical wall of ice." "Like the icefall, multiple trips up and down only increase the danger for anyone traveling..." "Because the wind-blown South Col is accessible, we wanted to go up there and clean off the hundreds of oxygen bottles that have been left... and mainly, these are the large, heavy ones that no one wanted to bring down in the past." "Some of them weigh up to 15 pounds a bottle." "In Nepal, the average annual income is five hundred U.S. dollars per year." "At twenty-five dollars per oxygen bottle, this man will make his income in 4 trips to the South Col." "Down the hill he will walk with 5 empty Bottles in his pack... worth $125 U.S. dollars." "Ask any Sherpa why he climbs, and the answer is nearly always the same:" ""I climb today so my children do not have climb tomorrow."" "But how did the garbage come to be here in the first place?" "The climb up Everest itself is so arduous... so dangerous... so cold and windy... that past climbers felt lucky to get out alive." "They thought little about the trash they left behind." "The accumulation of garbage is simply the past 40 years of climbers reaching for the roof of the world... and often hastily retreating." "This is Pemba speaking from Camp 2..." "over..." "Base Camp, can you hear me?" "Our Sherpas are going up to South Col and starting to bring the oxygen bottles." "And I'm going to scale here, hoping to weigh some oxygen bottles..." "I'm going to send down from Camp 2 to Base Camp," "Because there are 9 Sherpas coming up tomorrow from Base Camp to Camp 2 and on the way back I'll send down there some garbage and empty oxygen bottles... over." "OK." "I understand." "It's possible for us to weight the bottles here instead of..." "Today's our rest day." "We're out looking for garbage and trash left by previous expeditions." "That's not going to well, because the snow- and ice-cap here at Camp 2 is way higher than normal." "Usually this is bare rock and you can see a lot of the trash, but now it's covered with snow and ice so we're combing the area without too much success." "A storm moves rapidly up the Western Cwm, temporarily halting the clean-up effort." "The climbers accompanied by several Sherpas retreat back to Base Camp with the first full packs of trash and oxygen bottles." "The remaining Sherpas will wait out the storm at Camp 2." "Once the weather clears, they will promptly resume the clean-up operation." "All the trash and bottles that come into Base Camp must be weighed and logged, to accurately compensate the Clean-up Sherpas." "As well as present a final report to" "The Sagarmatha Pollution control committee and on the oxygen bottles, here's how much per kilo... so if it's one 15-kilo bottle, or 6 for a TOTAL of 15, you get the same money by the weight." "So now can you say that one again?" "I just wanna make sure that I got it right." "Okay, so it's 15 kilograms..." "Okay now but how many rupees for the full trip?" "Camp IV to Base Camp is 3800 rupees." "I think most of the Khumbu Sherpas, they're all belong for the trekkings and climbing." "Because we don't have education." "We have a good school in Kathmandu, but we can't do anything." "If we want to learn about, like a doctor, at the doctor schools, engineering schools - everything is Kathmandu." "But, to the Sherpas who live in the mountain areas, they are good for the mountain areas." "Because they are used to the altitude..." "They'd like to study about the doctor and the engineer, but they don't have enough economic ...the problem of the economic." "So they are running for the Everest, and other mountains, because they get the good money." "Because, you know, this is my income..." "without this I don't have a job." "After this, I have like 5 or 6 months in Kathmandu without job." "Because my son, I have 2 boys..." "they are in school..." "I have to look after all of them... and I have to pay for the house rent..." "like every man." "And because of the expeditions and trekking, we get a good job, to earn money, and our children, they are very lucky, they can go to school in Kathmandu." "Otherwise they stay in our village... we don't have a good school in our village." "Sherpas are extremely good business people." "The families work in these units, so as a family unit, they will make a fairly substantial chunk of change." "Probably, in the end, more money that a U.S. guide would make on the trip." "Weather forecasting in the Himalaya is extremely challenging." "Expeditions rely on daily satellite images streaming in on the internet..." "Uh, we've got a weather report from Breckenridge next 5 days." "And that weather report is not good, repeat, the weather report is NOT good." "While the clean-up team of Sherpas tend against the inclimate weather at the high cam the subject at base camp is the rapidly closing summit window." "We are looking at a good day and I don't see the point of going 1 day behind nine-hundred million other people until we have a month of good days." "I think everyone realizes or feels like at least I feel like we got only one summit in this group, we are not going to go up twice and if we put this much effort and time we should wait for a better window deal." "What's the downside of waiting at Camp 2 rather than waiting here?" "What you gain in acclimatization you lose in strength, and the balance is not equal, and while you acclimatize a little more, you may have a little less of a headache when you get up to 4, you've grown that much weaker." "At Base Camp your maintaining." "But I am looking at the weather and the weather has not been good," "It has not been the weather I've seen on this mountain 3 previous times." "Know that the disasters that have occurred have been three things;" "you've got bad weather, high winds, deep snows, you're not going to get to the summit, a couple of people do..." "If you have long lines of people going on up, and you get caught up in a cue more or less to speak, you don't make it." "And you go up too high and your sitting there waiting for your summit, you're so beat up, you don't make it." "Weeks of living and working at this altitude continue to take its toll the climbers." "Team member Rob Chang has fallen ill and has little choice but to leave the expedition." "I've been climbing for 11 years." "Going down, I know what it means." "But like I said, I don't want to become a liability here." "I'm not getting better..." "I'm kinda feeling worse, so..." "It's always a matter of judgment in terms of the time it takes for your body to acclimatize." "Which is a finite process that you have to spend time getting used to this altitude, so you're comfortable breathing." "Your body needs time to acclimatize to that." "On the other hand, the other thing that's happening to your body is there is a continuous, slow deterioration process going on." "And so it's a balance of the time it takes to acclimatize, and get that done properly, and not wait too long, and let the deterioration process get ahead of the acclimatization process, and then you have a net loss." "Living at extreme altitude is not physiologic." "It's man wasn't made to live here for a long period of time, and in fact, there are no indigenous populations that live this high." "Part of the problems are that you don't sleep as well... you mal-absorb fats, particularly you tend to lose weight... with that you lose vigor." "...and then the thing that you don't wanna have happen is the body begins to metabolize the muscle mass... and that results in weakness, and weakness does not work when you're climbing Everest..." "you gotta be strong." "We do everything we can to prevent weight loss:" "we have huge high calorie meals... many of us take supplements of different kinds to keep the calories on." "In fact, I've always thought I could open a Mt." "Everest Weight-loss School and guarantee our participants in writing the loss of weight." "There's no way you can maintain your weight up here." "And that's we're sorta facing here as we wait out the weather." "Sherpas continue to make progress on cleaning up the high camps amidst deep snow and harsh weather..." "We have 324 oxygen bottles." "Expecting another approximately 40 or 50 today and tomorrow." "Trash-wise, we brought a bunch of trash down from Camp II, and that's been mostly food waste, old tents, tent poles, gas cans, there's some batteries, and the total on that is approximately 500 pounds." "We're picking up some of the oldest bottles, and the heaviest bottles earlier teams which were helping out with cleaning-up didn't bring down because of their weight." "All of the oxygen bottles that've been brought down are dated, and this particular bottle was manufactured in June of 1951." "The first team to go up was in 1952, it was a Swiss team." "The leader, a gentleman by the name of Lambert, and Tenzing Norgay, reached the place we call The Balcony, at about 27,000 feet..." "In other words, they almost made it to the summit." "They came very, very close, and we believe very strongly that this is one of those bottles from that very first attempt." "Or, in other words, the very first oxygen bottle that was ever dropped at the South Col." "There were a number of these little fat ones..." "We've all seen pictures of the Hillary-Tenzing climb..." "This is the exact bottle that Hillary and Tenzing used on the '53 climb." "This style of bottle was only used by that team." "It was a military bottle that was manufactured for the British military." "After that all climbers were getting their bottles from Europe, and they were privately manufactured." "So we have 2 real antiques." "Finally, after nearly 7 weeks," "Bob Hoffman receives the weather report he has been waiting for, the summit is clear..." "What this is giving you is a constant feed of O2... at 2 liters, 3 liters, whatever, per minute." "You'll probably find that you, up high, will wanna have your mask on most of the time." "I'm kind of conflicted about it." "On 1 hand, I find it very constricting." "I feel as though I'm being asphyxiated." "I wanna rip the mask off, and yet, I can feel my fingers getting warmer, my toes begin to warm up, and I move faster." "And so, I think the benefits far out-weigh the negatives of using an oxygen apparatus." "This is the glamorous side of mountaineering, right here." "I was just checking E-mail from my youngest son, and he says, Dad, be careful, I don't wanna lose you now." "And I thought, God, what am I doing to the people at home?" "I got a tear in my eye thinkin'" "I've got this 18-year-old kid afraid I'm gonna die." "And I have no intention of dying, but we always have that risk." "I think not enough exposure is given to this side of mountaineering, because it really is in some ways a selfish sport, because I don't think enough of us pay attention to what effect it has on others..." "So I just think about the glamour and beauty and all the height." "It's good on the climbing." "It's good to think people back home." "The anxieties and in some case the sufferings they go through." "On Sherm's 3rd Everest trip, one slip in the middle of the night nearly cost him his life..." "I think we were just below the Balcony and suddenly boom!" "I don't know exactly what happened, I think I just misplaced a crampon." "I went down, and when you go down on a steep, icy surface you begin to enjoy the effects of uncontrolled gravity." "A crevasse saved Sherm from falling off the 5000 foot face of Everest." "Bob Boice witnessed Sherm's fall and traversed in the dark along the icy balcony to reach him." "Boice abandoned his own summit aspirations to short-rope his injured friend the 5 hours down to Camp 4." "Others joined in the rescue effort, in what would be an excruciating two-day descent to Base Camp." "Sherm was evacuated with severe, multiple injuries that would take nearly a year to recover from..." "Hoffman's team will be one of the last expeditions to the summit this season." "Additional clean-up Sherpas will accompany the climbers to the summit to do a final sweep of the upper mountain." "As long as we don't get any more snow tonight, we'll be all right." "I'm just concerned about more snow, because that could give us avalanche danger." "But if we don't get any more snow tonight, we can cut a trail on up." "The wind is from the south... and it's never good when the clouds are moving in outta the south." "That's always what I've always looked for." "We normally get the winds off Everest going in the more northerly, ah, easterly direction..." "But shit, movin' outta the south..." "And until that wind shifts, we're gonna continue to have this." "I think all of the waiting around was worth it." "I mean it was hard for everybody, including the people who were making decisions about when to go, but now we're up here and I think we're ready to do it." "We still have a long way to go..." "I don't know if the weather's gonna be on our side or not..." "But I mean who knows, the spirit of these mountains can do very funny things... and if not, today might have been just a long training exercise." "The weather up here is a crap shoot, and if what Apa said yesterday is right, from here on out it's monsoon season, so, we should stay up here, and give it a crack." "So I want everyone into Camp 4 by noon-time, so we'll get an early start..." "We'll be hydrating and resting, and then we'll start out for the summit somewhere between 10:00 and 11:00 o'clock at night." "Climbing through the night..." "Our goal is to be on the south summit between 6 and 7 o'clock in the morning, and on the summit between 8 and 10, and then back down to 4..." "Stay the night at 4... 2... 2 back here to Base Camp, and then it's party time." "Chuck Huss and Dan Smith are stricken with altitude-related illnesses, and will stay behind at Camp 4." "Six American climbers and 12 Sherpas depart for the summit before midnight." "The team leaves the night before to give themselves extra time to reach the summit and descend before the periless afternoon storms arrive." "For the next 7 hours, the team will climb in complete darkness." "As dawn breaks, the sun is out... but ominous clouds form below and the winds above begin to increase." "Apa and 3 Sherpas are out in front, breaking trail..." "Apa fixes the rope lines up the 40-foot exposed face known as the Hillary step..." "From the summit the first transmissions are heard..." "Apa and three Sherpas went to the summit." "Apa Sherpa summits Mt." "Everest for the eleventh time and establishes a world record..." "His moment of personal glory is fleeting as Apa descends back into the worsening storm, looking for Sherm Bull." "Nearing the Hillary step," "Apa encounters Lily Leonard, Jim Williams and Francis Slakey." "All three will soon summit each for the first time..." "The storm continues to intensify..." "This is Base Camp." "Where are you do left?" "How are you doing?" "Over." "Complete white-out conditions here..." "Can't see a damn thing..." "I'm stuck in place..." "There's no Sherpa following me..." "And the team's totally spread out." "At 11 AM and in the complete white-out, Pemba Nurbu is the last to summit." "Pemba and 3 cleanup Sherpas descend, cleaning up discarded oxygen bottles as they go." "Below the south summit, Bob Hoffman wisely decides to abandon his summit bid." "Alone and with snow blindness in one eye, he turns and descends toward the South Col..." "500 feet below the summit Apa finds Sherm Bull..." "Unwilling to allow the storm to daunt him," "Sherm pulls himself methodically up the fixed lines." "Taking into consideration the intensity of the storm," "Apa convinces him to turn back and give up his dream..." "Sherm and Apa is turning back..." "For those in Base Camp, all that is left to do is to wait for confirmation that the team has arrived back safely at Camp 4." "Bob Boice, alone at the south summit, calls in to report that his oxygen tank has frozen up." "Hello Ben, it's Robert..." "Ran out of o's between the summit and the step..." "Jim Williams intercepts the transmission." "Boice, relax start breathing..." "get yourself in a comfortable place..." "It may take some time eventually finding Bob Boice weak and very cold." "Williams replaces the frozen tank and the two descend together back to Camp 4..." "It has been 22 hours since the team left Camp 4..." "They now begin a 2-day descent to Base Camp." "In their final sweep of The upper mountain and the South Col the Sherpas will pack out more than 100 spent oxygen bottles and other refuse." "I'm so proud of you, hon." "You don't know how much." "Man, that was a bitch of a day and you just didn't wanna hear what I wanna do." "I'm super proud of you." "I'm 58-years-old, and it kicked the stuffing outta me coming down..." "But coming down was really life threatening..." "I mentioned to you that I had one eye shut down..." "I had to take off my goggles, so I knew I was susceptible to snow-blindness, but I couldn't see outta them..." "And this blizzard, we had a white-out the whole time we were up there... and so what I was having to do... is..." "we had a line of ropes going up, and I clipped into a figure-8 and repelled backwards, where I could kinda see where the rope was coming from..." "But I kept on stumbling into deep snow drifts." "This frost-bite..." "I think it's almost worse maybe 5 days after it happens... supposed to when it has actually occurred." "I mean I've never really had a bad case before, but I knew at The Balcony that I was gonna have... frost-bite..." "I'll be honest with you, I'm really scared..." "I hope I don't..." "like, lose anything ...like any tips... you know, that wouldn't be good... you just don't realize how much you depend upon your fingers until you lose them..." "for a few... for a few days." "Actually we get on the summit at the right time, around 8 o'clock on the summit." "First I went to the summit, I went to fix the rope up to the summit, then I come back to Hillary step where I met Lily, then went back to the summit again." "3 times." "This time I want to get all the teams to the summit, but the weather changed and only the three summated..." "So you see it as your job to get the whole team on the summit?" "On the top..." "I want to get all of them on the summit, but the weather had changed..." "The next thing you know, Apa pops over the hill." "This guy, I'm tellin' ya..." "I just can't..." "Oh, you've heard about him..." "I can't say enough about him." "Not just as a Sherpa, but as a person." "So he comes over the hill, and I'm struggling away, and he said," ""Sherm, I wanna get you to the summit more than anything in the world."" "And he said, "You know, I think, probably, I could, get you there."" "But then he said, "I dunno about getting you down, Sherm."" "He said, "I think you might die."" "And then he said the thing that really got me, he said," ""I think a Sherpa might die doing it."" "I said, "Apa, I take your advice 100%." "I would never put someone else's life at risk for somethin' I wanna do." "I mean it's one thing if a climber wants to risk his own scrawny neck, that's somethin', but to take somebody else's life, put that at risk, there's no, no one has the right to do that" "particularly on an egotistical adventure like climbing a mountain." "I thought it over about 10 seconds and I said," ""Apa, let's go down..." "let's go down."" "And I gave up my dream, and I got a little emotional about giving up my dream... been trying to do this thing for almost 10 years now... but... there are more important things I chose in life" " I chose my wife," "I chose my family, I wouldn't jeopardize those things..." "Bob, are you gonna be dancing this evening?" "I don't think so..." "just being here... thank you... just being here is about all I can manage." "He loves that bathrobe." "The Inventa Everest 2000 Environmental Expedition left Base Camp with 632 discarded oxygen bottles... and over 600 pounds of garbage from the high camps." "3 Western climbers and 10 Sherpas reached the summit of Everest... and a new world record was established by Apa Sherpa." "For the Sherpas this ends the climbing season, many will return next year to support other expeditions..." "Our simple message is..." "that no matter where we live... no matter what we do... we can do a better job in cleaning up our own environment." "If we were able to come to some place as difficult, and with an environment as harsh as Mt." "Everest has, and clean it up, there's nothing we can't do in the world in helping the environment." "The Silk Road" "In the West stood a continent built on lofty ideals and grand ambition." "In the East, towered an empire of unimaginable size and splendor." "For thousands of years these two civilizations had thrived in seeming isolation." "Two men stepped into the void." "Marco Polo was lured by the promise of unprecedented wealth." "Sven Hedin by a thirst for adventure and the trappings of world fame." "Confronted by the most daunting terrain on earth, they went in search of the impossible" "a lasting connection between East and West" "Along the old Silk Road." "Italy, 1296 A.D." "A Venetian trader languishes in jail and wonders if he will ever get out." "His name is Marco Polo and he's now a prisoner of war the victim of an ongoing conflict between Genoa and his native Venice." "Polo is afraid he will die here in jail and he's come up with an amazing strategy for survival." "A book about his life and his travels." "An incredible story that might allow his name to live on forever." ""There has been no man, Christian or pagan," "Mongol or Indian, or of any race whatsoever, who has known or explored so much of the world and its great wonders as have I, Marco Polo."" "He writes about his incredible trek across lethal mountains and deserts... to Cathay, modern day China: a magical country at the end of the earth." "A land so wealthy that its ruler could entertain 40,000 guests at a time." "A civilization so advanced they could predict the movement of the heavens." "A culture so generous that husbands even shared their wives with strangers." "Marco Polo's book was a success." "His journey to Cathay has become one of the most famous adventure stories ever written." "But it is full of such incredible tales of discovery and intrigue that it leaves everyone wondering the same thing:" "Could it possibly be true?" "Or is Polo's adventure along the old Silk Road actually a masterpiece of the imagination?" "In the first century B.C., imperial Rome dominated the west, Han China the east." "A world apart, these two superpowers knew little of each other's existence." "The seductive beauty of one substance drew them closer." "It all began in Mesopotamia. 53 B.C." "Roman legions were on the brink of a historic victory against the Parthian army." "Unexpectedly, the Parthians unfurled huge banners of a magical translucent material." "The Roman army had never seen anything like it, and fled in confusion leaving 20,000 dead on the battlefield." "Fear turned to fascination and silk quickly became the rage in ancient Rome." "The Chinese fabric was soon worth its weight in gold." "Traders saw their chance." "Caravans braved the 5000 miles separating China and Rome." "Cities sprung up in the deserts and plains to service the traders." "Along with the goods flowed ideas that revolutionized the cultures along the way." "Buddhism and Islam spread eastwards." "Printing and papermaking went West." "The Silk Road pioneering connection between East and West was established." "People have a mental vision that the Silk Road is like I95, a huge long highway and that one person took some silk from one end all the way to the other." "And in fact that almost never happened." "Merchants would take the goods from one oasis to another and then another group of merchants would take them on." "So I think the Silk Road is not the road." "I think the most important things are those communities along the Silk Road." "For nearly a thousand years these communities thrived." "In the 10th century, China collapsed in civil war, and it was no longer safe to travel in the East." "In the chaos, the Silk Road fell silent." "The desert cities that depended on its traffic were abandoned." "As shifting sands buried their memory, the link between East and West was broken." "350 years later, in 1254, a young boy named Marco Polo was born in Venice, Italy." "Marco grew up a forgotten orphan on the docks and canals of the city." "Marco Polo did not have a conventional and happy childhood." "His father left before he was born and his mother died when he was relatively young." "But actually that relatively unhappy childhood provided him with certain skills that would turn out to be very important for him on his travels." "He learned to get along with a wide variety of peoples." "One day Marco's world was turned upside down." "A stranger walked into his life." "It was his father." "It was the first time the two had ever met." "And the boy listened in awe as his father explained his 14 year absence." "He said he had made an incredible overland journey to a magical land in the East." "He talked about a foreign people the Mongols and their massive empire, the biggest the world had ever seen." "And explained how he had just risked his life to personally visit its capital in Cathay, modern day China." "Young Marco was stunned." "China, in the 13th Century to a Venetian, is probably the most foreign place that there is," "maybe like the South Pole is to us today." "That you can go but it's a huge journey." "Not many people go." "There are incredible logistical difficulties." "Marco's father also claimed to have risen to favor with Kublai Khan, the new Mongol king." "He insisted he was sitting on a gold mine." "For with the Khan's favor, he would have prime access to all the treasures of the East." "If the Polos could make it to China and back again, they'd be able to reestablish overland trade links between two very wealthy civilizations." "The sudden reappearance of his father must have stimulated him to think about perhaps joining him on a travel of his own." "Going to China for Marco Polo would be the most extraordinary adventure of his entire life." "They probably don't suspect they're going to get all the way to China." "But I think there's enough talk at the time about modern, what's now Turkey or what's now Iran that he would have been very excited." "Marco imagined his journey to the east the wealth of Cathay, the dangers ahead." "Some would say that an imaginary journey is all that he ever took." "According to his story, Marco Polo set off for China in 1271 A.D." "a merchant in search of the world's wealthiest market." "His 5000 mile overland journey took him through Tabriz, Baghdad, Hormuz the great bazaars of the Middle East where the trading energy of the old Silk Road is still alive." "Marco was encouraged by what he saw." ""Traveling merchants can make very good money." "For there is much gold and silk cloth of great value."" "Camping out in the open at night, Marco was careful to protect his profits." "Anybody who traveled on the Silk Roads had to be really quite brave and courageous." "Many people just didn't make it, in part because of banditry all along the route." "One night in Persia, Polo claims to have been robbed." "Many of his caravan were killed." "Marco was lucky to get away with his life." "It's not as simple as taking a plane in Venice and hopping over to Beijing." "This was a long, long and demanding journey." "After a grueling trek through modern day Iran and Afghanistan," "Polo describes his confrontation with the Pamirs, the infamous mountain range that separates East and West." "4000 meters above sea level, altitude and frostbite were the least of Polo's problems." ""There are innumerable wolves and the bones of their kill are stacked by the roadside to serve as landmarks to travelers in the bleak winter."" "Polo sought refuge in local villages." ""I give you my word that if a stranger comes to a house here to seek hospitality he receives a very warm welcome." "The host bids his wife do everything that the guest wishes." "The women are beautiful, vivacious and always ready to please."" "Marco Polo's description of these enticing beauties of the East, of their being so subservient fits in with a pattern that has continued throughout the ages of eastern women having some sort of exotic and erotic appeal." "There's an attempt to make the east more exotic than it really is." "According to his story, Polo now entered the Taklamakan desert the most forbidding obstacle along the old Silk Road." "With 1000 foot high dunes and swirling sandstorms, the Taklamakan is 600 miles of hell." "The Chinese call it the desert of death." "The temperature of the desert is formidable." "In the summer, the temperature can reach up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit." "There's no water, in the desert." "There's no wells." "So you're walking through a sea of sand and it's very difficult to think that you might come out the other end." "It is here that Polo and his story walk into a heated controversy." "Did Polo really make it across the Taklamakan into China?" "Or is the story of his arrival in the East a complete fabrication?" "Marco Polo has a format when he travels." "He goes from city to city." "He tells you where he is and he tells you how far it is from one point to the next." "When he goes to visit the Mongol capital he departs from that format." "He no longer tells you the cities in between where he is in north China and what's at the Mongol capital." "So the effect when you're reading it is very abrupt." "Did he go, how did he go, what cities are in between?" "And the only conclusion I can draw is he didn't go, that somebody told him about it and he just adds it in." "This was a custom of travel writing during that time." "You'd hear something and you'd claim that you actually had been and had actually witnessed the events that somebody else told you about." "This has been taken by some scholars to mean that he probably didn't travel all the way to China." "That is taking things a little too far." "Marco Polo wrote about his travels while he was in prison." "That obviously is going to affect the way he presents his information." "He's at a difficult time in his life and he wants to attract an audience so he's going to emphasize the strangest and the most interesting rather than the ordinary elements of his travels." "From his squalid cell in Italy," "Marco wrote about the luxurious court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol king, which he supposedly reached in 1275." "He told how in Shengdu, the city later immortalized as Xanadu, the trials of his 4 year journey suddenly seemed worthwhile." ""The Khan's palace is the largest in the world." "The roof is ablaze with every color it glitters like crystals and sparkles from afar." "The hall is so vast that it could seat 6000 for one banquet."" "The descriptions that Marco Polo provides for us, descriptions of Xanadu for example, the summer palace of Kublai Khan dovetail with what we know of the archeology of that city." "The city was excavated in the 1930s by the Japanese and they found that the placement of the buildings and the style of the buildings was exactly the way Marco Polo had described them." "The Venetian trader was equally impressed, it seems, by the mighty Yangtze river." ""It is the greatest river in the world." "More boats loaded with more dear things and of greater value come and go by this river than by all the rivers and seas used by the Christians."" "Marco could not have asked for more." "He had made it safely to China." "He had discovered a land of unimaginable wealth." "His quest to establish a lucrative trade connection with the east was very much on course." "It is here, on the threshold of his dream, that Marco's account turns fantastical." "He says that he sees a fish that's a hundred feet long that has fur on it." "He describes how the animals bow to visitors at the Khan's court." "Like the tigers came out and they take a bow on cue." "So you know it's just things that when you read it cannot have happened." "The bizarre sections in Marco Polo of animal headed people and strange looking fish, this is something that is not unusual." "The conventions of travel writing during that time fit in with the kind of mythologizing and fantasizing that Marco Polo includes." "Equally controversial is the total absence of any reference to unique Chinese rituals that would have amazed a European seeing them for the first time." "Marco Polo does not mention certain characteristics of China such as calligraphy, tea, bound feet because Marco Polo lived among the Mongols." "He dealt with Kublai Khan and the other members of the Mongol nobility." "He didn't deal with the Chinese." "So just because he didn't mention those things doesn't mean that he didn't reach China." "Marco Polo's defenders point to details which could not have been invented in Europe." ""Throughout the province of Cathay there are large black stones dug from the mountains which burn and make flames like logs."" "Marco Polo was the first European to ever write about coal a treasure that transformed the world." "Marco Polo was definitely in China." "I am absolutely convinced of it because of the tremendous detail in his book his descriptions of the Mongols:" "Mongol customs, Mongol dress, Mongol attitudes towards women." "And in addition he describes specific events so clearly." "The assassination of a finance minister." "Now who would have known about that if you hadn't been in China?" "The reason I don't think Marco Polo went to China is that there are basic factual inaccuracies in the book." "He says he's the governor of a town and we have a list of governors of that town, Yangzhou, and he's not on the list." "And the second is he says he's at a battle that took place in 1273 and we know the battle took place in 1268, which is before he gets there." "Perhaps the secret to the mystery of Polo's account lies in his prison cell in Italy." "Marco did not write the book himself." "He dictated it, during his year in jail, to his cellmate, Rustichello who happened to be a writer with a passion for fairytales." "Rustichello was a man whose renowned for writing romances and not actual descriptions of events." "And so obviously the fact that Rustichello rather than Marco Polo set down the work may have added some of these legendary and mythical qualities to the work that Marco Polo had not intended." "The only verifiable piece of evidence from Polo's life his will reveals that he died a wealthy man." "Yet his nickname"Il Milione" the big one mockingly referred to the size of his imagination, not his bank balance." "Marco was defiant till the end." "When asked by his friends on his deathbed in 1324 whether he had really been to China, Marco replied:" ""I have only told you half of what I saw."" "Marco Polo died surrounded by doubters, yet his influence on the history of exploration is undisputed." "His controversial book became the bible for a new generation of explorers." "The inspiration for Christopher Columbus' historic discovery of the new world." "The greatest impact Marco Polo has on later explorers is planting the idea that you can go to exotic places and write about them and become famous." "When you think about it nobody before him is famous as an explorer." "So he becomes the first famous explorer, adventurer." "Whether Marco Polo did make it China or not, one thing is certain." "His dream of pioneering a trade connection between East and West was never realized." "China again dissolved into civil war, making travel in the East impossible." "The tantalizing promise of the Silk Road once again faded into the past craving fulfillment in another age." "600 years later, an ambitious explorer set out in Marco Polo's footsteps." "Unlike Polo, Sven Hedin was not in search of wealth." "He was after something far more elusive and dangerous." "Stockholm, Sweden. 1949." "Sven Hedin, the 84 year old explorer, prepares a memoir of his life." "In his prime he heroically explored the earth's final frontier." "He discovered lost cities of the Silk Road, bringing to life a forgotten civilization." "Hedin, the ambitious adventurer, had won the adulation of the world." "He was the Neil Armstrong of his day." "You know, Inner Asia was the moon." "And he went." "He was very famous, a rock star at the time." "But his passion for the spotlight led to a very dangerous liaison." "After the war, Sven Hedin was obliterated from the memory of Europe." "He was a persona non grata." "Nobody wanted to touch him after the second world war." "Sven Hedin was really a person who you couldn't associate with." "In his memoir, Sven Hedin has one last chance to redeem himself." "Would he exorcise the demons of his past?" "Or would he die a forgotten man?" "April 24th, 1880." "15 year old Sven watches in awe as his childhood hero returns triumphant." "Stockholm harbor is a riot of pride and excitement." "Adolf Nordenskiold, the Swedish explorer, has come home the first person to sail around Russia back to Europe." "Together with his family he had climbed the mountains overlooking the harbor of Stockholm, from where he and thousands and thousands of Stockholm people watched the return of the ship." "A great national hero was created and Sven Hedin really wanted to step into his footsteps." "This dream of fame and adventure would drive Hedin all his life." "It was in Berlin, as a geography student that Hedin developed his lifelong obsession with central Asia." "At the turn of the 20th century," "Central Asia was one of the last unexplored frontiers on earth." "the distant prize of aspiring explorers and world statesmen alike." "For it was the center of a brooding cold war:" "a race between Britain, Russia and China to expand their empires in the region." "With the eyes of the world focused on this remote land, it was the perfect stage for the ambitious Hedin to make his name as an explorer." "At its heart, was a massive sea of sand known as the Taklamakan." "When Hedin decided on becoming an explorer, he wanted deserts." "Explorers should climb dangerous mountains and they should cross dangerous deserts." "That's what an explorer should do." "So he found this Taklamakan which according to him, no one ever had crossed, in living memory at least." "He wanted to be the first, to walk on paths where no man ever walked before." "Hedin was sure that beneath the Taklamakan's shifting sand lay ancient cities of the old Silk Road which had been lost to the world for over a thousand years." "If only he could discover the lost cities of the Silk Road," "Hedin believed his path to fame would be secure." "In 1893, Hedin obtained funding from the king of Sweden to explore the uncharted extremes of central Asia." "But his imminent departure was bittersweet." "Hedin was leaving behind the woman of his dreams." "Mille Bruman was beautiful and very wealthy." "Like Hedin, she was a romantic." "He adored her." ""She was magnificent in her youth, innocence and beauty." "She was blonde and had eyes of the most beautiful color."" "In Sven's mind, there was no doubt they would marry when he got back." "Kashi, modern day China." "Once known as Kashgar, a key market town along the old Silk Road." "Sven Hedin arrived here in 1894, after a grueling year long journey." "Kashi was the obvious base for Hedin's expedition for it stood on the edge of the Taklamakan the desert Hedin had come to explore." "With thousand foot sand dunes and 130 degree summer heat, the desert is one of the most forbidding places on earth." "Hedin began to make careful preparations for an expedition into the desert, when devastating news arrived." "When he was sitting there waiting for his camels there came a letter from home where somebody wrote that his love," "Mille Maria Bruman, was going to get engaged with someone else." "And his whole world shattered." "And he writes about his desperation that now nothing was worth anything." "He would do this absolutely crazy thing." "He would just venture into the desert and see what would come out of it." "Hedin was heartbroken." "Distraught and totally ill equipped, he set off on a suicidal quest to find a lost city in the desert." "He walked through the streets and the people formed lines and they cheered him and they cried and they said you will go to the desert of death and you will never come out alive." "And he walked through the streets with his laden camels and people said his camels are too heavy." "They'll not make it, he'll not come back from the desert of death." "They walked out to the edge of the desert and disappeared." ""One thousand heavy steps towards the goal." "Not one backwards was my motto."" "Stubborn and defiant, Hedin had started a deathmarch." "15 days into the trip," "Hedin realized his guides had not brought enough water." "The expedition was now in the middle of the deadliest desert on earth with only two days of water left." "Should they turn back?" "Or look for an oasis?" "Hedin, as ever, chose to push on." "Straight into the Karaburan an infamous storm that whips the sand into a punishing frenzy." "His expedition was now lost in the dreaded Taklamakan." "The name 'Taklamakan' from the Uighur translates is" ""you go in but you do not come out."" "By 9 o'clock in the morning having spent 2 and a half hours loading your camels to get ready for the day's march, you could have drunk the water by then, let alone keep it and have precious sips throughout the day," "to try and cover a pitiful maybe five miles at most." "Because the nature of the sand dunes is such you can't go in a straight line or very fast." "Then the sand just gets into every part of your body your nose, your eyes, your ears just become blocked with it." "And your lips were split." "Your tongue was swollen and sticking to the roof of your mouth." "Over the course of the next 5 days, 2 of Hedin's team died from dehydration, and one collapsed with exhaustion." "Finally Hedin and a local guide, stumbled across footsteps which they prayed would lead to water." ""Why should I die, in the embraces of this deceitful desert, for an unfaithful girl?" "I will conquer the desert and return home a hero and all my people will see it as a manly and courageous deed."" "But the footsteps were their own." "They had walked in a circle." "The guide gave up, leaving Hedin alone to crawl to a parched death." "He struggled on." "After 6 days without water, Hedin finally found the Khotan river." "Luck and unbelievable perseverance had saved him." "His whole life was characterized by this will to achieve to prove himself, to prove that he was not a failure." "The failure that he had become when she turned him down." "Six months after his first disaster, Hedin was back in the Taklamakan." "More determined than ever to find the footsteps to fame." "One night, a local brought Hedin some woodcarvings he had found in the desert." "Mysterious objects which might lead him to the lost civilization buried beneath the sand." ""In spite of my misfortunes the previous spring," "I was again drawn irresistibly toward the mysterious country under the eternal sand."" "This expedition was different." "The water bottles were full, the winter air cooler." "After a 5 day trek into the Taklamakan," "Hedin finally came across signs of an abandoned city." "He stopped and looked for confirmation." "The evidence was undeniable." "He had found Dandanuilik, a lost city of the Silk Road." ""No explorer had an inkling, up till now, of the existence of this ancient city." "Here I stand, like the prince in the enchanted wood, having wakened to new life a city which has slumbered for a thousand years."" "Hedin's discovery was just a beginning." "It started one of the greatest archeological races of the 20th century." "Hedin's main contribution to the Silk Road is that he starts the race to discover all the Silk Road sites." "He is never the person who figures out the historical significance of any given site." "But, he's the person who gets other people to go and figure those things out." "Using Hedin's pioneering maps, famous archeologists like Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot raced desperately to find other lost cities of the Silk Road." "For these Europeans, it was much more than a race for buried treasure." "It was a battle to appropriate the history of an area they hoped to control in the future." "The Silk Road, a forgotten ideal, was once again a global concern." "Despite his success, Hedin was still infatuated with Mille." "The proud Swede wrote her a letter, wishing her happiness with her future husband." "She was at that time on vacation in Norway and she had decided to break up the engagement because the one she really loved was Sven Hedin." "So she wrote this letter to Sven Hedin." "She went to the post office to drop it in the post box and the postman says oh here's a letter for you from Sven Hedin." "And she got this message that he wanted her to be happy with her new husband." "And she thought that now he has forgotten her." "So she got married and he went to new expeditions." "Wounded and defiant, Hedin pushed harder on his quest for fame." "Over the next 10 years, this solitary, driven man set out to chart the earth's final frontiers." "He traveled more than a third of the world's circumference, mapping an area twice the breadth of the United States." "He was the first to explore the mighty Transhimalayan Mountains in Tibet, the first to trace the source of the Indus River." "I think that the ideal of Sven Hedin was the strong and lonely man." "He said that the best thing with the desert is that there are no people." "A real man was a lonely man." "His ideal was the lonely leader who took his responsibility and did great things for the nation, for mankind." "As he put Central Asia and the Silk Road back on the world's map," "Hedin became one of the most celebrated explorers of the day." "On January 17th 1909, Sven Hedin returned to Sweden a hero." "Sven's childhood dream had come true." "Thousands of Swedes were there to greet him just as they were for Nordenskiold, 30 years earlier." "But it still wasn't enough." ""The joy I felt to be reunited with my parents and siblings and to be greeted by the old king was darkened because she was not there to greet me."" "Alone in his moment of triumph," "Hedin craved adulation on an ever larger stage." "It was a path that would ultimately end in tragedy." "In 1914, Europe slipped into world war." "As the conflict intensified, Sven Hedin headed for the frontline as a war correspondent for the German high command." "There are many reasons why Sven Hedin supported Germany throughout his life." "Germany, the scientific community, always supported him." "He came from a background in Stockholm where one always were close to the Germans, so that was a natural thing." "But the really decisive factor was his belief in geopolitics." "Like many Swedes, Hedin believed that Germany was the only power capable of protecting Sweden from a Russian invasion." "When Germany lost the war, allied countries like England and France retracted the honors they had bestowed on him." "Hedin was on the wrong side." "He would defiantly stay there for the rest of his life." "Unperturbed, the explorer focused on writing books about his previous expeditions." "In 1920, Mille got back in touch with him." "They had had some meetings." "She had children and she, she wrote a letter to him." "That she could never forget, forget him." "He was the love of her life, and couldn't they get back together." "And he wrote back that you know what is done is done." "Never turn back; 1,000 heavy steps towards the goal, but not one backwards." "Hedin returned to Central Asia:" "the region he now called his "frozen bride."" ""She has held me captive in her cold embrace, and out of jealousy would not let me love any other." "And I have been faithful to her, that is certain."" "Hedin's new project was to draw up maps for a revolutionary new Silk Road a massive motorway that would run 5000 miles from Peking all the way to Vienna." "Hedin's pioneering maps were the basis for the overland highway that today links Asia with Europe." ""This highway should unite two continents, Asia and Europe;" "two cultures, the Chinese and the Western."" "Sven Hedin, the man who had rediscovered the Silk Road 40 years earlier had now given it a new lease of life." "The world famous explorer now gambled his celebrity on a highly controversial cause." "Hedin's achievements had attracted influential admirers." "One was Adolf Hitler." "There was a special relation between Sven Hedin and Adolf Hitler who had only had two heroes in his life, and one of them was Sven Hedin." "It was Sven Hedin's stories that had kind of awakened the young Adolf Hitler to the world." "So when they met in the '30s and the beginning of the '40s," "Hitler wanted to talk about all the heroic things that Sven Hedin had done." "Hedin, the attention seeker, was flattered." "In 1936, he gave the opening speech at the Olympic games in Berlin." "For Hedin, Germany had always been a symbol of honor and discipline." "He would refuse to see that the Third Reich was the cause of the horrors to come." "In 1940, an eye disease that plagued Hedin all his life resurfaced, and the explorer went partially blind." "A Norwegian resistance fighter was brought to Sven Hedin to tell him about the torture that he had sustained on the hands of, of German soldiers." "And Hedin couldn't believe him because it just didn't fit his image of what a German soldier is." "And then the Resistance man told him that his face was badly scarred." "And he took Sven Hedin's hand and Sven Hedin could feel the scars." "And the story goes that Hedin's eyes then are filled with tears but still he couldn't believe that a German soldier could do something like that." "In 1945, when the atrocities of Hitler's regime were undisputed," "Hedin chose to ignore them." "He was always very naively attracted to these men of power." "And it's never as glaring as when it comes to Adolf Hitler." "Sven Hedin simply didn't want to see that this was an evil man." ""One thousand heavy steps towards the goal." "Not one back."" "The motto that led Hedin to triumph in the desert now led him to disgrace in Europe." "An unrepentant Nazi sympathizer, Hedin was an international outcast." "Banished from the world stage, the defiant explorer wrote about his past in the limelight." "Hedin sent a letter to a friend's 15 year old daughter." ""I understand that you will speak at school about my travels in Asia." "Greet the deserts and mountains when you speak to them, but tell them that I do not long after them anymore."" "After World War II, Hedin never returned to Asia." "When the Communists seized control of China in 1949, they severed all links with the West." "The Silk Road Hedin's lifelong obsession was once again abandoned." "Sven Hedin died in his sleep in 1952 at the age of 87." "By his bed was a photo of his beloved Mille, with an inscription on it:" ""You have been by my side on all my travels"." "They lived by wind and wave, and knew these waters well." "Their people were lords of the sea." "Few built finer craft." "Few sailed faster... or farther." "But none of that could save this ship." "The sea would rise up and conceal its fate for nearly an eternity." "Summer 1997." "The US Navy's nuclear submarine, the NR-1 is on a mission in the eastern Mediterranean." "The sub's advanced sonar detects several large objects in deep water that appear to be shipwrecks." "Though pressed for time, the crew decides to take a quick look." "A rough set of coordinates and a shadowy videotape are recorded on the fly." "Later, the crew will send word to a former naval officer- who is also one of the greatest undersea explorers in the world." "The man who discovered the Titanic, the Bismarck, and many other shipwrecks, Robert Ballard is immediately intrigued." "The sheer number of ceramic jars is impressive- but their meaning escapes this marine geologist." "Well, not being an archeologist, all I could tell was it's an ancient ship, but I didn't know anything more than that." "It lies at a forbidding 400 meters depth." "Is it worth investigating?" "Ballard will seek the advice of an expert." "Throughout the Mediterranean, most shipwrecks have been discovered in shallow water." "But this one was found nearly 50 kilometers off shore, opposite what was once a thriving seaport: the city of Ashkelon." "On the southern coast of present-day Israel," "Ashkelon's roots reach back nearly 6,000 years." "Crusaders and Muslims fought over this place." "Romans claimed it." "Babylonians destroyed it." "In the Bible, it was a stronghold of the Philistines." "Its earliest known inhabitants were the Canaanites." "Since 1985, archeologist Lawrence Stager, of Harvard University has directed excavations here." "His knowledge of ancient pottery is renowned." "In a tiny shard, he can 'see' an entire artifact, and pinpoint the culture that produced it." "Oh, now this is great." "This is Cypro-Geometric III." "This is most probably an import from Cyprus." "But things were not so clear in the Navy's videotape." "Well, when I first looked at it, I was a bit disappointed that it was so fuzzy, and couldn't really make out these jars very well." "Because that, of course, was the key to determining the age of the shipwreck." "But it seemed to me that they might be early, and possibly even 9th, 8th, 7th century BCE." "These two-handled storage jars, called amphoras, were first used throughout the Mediterranean around 4,000 years ago." "Distinctive styles evolved in various locales- a boon for archeologists who can use the jars as 'signatures' of time and place." "But sometimes two amphoras from vastly different eras can be deceptively similar." "These might be from the 5th Century A.D." "But Stager has a hunch they're much older." "He tells Ballard that if this wreck dates to the Iron Age, as he suspects, it is the first of its kind ever found in the Mediterranean." "It was a gamble but one that I was at least confident enough in that I would have put down a good-sized bet." "More than money would be wagered." "In the summer of 1999, the 'Northern Horizon' sets out from Malta." "Ballard and Stager lead an expedition to relocate and study the mysterious wreck." "At stake is their conviction that the combined strengths of oceanography and archeology can make history." "You know, when we found the Titanic, we found the Bismarck, we knew they existed." "They really were not a discovery." "They were a relocation." "These are true discoveries." "These are chapters of human history we don't know about, and I actually think they are more important." "Still, this expedition begins like any other." "Okay, ladies and gents!" "Make sure your life jackets are right before I shout you out else I'll give you to Albert!" "Safety training is mandatory for everyone on board- forty-nine scientists, engineers, programmers, ship's mates and graduate students." "When you jump in what's the correct way to hold your life jacket?" "Yeah, and your nose." "Smashing." "Landlubber or seadog, no one is exempt." "No one." "Larry!" "Can't get it any tighter!" "The Northern Horizon has been transformed into a floating research facility." "Over 55 tons of equipment were shipped from the United States." "Several larger items have been welded to the deck." "For nearly two decades," "Ballard has worked with an expert team out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute." "Martin Bowen and Andy Bowen have been key members of many expeditions." "Inside, Stager's archeology team has established its own 'headquarters'." "Hey, team, excuse me, I just got some interesting information from Bob;" "he just gave me the coordinates." "They're right on the ancient routes that some have predicted between the cedars of Lebanon and Egypt." "His team includes four graduate students, as well as an expert on ancient ships, nautical archeologist" "Shelley Wachsmann of Texas AM University." "These ships might have had pretty wide beamy hulls and so forth?" "Wachsmann:" "They seem from all the iconography we have from this period that the merchant ships were extremely beamy and broad hulled." "Yeah." "If this dates to around 700 BC this is the first ship ever found that dates to that time period." "You have to remember that ships tell the story of history." "I mean, there is nothing that man ever made that was not carried on a ship, including the pyramids- stone by stone, not in one shot!" "And each one of these are literally a time capsule." "They went down in one moment, like that, and everything they were carrying on it at that one time went down together, and that tells us a story." "To reach the coordinates provided by the Navy will take about five days." "This is the calm before the storm." "We are very relaxed now, which is great." "People are charging their batteries, getting sleep, we just did the testing of the ship." "Everything's proceeding smoothly." "But once we get on site it'll kick in to around the clock." "And you will see people break up into three watches, and there will always be a team at work 24 hours a day." "Susan and Michael have the most difficult schedule in some ways because they work from 12 noon to 4 p.m." "and then from 4 p.m. to midnight, they have to sleep and that's a tough time to go to sleep at 4 o'clock in the afternoon." "But the reason they have to do that is because at 12 midnight they have to get back up and work the 12 midnight to 4 a.m. shift." "And go to the van." "Exactly." "And that's where everything is happening?" "Well it sounds like, from what they said, that the midnight to 4 a.m. shift actually is a time when a lot of things do happen." "On the Northern Horizon, 'navigation' involves a Global Positioning System and computer-controlled propulsion." "But a few thousand years ago, a sea captain had to rely on somewhat 'higher' powers." "The very heavens were his guide." "He probably spent a lifetime committing constellations to memory, observing the shifting angle of the sun." "The special temper of each wind, and the season of its coming." "The powerful currents hidden beneath the waves." "All these may have been the secrets of his trade." "Surely he watched for seabirds, heralds of an approaching shore, and for landmarks familiar as a friendly face." "But the nearness of land was not necessarily a comfort, and he likely kept his ship at quite a distance." "Well, generally the common wisdom has it that, for safety, the ancient mariners hugged the coast." "But when you think about it, the last thing an ancient mariner ever wanted to see during a storm was a quickly approaching the shore." "Plus there was piracy." "Piracy wasn't the type that you see in the movies, in the Caribbean where you're just sailing around in the middle of nowhere and suddenly another ship comes out." "Rather, they would watch from shore." "So you don't want to stay too close to shore, and if somebody comes out to attack, you want to have that leeway to get out of the way." "It's Day Five and nearly midnight when the Northern Horizon arrives on site." "The coordinates provided by the Navy are only approximate." "Margin of error might be up to a kilometer." "Ballard's team deploys a deepwater side-scan sonar." "The hope is it will pinpoint the same pattern of large objects detected by the Navy." "Slip his line, slip his line!" "As the sonar is towed, its fiber optic cable carries signals to the 'Control Van', nerve center of the expedition." "Sonar screens are not inherently exciting." "As the first watch hunkers down, everything starts to go wrong." "Okay, this course is going to take us into deep water." "It already is increased." "The ship can't seem to stay on track, and the sonar is pitched at an angle." "Pull up the winch." "The generator is not going to survive a lot longer." "They have to shut the generator off now." "This is the ship's?" "Now." "Yes, the ship's." "The ship has lost a generator." "Our speed over the ground is 5 knots." "Five knots?" "I'm shocked!" "If there's a current like 4 knots, we're not doing this site." "That could be a real showstopper right there!" "Unless the winch is rewired to another source of power on board, the expedition is dead in the water." "Time to improvise." "There's no way we can feed any power from below through the Scania circuit, right?" "Because I have someone now disconnecting the cables." "No estimated time on repairs." "Okay." "Got the hand crank?" "No..." "Such are the risks of trying out a brand new winch." "We're doing things we've never done before." "But that's why we're here." "We're always pushing the envelope." "The challenge is always the desire on the part of the scientists to do things that have never been done before and the operator's side not wanting to change anything, 'cause it works." "4 a.m. Mission accomplished." "It's a miracle that's the only guy that's a problem." "Power has been re-routed- and the hunt is on." "That looks pretty good now." "Do you see something that you believe?" "The sonar displays targets as subtle smudges." "It takes a trained eye to tell a shipwreck from a rock heap." "There dead ahead." "Zero three seven" "It's on the screen now." "Just starting' to appear." "There's something comin' in but it's on the right." "There's something there." "There's something there" "You're certainly within the range of Jason to see it." "It's about the right length;" "it looks like it's maybe 30 meters." "It's roughly in the right place." "It smells right." "Within twelve hours, the team locates three targets that line up in a similar configuration to the Navy's - but offset by half a kilometer from their coordinates." "Back to you, Larry." "I think we did it." "We did it." "Okay." "The weather's nice." "I think we'll go to 'Phase Two'." "It's a conditional victory." "Until they actually look at the targets, they won't know if they've hit pay dirt." "There's plenty of work ahead." "Better get something to eat below." "As one shift gives way to the next, notions of time begin to blur." "Day 6." "The team prepares to launch an extraordinary robot named Jason, designed and built at Woods Hole - and championed by a man with a life-long dream." "Robert Ballard can't remember a time he wasn't obsessed with the deep sea." "I mean my idol, as a kid- perhaps still is... was Captain Nemo." "He first dove in a submarine in 1969." "Later, he was part of the historic expedition that discovered hydrothermal vents and surprising life forms on the floor of the Pacific Ocean." "But he's always had a healthy respect for the deep." "Diving in a small submarine can be very dangerous." "Pressure is a funny thing 'cause you look out the window and you can't see it." "But it's there and the slightest mistake and the failure of your porthole or anything would be a catastrophic implosion - just pfft - you'd just vanish." "Ballard began to think that remote- controlled robots might be the answer." "The idea led to a prototype called 'Jason Jr.', rigged with four motors, a thirty-meter tether, and an electronic eye." "In 1986, on the Titanic, Jason Jr." "proved himself a nimble explorer." "Maneuvered by Martin Bowen from within a submarine, the little robot descended the grand staircase and danced beneath a chandelier." "That success launched a flurry of innovation at Woods Hole." "By the 1990s, Jason had become a technological wonder weighing just over two tons." "In a sense, he remains a work-in-progress- forever refined and improved." "But even his standard features are impressive." "Seven thrusters allow for precision maneuvering underwater." "Titanium components can withstand depths of 6000 meters." "Get it here and move the whole thing back." "Jason's video, film and electronic cameras can be remote-controlled by an experienced pilot." "Likewise his articulated arm, which can lift up to 15 kilos." "You know, right about here, Andy." "By about my foot." "To fire up such a complex machine takes teamwork and time." "Jason won't be ready to launch until well after dark." "It's a breathless moment just before Jason hits the water." "If a single component leaks, it could short-circuit the entire electrical system." "Okay, pins released." "But tonight it's 'all systems go.'" "Jason dives toward the most promising of the three sonar targets." "And we're off." "Roger, make it slow." "You're 110 meters out to the target." "At the controls is pilot Will Sellers." "He adjusts Jason's buoyancy by dropping ballast weights." "Amazing!" "Jason's own forward-facing sonar now scans the bottom." "A hundred and five meters." "Okay, it's off to the left." "Forty meters off to the left." "Is that it coming in?" "That's it." "Let's see what we've got." "Lot of pits" "That's just noise" "There it is." "That's not geology." "There it is." "Whatever it is." "That's it ahead." "Off to the right slightly." "That's an anchor." "There's the chain." "Yup, there's the chain." "Follow that chain, Will, to the right." "Come right." "That's the chain." "Metal chain, modern anchor." "This is no ancient ship." "So it's the other guy." "Yup." "That's the Queen Victoria." "That was target AA, right?" "Yeah so it means it's AC." "The brightest one is gonna be the oldest." "Well, there you are." "Anyway it was a hit." "Okay, so we don't care about this guy." "We want to drive to AC as fast as humanly you know, just head over there." "It'll take us a while, we'll go have coffee and celebrate." "We've got a ship, the wrong one." "But it means we know where the right one is." "Stager:" "My knees are weak." "From standing or the excitement?" "And then the anchor and then the chain." "Those apparently don't start before 1820." "So we might have a Victorian ship, we may not." "Who cares?" "It's two hours transit to the next most likely target - for some, a very long two hours." "Day 7. 5 a.m. Jason is back in action." "The Control Van is flooded with anticipation, exhaustion, and adrenaline." "That must be it." "That bright spot." "The bright spot, it's it." "That's it." "Magic." "Brightest thing on the screen." "That's gotta be the big one." "That's the mother lode." "The mother of all ships." "Eighty meters." "Remember that movie when the alien is being tracked?" "And it's coming towards you?" "'The alien is approaching our cabin, captain.' 45 meters." "And closing..." "Eighteen meters..." "There she blows!" "All right!" "Look at that!" "Fantastic!" "There we are!" "Oh, yeah." "Now we can see that they're not Byzantine, that's 8th Century." "That's..." "It's now your problem, Larry." "It's a problem I like." "This is the first iron age ship that's ever been found in the Mediterranean." "All right!" "And it's the biggest one." "I mean, there's nothing bigger." "Look at the corks." "Are they corked?" "No, no." "There's something in them." "They can't sediment that way." "But they can't sediment that way, unless they've been excavated." "I don't think so." "You can't fill them that way." "Look at those thing, still stacked." "And cooking pots too." "We didn't see those..." "Oh my." "Those are absolutely perfect 8th Century." "I was nervous that we were gonna relocate it, and then when I saw those amphoras," "I stopped looking at the ship at that point, and I'm looking at Larry, 'cause he's the one who knows what we have." "And then when you saw that big smile that we got the ship we wanted- as far as I was concerned the cruise was over." "Look at that." "It's the anchor." "The stone anchor!" "More than a night to remember." "It was ecstasy." "I haven't been so happy about an archeological discovery in years, maybe a lifetime." "Look at that, you can see the ridges on the high neck." "You know, when you have those kind of moments you never forget them, and this was mine." "For me, something that was incredibly evocative were the two cooking pots with, you know, maybe the last supper in them before the ship went down." "Yeah, I do think about people who went down." "Like a messenger from the future, Jason sheds light on a vessel that set sail around the time Homer is said to have written the Odyssey... when the Greeks began to celebrate the Olympic games... and a pair of twin brothers, according to legend," "founded a city called Rome." "The archeologists need a detailed, overall view, but Jason's lights can't illuminate the entire wreck." "To map the site, the robot moves over the ship in small increments and takes some 800 electronic close-ups." "On-board computers help merge these images into a black-and-white high-resolution 'photomosaic.'" "It speaks volumes about the world's oldest deep-sea shipwreck." "Some 300 amphoras preserve the shape of a long-vanished hull." "About 18 meters long, it was heading west when it sank." "A stone anchor marks the bow, cooking pots the stern." "All this, plus the style of the amphoras suggests it may be a Phoenician merchant ship, broad in the beam, with a curved horse-head bow." "Such ships are known from Assyrian carvings, and from a detailed description in the Bible, in the book of Ezekiel." "Of the Phoenicians, little tangible has been unearthed." "They lived along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from before 1200 BC through the Roman period." "But their real domain was the sea." "The greatest maritime merchants of the ancient world, they traded with Pharaohs, Greeks, and Romans, and left traces of colonies as far west as the Strait of Gibraltar." "Their rich purple dye was much prized, as were their cedars of Lebanon." "It was the Phoenicians who provided lumber and expertise when Solomon built his temple in Jerusalem." "Their skill at carving wood and ivory was unrivaled." "Sadly, only shreds of Phoenician literature survive." "But their simple alphabet was widely adopted, and would evolve into the Roman alphabet we use today." "Still, it was as seafarers that the Phoenicians most impressed the world." "A Greek historian claims they first circumnavigated Africa." "Others believe they even reached England." "It's as if the Phoenicians entrusted all their secrets to the sea." "Until now." "Day 8." "The team drops a rig called an 'elevator' to the bottom." "Later, it will raise precious cargo to the surface." "So, there are the pots right there." "Today's goal is 'retrieval'." "With hundreds of amphoras to choose from, the two lone cooking pots are top priority." "It won't be easy." "Pilot Matt Heintz is first to test Jason's new 'hand'- nicknamed 'Deep Spank' by the team." "You get it just like that, and hold it like that, so the weight's sitting on that." "Okay, we'll see if we can nudge it under there." "And avoid the handles." "Yeah." "They're not up to taking weight like that." "No one is quite sure how the pot will hold up." "First time that one's been moved in 2,700 years." "Yeah?" "I think it's the food's ready." "It's lost." "Okay, we gotta recover and change out." "For now, 'Deep Spank' disappoints." "It was a new modification that didn't work." "Engineering on the fly." "It's back to an old die-hard." "Scoops in underneath and then you close down on top." "We call it the cowcatcher." "It works." "Within hours, Jason is back on the bottom, with a priceless cooking pot in his 'cowcatcher.'" "Now this is archeology." "Quick and beautiful." "That dog can hunt!" "It's a triumph of technology each time Jason deposits an artifact in the elevator." "But it also means the wreck site has been altered." "Careful records must be kept." "Archeology is a destructive science." "It's like tearing pages out of a book." "Once you've removed something, if you haven't recorded it you've lost it forever." "Work continues until the elevator is full." "Then begins a slow ascent that will bridge nearly thirty centuries." "There it is right here." "Bob, we made a mistake." "We shouldn't have put both cooking pots in one load since there are only two of them." "Yeah." "Is that the right place?" "Is that the right place?" "The center!" "Okay, undo yours." "Let him just come straight up." "Take the slack off" "Don't tilt it." "Just stop it when it starts to swing." "Okay, don't pull hard guys." "Let him try to get it vertical first!" "Oh those beautiful cooking pots." "Ha Ha." "Oh they're so glorious." "Okay, watch the guys." "Make sure the objects don't come down on anything hard." "Thank god they're here!" "I'll tell you, I was really happy to see those cooking pots arrive." "The amphoras, we've got more of." "What would they cook in that?" "What kind of meal." "That's the one you'd do your one pot stew in." "It isn't as though you made one thing here and one thing there." "Just throw it all in." "Refrigerator soup." "My wife's mother calls it." "Whatever is at the end of the week in the refrigerator." "Well, this is in beautiful shape." "There's something special about touching something that has been untouched by humans for almost 3000 years old," "I mean, to the time of Homer." "Wow." "That's, that's pretty far back." "Here comes the pot, so don't jump up, Dan." "Two years after scrutinizing a fuzzy video," "Stager finally enjoys a close encounter." "Few little sea creatures attached to it." "Well, my great wish came true that it was 8th Century and not something Byzantine." "You know the other possibility for it was that it could date, oh, maybe 1100, 1200 years later." "In which case we have lots of wrecks and lots of material from that period." "But you rarely if ever find this on land complete." "Even if they're more or less complete they've all been shattered and you have to put them together to make up the whole." "But out here, a whole shipload of them intact." "It's marvelous." "Bathed in a solution of fresh and salt water, the artifacts are now the concern of conservator Dennis Piechota, his son James and assistant conservator Catherine Giangrande." "Sampled and sifted for future analysis, sediments might yield traces of a meal, or fragments of the ship's hull." "I'm getting 7.2 millimeters." "Preservation of this pot will take months, but its digital doppelganger is ready for study." "It's equally possible the amphoras contained olive oil or wine." "I think I'm almost at the bottom..." "Then Giangrande spots the residue of tree resin, used for sealing amphoras of wine." "It's as fine a discovery as any to toast." "Not a bad millennium." "Terrific wine." "The superb condition of the amphoras leads Ballard to a theory about the fate of the ship that carried them." "The ship is not busted up." "There's very few amphoras that were broken." "So it wasn't like they were tossed around and flipped around." "They were swamped." "You know, when you get in trouble you tend to run with the sea, hoping you can outrun the storm and get away from it, but you can then have a very powerful wave come over the stern and just swamp you." "We call 'em rogue waves." "I've been in two of them in my life." "We took one head on- right over the bridge, took off the ridge, took off the mast, all but sank us." "So my first expedition, 40 years ago this summer," "I almost went down in a storm!" "Understanding the wreck site has also consumed the computational energies of the team." "So we've got the map crunched." "Using data collected by a sensor on Jason, Dana Yoerger has produced a three-dimensional map." "It shows the wreck is sitting in an oval depression nearly two meters deep, and helps explain something that's been puzzling Ballard." "'Cause you know one of the thing we've been, the problem is the amphoras are full of mud." "And you figure out, how could they be full of mud?" "But what you've done is, it was buried." "When the ship was swamped, it probably sank to the bottom like a weight, and buried much of its hull in the soft mud." "In time, wood-boring organisms ate away any exposed hull or mast." "The amphoras' unbaked clay stoppers simply dissolved." "As wine escaped, water and sediments poured in." "Over the centuries, deep-water currents scoured the surrounding sea floor, excavating the wreck, and laying bare its amphoras." "So much revealed in so few days." "The team has earned a bit of fun." "Feet were still a little apart." "I don't know, about an 8, something like that..." "Ballard:" "Time to get all the children out of the water and get back to work." "Day 9." "The team heads for the coordinates of the third sonar target." "Three two seven..." "Three two seven and a hundred ninety one meters." "The expedition leaders have been keeping nearly 24-hour shifts." "But there's no sign of fatigue when a target appears on Jason's sonar." "Down 75 on the range." "That's a 55-gallon drum." "That was a decoy." "They always drop drums to throw people off their trail." "Let's, uh, go back to 400, just do a simple turn and see what you've got." "As Jason rotates, he picks up something far more promising." "It's trash" "Straight ahead." "Okay." "There it is!" "It's amphoras!" "Yes!" "All right!" "It's the same." "The same!" "It's a fleet!" "It's another bunch of them." "It's the same guys." "They had a bad day." "Look at that." "That wine company went bankrupt." "It's exactly the same. 8th Century." "Same guy caught the same storm, heading the same direction." "This one is more laid out, more spread out." "More scattered." "Bonus!" "Definitely!" "A survey reveals a ship early similar in size and shape to the first wreck, facing west, and carrying the same cargo." "But here, more small personal items seem to be exposed." "Ah, Now, there's a bowl." "There's a dish or something." "These could help confirm the homeport of the crew." "Zoom down, zoom." "Keep going." "Focus stop." "Boy have we got some work to do!" "For the next few days, Jason's busy as a bee." "Oh, that's a beauty, a little cooking pot..." "This is terrific." "I thought this thing was too big to be a bowl and it's actually a moratorium and it's for grinding different kinds of spices and herbs and putting it in the stew." "Great!" "It's swinging." "Don't go overboard." "Now we're getting slightly different sizes." "Yeah, this one looks like about a gallon more than that one." "I'm not an archeologist and Larry's not an oceanographer, but maybe our students can be half archeology, half oceanography." "Are these the ones you want or should we put them back and get some different ones?" "I think we like these!" "You've got people who wanna study shipwrecks and people who wanna build stuff to study shipwrecks coming together." "And of course the technologies that are available lend themselves beautifully to this." "Let me look at that." "See this?" "Looks like a candlestick holder." "Yeah, well, you're looking at it upside down." "See, actually the way this would stand, Bob, is like that." "This is most likely a little chalice for burning incense, incense to the protectors, the protective deities of the sailors." "They may well have held it this way, added their incense, and others would be raising their arms like this, to Baal" " Baal Hadad or Baal Zafon, the Baal of the North." "Day 14." "Jason's final load yields a distinctly Phoenician 'calling card'." "So that's the clincher." "We've been looking for something really decisive - well that's it." "That cinches is for a Phoenician ship, a Phoenician crew, Phoenician origins for this cargo." "This wine decanter, with its fanciful wide lip, is uniquely Phoenician." "It crowns the final act of a drama that began nearly 3000 years ago." "They may well have set sail from the great city of Tire, two ships laden with fine wine from the hinterland." "Their destination?" "Perhaps the Egypt of the Pharaohs." "Or their wine-thirsty compatriots in the newly founded colony of Carthage." "To bless their journey, they would have performed age-old rituals, invoking the gods and perfuming the air to attract their favor." "For a time, they may have felt protected by divine grace." "A gentle sea guided the rhythm of their days." "Then suddenly it seemed their gods abandoned them." "And no prayer, no offering could win them back." "For those who waited on the home shore, there was no end to this voyage." "No matter how hard they prayed, the ships would never reappear on their horizon." "The fate of their loved ones would remain a mystery." "Yet centuries later, two modern-day explorers have raised their story from the depths, and added a new chapter to our understanding of the past." "As future expeditions are planned, the promise of deep-sea archeology seems brighter than ever." "For who knows how much history lies hidden on the bottom, just waiting to be discovered?" "Code of Maya Kings" "They would tantalize explorers for hundreds of years," "ruined cities lost in the jungles of Central America and Mexico." "Inscrutable faces etched in stone." "Mysterious writing." "Who had left these messages from the past?" "It would take more than a century to unlock the secrets of the ancient Maya." "Two extraordinary people would lead the way." "Separated by 100 years, they would unveil one of the greatest mysteries of archeology." "Code of Maya Kings" "Chichen Itza, Mexico 1842." "An American lawyer named John Lloyd Stephens wanders the empty ruins looking for clues." "He knows what he wants to find." "It has kept him going through two harrowing journeys, exploring the desolate jungles of Central America." "Kept him pushing on through mud and malaria, poisonous snakes, and insect-plagued nights under the stars." "Stephens, the lawyer, was looking for proof, undeniable evidence that these ruins were not built by the Egyptians or the Phoenicians or the Lost Tribes of Israel." "And here at Chichen Itza he thinks that he's found it at least." "Writing unlike that of any other civilization he knows." "The same writing he'd seen at other ruined cities hundreds of miles away." "Proof of an ancient empire of Native Americans more sophisticated than anyone believed possible." "Stephens himself was a product of the New World." "He was born in 1805, the son of a wealthy New York merchant." "The city wasn't much more than a Dutch village, but it was the hub of a new nation." "Stephens grew up along the Hudson River watching the ships come in from around the world." "After reading law, he opened a practice on Wall Street." "Soon he got into politics, campaigning vigorously for Andrew Jackson for President." "But months of shouting to the crowds gave him a serious throat infection." "His doctor prescribed a common remedy for wealthy young men- a grand tour of Europe." "The ancient ruins of Italy and Greece only piqued his curiosity." "Stephens went on to Egypt, and spent three months floating up the Nile, visiting the temples and monuments along the way." "Only a decade before a Frenchman had deciphered the hieroglyphs, revealing the rich history of Egypt's kings and queens." "Stephens was fascinated, and he still wasn't ready to go home." "He'd seen pictures of a fantastic ancient city in Arabia, lost for century to all but the Bedouins." "Everyone told him the journey was too perilous for an unaccompanied American," "so Stephens disguised himself as a Turkish merchant and took the name Abul Hassis." "In 1836, John Lloyd Stephens was the first American to set eyes on the ruins of Petra." "In Roman times it had been one of the greatest cities of the East." "Stephens still found it dazzling:" ""A temple delicate and limpid, carved like a cameo from a solid mountain wall, the first view of that superb facade must produce an effect which will never pass away."" "Stephens letters home were so vivid and imaginative, they were published in a monthly magazine." "Soon, he was writing books recounting his exotic adventures around the world." "The lawyer had become a literary sensation." "He was a seasoned observer, he was an incredible observer." "In fact, Herman Melville of Moby Dick fame, recalled one time when he was in church, Herman Melville was, he was a kid." "He heard that Stephens was in the front row." "And when Stephens left, Melville writes," ""I thought this man must have great huge eyes that bulged through his head, he was such a good observer," because Melville had read his stuff." "Back in New York the life of a sedentary lawyer no longer held any charm for Stephens." "Instead, his mind was filled with thoughts of another journey, not so far away, but even more remote and daring." "On his way home through London, he met an artist named Rederick Catherwood who'd spent ten years in the Near East." "They shared their interest in exotic travel." "Sensing a kindred spirit, Catherwood had showed him a curious book about a lost city in Central America hidden in the jungle." "The book's authors thought the fabulous ruins of Palenque had been built by Egyptians," "Carthaginians, maybe even the Lost Tribes of Israel." "Anyone but the Native Americans." "There was sort of a racism in here that said that everything great had come through the Greeks, the Egyptians, through the European tradition." "And anything different appeared relatively to be a bunch of naked savages wandering through the woods." "In 1839, no one believed the Native Americans capable of building a sophisticated civilization." "Stephens' own government had little use for them." "Only a year earlier they had uprooted thousands of Indians, sending them westward along the infamous Trail of Tears." "The thought of a great ancient civilization in Central America seemed even more preposterous." "A few travelers had reported sighting ruined cities like Palenque, but Stephens could find none of them on the map." "It was a travel writer's dream, but only this time he would have to bring back evidence of whatever he found." "But who better to accompany him than the artist Frederick Catherwood, now practicing architecture in New York?" "Only one small problem remained, the newly formed Central American Federation was fighting a bitter civil war." "Using his political connections," "Stephens secured a post as a Confidential Agent." "He figured his diplomatic coat would protect him in dangerous territory." "So in October 1839," "Catherwood bid farewell to his wife and two young boys, and now they were here, deep in the jungles of Central America." "The ruins of Copan was their first goals." "But when they found the little village of the same name, no one there had ever head of nearby ruins." "Finally, a knowledgeable Indian offered to guide them." "But that was hours ago." "Now they were beginning to think that the ruins were nothing but a legend." "When suddenly, there they were, grander than their wildest dreams, the Ruins of Copan." "Pyramids rose majestically out of the jungle." "Great stone faces peered at them from intricately carved monuments, twice the size of a man." "Stephens noticed hieroglyphs and judged them to be as fine as any he'd seen in Egypt, yet his experience told him that these carvings were unique." "The silence of the once majestic city overwhelmed him:" "Copan lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came." "I think the description of Copan is the single most poetic description of a place he visits, for it is though he is walking around inside the Titanic, and he's looking at the shipwreck of a civilization." "He walks from monument to monument." "It is through he's looking into the faces of those who have recently been ruling this place:" "America, say historians, was peopled by savages." "But savages never reared these structures, savages never carved these stones, architecture, sculpture and painting, all the arts which embellish life, had flourished in this overgrown forest, and yet none knew that such things had been," "or could tell of their past existence." "He's the first who is really able to say," "Look at these stone figures;" "these must be portraits of their kings and queens." "And he uses the word queen which is really quite astonishing, in seeing men and women in the monuments, for 100 years later, all the men and women that Stephens saw will have been reduced by 20th century archeologists to a group of anonymous calendar priests." "Stephens has this kind of Yankee can-do observation." "The best part of many of Stephens' insights is that they prove to be absolutely true." "Yet Stephens was deeply puzzled by the mystery at the heart of Copan." "Who could have built this extraordinary city?" "The local Indians didn't seem to know." "Stephens needed their help to explore the ruins, but the owner of the land interfered." "Finally, it seemed that the only solution was to buy Copan." "So the lawyer put on his diplomatic coat, and went to the village to negotiate." "You are perhaps curious to know how old ruins sell in Central America." "I paid $50 for Copan." "There was never any difficulty about price." "I offered that sum, for which Don Jose Maria thought me only a fool." "If I had offered more, he would probably have considered me something worse." "Ownership settled, the team set about surveying the ruined city, measuring and mapping its buildings." "Catherwood is a remarkable character as well." "I wish we knew more about him." "One gains some sense of the Stephens personality, just from the written word." "The Catherwood personality doesn't emerge much." "Stephens treats him very formally, and he appears as Mr. Catherwood." "At first Mr. Catherwood found it almost impossible to draw the monuments." "Their tropical luxuriance defied his restrained British hand." "Stephens mentions coming upon him in the woods one day." "Catherwood is standing in front of a big upright monument." "It is a statute of one of the Copan rulers, and all intricately carved." "Catherwood's standing there almost obscured by a pile of crumpled paper, which represents the output so far that day of unsuccessful attempts to draw this thing." "Fortunately, Catherwood had brought along a camera lucida a box with a prism inside which allowed him to trace a reflected image." "To please the perfectionist Mr. Catherwood, every detail had to be correct." "With the coming of Spring, they were ready to begin the search for the next great goal, Palenque." "The territory to the north, through the Sierra Madras Mountains, was wild and uncharted." "As one local said, the road to Palenque were only for birds." "Snakes and clouds of mosquitoes dogged their steps." "To Stephens the worst part was the local custom of carry a visitor up the steepest trail on a chair, strapped to the back of an Indian." "I rose and fell with every breath, felt his body trembling under me, and his knees seemed giving way." "The slightest irregular movement on my part may bring us both down together." "I would have given him a release for the rest of the journey to be off his back." "On and on they traveled." "It took more than a month to reach the fabled ruins that had first inspired their journey." "Palenque seemed to hang on the edge of the mountains." "It's graceful buildings dominating the plain below." "Wherever we moved, we saw the evidence of their tastes, their skills in arts, their wealth and power." "In the midst of desolation and ruin, we looked back to the past, cleared away the gloomy forest and fancied every building perfect, lofty and imposing." "Palenque's architecture was different from Copan's, but Stephens noticed many similarities, particularly the mysterious writings." "Examining it carefully, he reached a remarkable conclusion:" "There is room for the belief that the whole of this country was once occupied by the same race, speaking the same language, or at least having the same written characters." "The Indians Stephens met spoke many languages and were as mystified by the ruins as he was." "Yet, intuitively, Stephens seemed to sense a link between them." "Stephens, I think, is the first person who can make the connection between the Indians that he sees and meets and the ancient ruins." "Whereas other people want to say, oh, these pathetic peasants, these miserable Indians, they could never have built this." "We must look for some alternative solution to where these things would have come from." "He believes that here is complete continuity." "And that, I think, is one of the most radical ideas to come out of his book." "At night, Stephens and Catherwood slept in the imposing ruin they called The Palace." "The rainy season had begun, and the mosquitoes, venomous during the day, were even worse at night." "Catherwood was already racked with malaria, but somehow they kept on working," "for 22 days and sleepless nights, bewitched by the beauty of Palenque." "Exhausted, they pushed on, further north and east to the Yucatan, but Catherwood was too ill to continue." "Vowing to return, they headed home to New York." "In 10 months the two explorers had accomplished the impossible." "They had rediscovered an ancient American civilization grander than anyone had ever dreamed." "Now they were ready to astound the world with its story." "Stephens's books was incredible popular when it appeared in the summer of 1841," "Incidents of Travel in Central America," "Chiapas, and Yucatan." "Harper and Brothers had printed up a goodly print run, and it sold out pretty quickly." "Stephens writes a real page-turner." "It is such a personal view, and it becomes one of the great bestsellers of the entire 19th century." "It goes through dozens of editions." "And there is an enormous American desire to know more about this part of the world." "They were lionized after the publication." "They were quite the thing in New York." "It was reviewed everywhere." "Just an amazing publication epic, so the trip was a success and they planned to go again." "Seventeen month after they'd left Mexico," "Stephens and Catherwood were back in the Yucatan, exploring the city of Uxmal." "On this second journey, they concentrated their efforts on this one region of Mexico." "Inching their way through the jungle, they discovered many ruined cities entirely unknown, with names like Coba, Labna, and Sayil." "Stephens felt they were racing against time." "Everywhere they went, they found ruins collapsing into piles of rubble." "Catherwood even learned how to sketch from his mule to save time." "At Uxmal, the artist drew the face of a god on the side of a pyramid." "Years later, it was destroyed." "Catherwood's illustration is our only record of it." "They performed the greatest service, perhaps, in freezing in time a set of observations and images of a land that no longer exists." "They're romantic pictures, yet at the same time they're remarkably accurate." "Many of Catherwood's renderings, for examples, of the Maya at Uxmal and Magna and other sites are the first depictions that we have of what Mayan people looked like." "We had no earlier record." "In the town of Balankanche, the explorers visited an ancient well deep underground." "Catherwood was so inspired, he began his memorable sketch at the foot of the ladder." "It was the wildest setting that could be conceived, men struggling up a huge ladder with earthen jars of water strapped to back and head, their sweating bodies glistening under the light of the pine torches." "One of the last places they explored was Chichen Itza." "Its architecture moved them more than any other city on this second journey." "Most exciting of all was the revelation that this city had been linked to Copan and Palenque hundred of miles away." "It was the first time in Yucatan that we had found hieroglyphics sculptured on stone which beyond all question bore the same type with those at Copan and Palenque." "If one but could read it." "Finally, Stephens felt he had the proof he'd been looking for." "The mysterious writing was unique, unlike any he'd ever seen." "Now he could convince the skeptics that the ruined cities had been built by Native Americans." "These ruins are different than the works of any other known people." "Of a new order, they stand alone." "In the nine months of their second journey," "Stephens and Catherwood managed to visit 44 ruined cities." "And gather some treasures for an exhibit on their return." "But they paid a heavy price for their adventures." "Malaria would haunt both men for the rest of their lives." "John Lloyd Stephens would fight the dread disease for ten years before succumbing to it in 1852." "Frederick Catherwood would die tragically a few years later in a shipwreck." "This is the only image we have of him." "For there was another sad chapter to their story." "The fate of the great exhibition they held on their return to New York." "This fire started one night in July of 1842, and literally overnight it wiped out the physical originals" "The drawings, some of the archeological stuff, the limestone carvings they had brought back at great labor." "Thank goodness for the books." "And I thank the Fates everyday that somebody at Harper and Brothers Publishers in New York had the foresight to heavily illustrate the book, because what a shame if the drawings had been lost." "Fortunately, before he died," "Catherwood issued exquisite folios of some of the drawings." "They inspired generations of explores to follow the intrepid pair to the land of the Maya." "But Stephens' insights would have a different fate." "His greatest intuition-that the Maya had written the real stories of their lives on the monuments- would be ignored." "The legions of archeologists who came after him were able to decipher some of the glyphs," "but only those that spoke of numbers, dates and the stars." "Carried away by the discovery that the ancient Maya were great astronomers, archeologists fashioned a picture of them as peaceful stargazers, obsessed with calendars and time." "When John Lloyd Stephens had looked at the monuments, he had seen real kings and queens." "One hundred years later, archeologists saw only the calculations of anonymous timekeepers." "It would take a fresh set of eyes to finally unravel the secrets of Maya carvings and prove that Stephens was right." "The story of Tatiana Proskouriakoff is not well known outside the realm of Maya studies." "Yet, in that field she is a giant, a woman in a man's world who saw further and deeper than her more famous contemporaries." "What we know of the ancient Maya today, the exciting revelations emerging from dozens of excavations is built on her work." "Speaking of Copan, she was the first to describe its ruins as a puzzle." "She was the one who supplied the missing piece." "Tatiana, or Tanya, as her friends called her, was born in Tomsk, Siberia in 1909." "Her mother, the daughter of a prominent general, was a physician." "Her father, a chemist." "World War I shattered their peaceful existence." "In 1915, Tanya's father was sent to the United States to supervise arms manufacturing for the czar." "With the coming of the Russian Revolution, the family was trapped and began a new life in suburban Philadelphia." "At work on the first biography of Proskouriakoff," "Char Solomon has been uncovering these early details of her life." "Tanya's story is compelling to me because she was born in Russia at such a tumultuous time." "She came to the United States." "She acquired English as a second language, and mastered it in such a way that it became the equivalent of her first language." "She chose a profession that was dominated by men at a time when many women did not choose to go that route." "Tanya majored in architecture at Pennsylvania State University, one of the only women to do so in her graduating class." "It was 1930, the height of the Great Depression." "Tanya spent several dispiriting years looking for work, then settled for a job making drawings for a needlepoint shop." "The search for good subjects led her to the Archeological Museum at the University of Pennsylvania." "Tanya's skillful drawings attracted the attention of Linton Satterwaite, an archeologist looking for an artist to work at his dig, deep in the jungles of Guatemala." "The ruined City of Peidras Negras was a big jump from her close-knit Russian family, but Tanya was ready for an adventure." "The small party set off for Guatemala in the winter of 1936." "On their way, they stopped at Palenque, the graceful ruined city that had captivated the explorers Stephens and Catherwood almost 100 years before." "Tanya was equally entranced." "She, in older years, said that when she first saw the elegant little Temple of the Sun, she knew she had found her vocation, that there would never be anything else that would get her as much as that." "Tanya's pencil responded easily to the intricacies of Maya art." "The young Russian American had felt the pulse of an ancient mystery." "But settling in the Peidras Negras wasn't easy." "Tanya had to learn how to survey and draw the dilapidated ruins." "As an outsider, as a woman who had learned a profession and trying to find a way into it, I'm sure she was clearly little Tanya, allowed to sit there with her drafting pen and make observations about Peidras Negras." "I think she had to pay for every step she took, but she really," "I think, was someone who was able to compete effectively with the boys." "In Mayan archeology in the 1932s, 'the boys' were a pretty formidable bunch." "This was a group of people that came together, people from mostly Ivy League, Harvard and Penn and other places." "They were all great friends." "They were all, as most archeologists were at the time, people of independent means." "They could do what they darn well pleased." "Even in the bush these silver-spoon archeologists managed to live well." "At Peidras Negras, dinner was a formal occasion, beginning with cocktails." "Somewhere around 5 o'clock they would dress, and they would dress elegantly." "Tanya had a white dress, full-length dress, that she packed along with her." "She would slough through the mud to get to the dining hut, and then sort of tuck the muddy bottom of her dress down behind her feet, so that no one would notice." "There was a little bit of challenging banter also between Tanya and Linton." "He had suggested that one of the structures did not have a staircase going up one side, and she felt strong that there would have been and challenged him on that point." "So he said, well, if you really believe that there was a staircase there, then you have to dig and find me the proof, which she did." "And to her delight, she found the staircase." "Tanya began to sketch reconstructions of the ruins based on the archeological data." "Her drawings were so impressive, they earned her a sketching tour of other Maya cities." "Her first stop was Copan." "Noted Mayanist Ian Graham shared an office with Tanya in her later years at Harvard's Peabody Museum." "He remembers her tails of Copan in the thirties." "Anyway, she landed, the sole female in this isolated camp." "There were some fairly spirited characters there." "One was an amazing man called Gus Stromsvik." "Gustav Stromsvik, the Norwegian archeologist who worked for the Carnegie Institution, fell deeply in love with her." "And Tanya had a period in which she tried to decide what this relationship was going to mean in her life." "Stromsvik was a very dynamic personality." "He was very outgoing." "He was a raconteur, and she loved people who could tell good stories, she loved to laugh." "So she was drawn to him." "But on the other hand, Stromsvik had a very serious drinking problem." "Particularly on Saturday nights, the life there was spent pretty wild." "Tanya seemed to handle it perfectly well." "It's amazing." "She led such a protective life in her Russian family and in her suburban life in Philadelphia." "But she had grit." "Tanya's next stop was Chichen Itza, center of the Mayan world in this golden age of archeology." "The ancient city was undergoing a renaissance, as archeologists from the Carnegie Institution pieced it back together." "Half of rebuilding has gone hand in hand with the work of" "Welcoming the throngs of visitors was the man who would serve as the spokesman for the Maya for more than 20 years, Carnegie's Sylvanus Morley, known for his oversized straw hats and ebullient personality." "At Chichen Itza, he lived in grand style in a Spanish colonial manor house." "Every evening a Chinese cook would prepare dinner for Morely and his band of archeologists." "Envious colleagues referred to them as the club." "On special evenings Morley would lead his guests to the ruins of the Maya ball court for a concert," "amplified by the court's amazing acoustics." "Tanya would join the others in the moonlight in this fitting place to conjure the spirits of the departed Maya." "For to the Carnegie Club, the Maya were a band of priestly stargazers, unlike any other people who had ever lived." "These ancient wise men had never fought wars." "Instead, they had spent their time inventing an elaborate calendar and a system of writing used for nothing but recording time." "The author of this view of the Maya was Sir Eric Thompson, an acerbic Englishman whose intellect dominated Maya studies for nearly 50 years." "No one, not even Morely questioned his authority." "As Thompson began to formulate his ideas, no one had the strength of character to resist." "Morely was the one who tried." "In Morely's early works he offers a rather different picture." "He is overwhelmed by Thompson's point of view and adopts it." "This makes it very difficult for a new voice to find a path, and particularly when one can imagine that the name of Tanya is probably generally preceded by little." "Thompson may have been able to cow the other members of the Carnegie Club, but he hadn't bargained on Tanya Proskouriakoff." "My general sense of her is absolutely contrary in a kind of way that if you said, well, it looks like rain, she would say, ah, there's not a drop of rain in that cloud." "She was the kind of person if you said," "Oh, it's too warm in here, she would immediately go turn up the thermostat and make it a little warmer." "She just had a kind of contrary personality." "I think that helped her also then say, well, if you say the Maya are peaceful, let's look at them from another point of view." "Bit by bit, Tanya began to ask different questions than her colleagues." "She also started to study the living Maya, convinced that they had something to teach her as well." "When she was in highlands Chiapas, she took some lessons learning how to weave on the hand loom that the Maya work with." "At the same time, the same young woman was helping her to learn Maya." "This is something a lot of people don't know about Tanya is that she did study Yucatex Maya." "Tanya's intuition that the living Maya could provide the valuable link to the past was borne out by a fabulous discovery in 1946." "An American filmmaker named Giles Healey persuaded a Maya Indian to show him one of their secret place." "The Indian lead Healy to Bonampak, a lost city buried in the jungle." "Peering into a building, Healy was astounded to find faces looking back at him from the walls." "Armies were locked in a furious battle." "Other scenes showed prisoners of war and victims of human sacrifice." "Try as Thompson might, it was impossible to convince anyone, I think, that these depicted a peaceful Maya, for in the Bonampak murals we see one of the greatest battle paintings ever created in the history of humankind." "Proskouriakoff had not been allowed to write a single interpretive word on the Bonampak paintings," "but I've always wondered if it did not play some role in shaping how she looked at the Maya world." "Sir Eric Thompson effectively barred the door at Bonampak, preventing other Mayanists from pursuing the bloody implications of its murals." "Nevertheless, the flaws were beginning to show in his vision of the peaceful Maya." "A few years later, another piece of the puzzle would slide into place." "In a bookstore in Mexico, Tanya found a revolutionary new book by a Russian named Yuri Knorozov." "Always interested in things Russian, she avidly read his new theory of Maya writing." "Eventually, it would prove the key to deciphering the glyphs." "But for years Sir Eric Thompson would condemn the new theory as Communist propaganda." "In the late 1950s, Carnegie closed down its Mezo-America program, a victim of new priorities." "But Tanya was kept on as a research associate with an office at Harvard's Peabody Museum." "Her days in the field were over, but her greatest work had just begun." "In her little apartment in Cambridge, Tanya was on to something." "When reading through Tanya's diaries, I can see that in the 1950s she made a very conscious decision to become more private in her life." "She began working much more intensively with the hieroglyphics." "In her mind Tanya had returned to Peidras Negras, the site of her first experience with the Maya." "Puzzling over the monuments, she noticed a peculiar pattern with the glyphs." "Over and over, the same glyphs were linked to dates and on each of the monuments none of the dates exceeded a human lifespan." "Suddenly to Tanya the evidence was clear:" "the monuments were marking the stages of an individual's life." "Where others had seen only cold calculations," "Tanya Proskouriakoff saw the lives of human beings." "It was a conclusion that cut to the heart of everything" "Sir Eric Thompson believed." "Tanya marshaled her facts, then showed Thompson her article before sending it to the publisher." "And when she talked with him before he had read it, he disagreed strongly with what her ideas of the Maya were." "When he took the article home and he read it, he came back the next day and said, well, actually," "I believe you're right which were very big words from someone who was considered a giant in the field at the time." "And from that time on, when you saw a Maya monument you knew that it didn't deal with gods and priests, it deal with human beings, and that was the importance." "In one sense, everything that we've done since then in hieroglyphy and in the interpretation of the hieroglyphs has been a footnote to what Tanya did." "She did the general breakthrough." "When she and Yuri Knorozov in Russia came up with through hieroglyphic keys, that was it." "We went on a roll." "Once the code breakers went to work, a more human image of the Maya began to emerge." "Written in the monuments were the stories of their lives, their ancestors, their battles and conquests." "Across the centuries the Maya came alive, kings and queens, rulers of fabulous cities" "full of the voices of the people echoing out of the past." "Things were changing at such a dramatic rate." "We can read about, I would guess, 75 or 80 percent of the inscriptions that the Maya wrote." "Given that in 1960 we could barely read any of it, that's extraordinary." "David Stuart began deciphering Maya glyphs when he was just a boy." "Tanya Proskouriakoff is one of his heroes." "He met her shortly before she died, when she was continuing her careful scholarship at the Peabody." "In 1998, Stewart took her ashes to Peidras Negras for burial at a sight high above the ancient city she had loved." "We didn't realize how poignant the ceremony was going to be." "Most of us were students or young people in the field, in our 30s at the oldest." "And it sort of dawned on everyone that here was the remains of this great lioness, this legendary figure." "The Guatemalans who were there were very emotional about this because this was the woman who had brought the Maya back to history." "At the end of his pioneering journey to Central America in 1840, the explorer, John Lloyd Stephens had been the first to state with conviction:" "One thing I believe, that its history is graven on its monuments." "More than 100 years later, we finally knew that Stephens was right." "At Palenque, Copan, Chichen Itza, and dozens of ruins in between, the ancient Maya now speak for themselves." "In the dim past of Europe, by the shores of the Aegean Sea, the ancient bards told stories of a golden age long ago, a time when men were heroes larger than life, when the daring Theseus battled the Minotaur," "and soldiers clashed over the face of the beautiful Helen who brought down the walls of Troy." "For hundreds of generations these tales will pass down as myths." "Then in the 19th century, two remarkable men dared to believe that the myths were clues to the treasures of a forgotten past." "Their extraordinary adventures uncovered the roots of Western civilization." "In the 19th century, archeology was in its infancy." "Ancient Greece was considered the beginning of Western civilization, its architecture the most beautiful;" "its ideas the foundation for everything to come." "Yet its roots before the 8th century B.C. were shrouded in mystery." "Did this extraordinary civilization spring out of nowhere?" "Or did another, almost as advanced, come before it?" "The only accounts of an earlier age were legends that nearly everyone dismissed as myths." "The first grade works of Western literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were considered fiction, nothing more." "Who could have guessed that Homer's beloved stories could lead the way to a real past?" "In Athens today a classical temple marks the grave of Heinrich Schliemann, to some, the father of archeology." "To others, an impetuous fool." "To Schliemann, Homer's stories of the Trojan War were true, and he set out to prove it." "His incredible discoveries pushed back European history a thousand years." "Schliemann's story has been romanticized in films, books, even grand opera." "But none more fantastical than his own stories about himself." "I think he thought that he was the center of the world." "And I think he had a kind of medieval map of the world in which he was at the center and everything else was in concentric circles around him." "I think he was the most frightful big head." "Schliemann throughout his life was pretty cavalier with the truth." "He, I don't think, distinguished so clearly as most of us do between what is true and what is false." "He tended to tell the story that suited the moment." "Schliemann's personal myths stretched all the way back to his childhood." "He was born in 1822 in northeastern Germany." "At the age of 7, he tells how his father gave him a history book with a picture of the ancient city of Troy in flames." "Electrified by the site, the young Heinrich asked what had become of the great city." "His father explained that Troy had burned to the ground leaving no trace." "Unconvinced, Heinrich disagreed:" ""Father," retorted I, "if such worlds once existed, they cannot have been completely destroyed." "Vast ruins of them must still remain hidden away beneath the dust of ages."" "In the end we both agreed that I should one day excavate Troy." "It's a wonderful story, but there's really no reason why we need to believe it." "He tells us not a day went by where he thought about this goal of earning enough money to go out and excavate Troy." "But we have thousands of letters and many diaries when he was a young man." "There's no mention of going out and excavating Troy." "Schliemann may have been trying to mask the truth of a painful childhood." "His mother died young, but not before his minister father lost his job by committing adultery with the housemaid." "Schliemann had to drop out of school to help support his brothers and sisters." "All this, I think, etched itself deeply onto Schliemann's mind." "He was left with a bitter, bitter resentment about it in later life." "On the other hand, the drive for all that he achieved came out of this unhappy childhood." "Schliemann's story continues like a fairy tale." "He ran away to sea, was shipwrecked, and then became a clerk for a trading house in Amsterdam." "Toiling endlessly, he taught himself languages by copying passages and then learning them by heart." "He mastered at least ten languages this way." "As Schliemann himself said:" "Talent means energy and persistence, and nothing more." "Schliemann's talent was making money." "With energy and persistence, the obsessive German became an international merchant, trading in commodities like indigo." "In 1849, prospectors struck gold in California." "Ever the opportunist, Schliemann joined the Gold Rush." "In Sacramento, he opened a bank, buying gold dust from the miners and lending them money at 12 percent interest per month." "After two years, he left California a very rich man." "My biggest fault- being a braggart and a bluffer- yielded countless advantages." "And there were even more to come." "Russia was on the brink of war, so Schliemann cornered the market on saltpeter, an ingredient of gunpowder." "The Crimean War made his fortune." "It seemed that everything he touched turned to gold, except his social standing." "His unhappy marriage to the daughter of a St. Petersburg lawyer didn't help." "The uneducated merchant was shunned as nouveau riche." "Now in his mid-40s," "Schliemann realized he wanted more out of life than making money." "He wanted respect." "The situation in 1868 was that he was adrift." "He'd divorced his first wife, a Russian woman." "He had sewed up his business in St. Petersburg, and he didn't know what to do." "He was going through a kind of mid-life crisis." "And he took a journey to the Mediterranean, to Italy and to Greece." "It was during the course of that journey, he was looking for something to do with the rest of his life and he found it." "In June of 1868, Schliemann arrived at the ruins of Pompeii." "Buried under layers of volcanic ash for almost 1800 years, this lost city was in the midst of a spectacular rediscovery." "Excavations had uncovered magnificent public spaces." "And rescued intimate frescos from the buried houses." "Schliemann was captivated by this journey into a lost world." "For the first time he met a real archeologist, Giuseppe Fiorelli." "It was the Italian's innovation to inject plaster into the ancient ash, revealing the forms of the Pompeiians caught in the last moments of life." "At this point, archeology was more romance than science, with few precedents and even fewer rules." "Needless to say, it was right up Schliemann's alley." "As he continued his travels," "His diaries began to reflect a new direction." "He would set off on a grand archeological adventure and uncover the biggest challenge of all:" "the legendary city of Troy." "But first he had to find it." "When Heinrich Schliemann set out on his quest for Troy, most people believed the city was a myth." "For one thing, it wasn't on the map." "Legend had placed Troy on the Dardanelles, near the coast of present-day Turkey" "But no ruins identified the great city." "It was as if the site of the Trojan War- the greatest war story ever told- had never existed." "But for thousands of years people had repeated Homer's tale." "How Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, had been taken away to Troy." "How the Greeks had battled for ten long years to get her back, led by the great king Agamemnon." "How the war was finally won with a wooden horse full of soldiers." "In Homer's tale, the Greeks destroyed the great city of Troy; burning it to the ground." "Schliemann was just captured by the Iliad, the descriptions of what goes on, everything about the human condition is found in the Iliad in a very poetic and magnificent manner." "And the idea of finding the site where all of these great tensions between love and strife, between divine and human interaction were worked out was something that just swallowed him up." "With his copy of Homer as a guide," "Schliemann examined the mound thought to be the likeliest location of Troy." "In the Iliad, two springs marked the foot of the great city's hill." "To his dismay, Schliemann found many more here." "And trial excavations turned up nothing but dirt." "But just as he was about to leave the area, the German got lucky" "He met an Englishman named Frank Calvert who owned another mound, the site of many prior civilizations." "Calvert believed his mound held the real Troy far beneath the surface." "Frank Calvert explained to Schliemann that he had done some excavations there which took him below the Greek and Roman levels, into deep deposits where were earlier." "So he said there was a very good chance that in these deep burial deposits you will find the Troy of the Trojan War." "And that convinced Schliemann;" "it gave him something to do." "But Schliemann didn't have a clue how to begin." "Dear Mr. Calvert, have I to take a tent and iron baluster and pillar with me?" "What sort of hat is best against the scorching sun?" "Please give me an exact statement of all of the implements of whatever kind and of all the necessaries you would advise me to take with me." "With Calvert's encouragement Schliemann began digging in earnest in October 1871." "On the first day, he hired 8 men." "By day three there were 80." "Caution was not his style." "Assuming Homer's Troy lay at the bottom of the mound," "Schliemann had his men dig a great gash right through the center of it." "One must plunge immediately into the depths." "Only then will one find things." "On their way down the men uncovered not one city, but many of them." "But Schliemann didn't let these other Troys get in his way." "You can see when he began that his methods were very, very crude." "He was going in with winches and crowbars and battering rams." "The horrifying tales are spelled out in some of his writings." "Nowadays, one just blenches at the thought of it." "Numbers of immense blocks of stone which we continually come upon cause great trouble and have to be got out and removed." "All of my workmen hurry to see the enormous weight roll down and settle itself at some distance in the plain." "Schliemann was discarding priceless relics from thousands of years of civilization on the site." "Thankfully, rains closed the season early." "But the next year he was back, this time attacking the mound with 150 men under the command of a railroad engineer." "Often by Schliemann's side was his new Greek wife, Sophia, who won his heart by reciting from the Iliad." "Forging ahead," "Schliemann continued to aim straight for the bottom of the mound, haphazardly uncovering ancient stone walls and collecting pottery and other artifacts along the way." "What Schliemann did was to go down deep into this complex, complex site." "And he did try to understand how the layers had built up one on top of the other." "He wasn't bad at either;" "he was quite observant." "Of course now we would do it in much finer detail than he did, but he was the one to reveal that this sort of thing could be done in a site of this sort." "In the third season of digging the hard work finally paid off." "Near the bottom of the mound workman uncovered the charred ruins of a citadel." "It didn't look like much, but Schliemann declared it must be the place of King Priam burned in the Trojan War." "As he himself told the story, he dismissed his workman and began to attack the palace walls himself." "I cut out the treasure with a large knife, which was impossible to do without the most fearful risk of my life." "But I never thought of any danger." "It would, however, been impossible for me to have removed the treasure without the help of my dear wife who stood by me ready to pack the things that I cut out in her shawl and carry them away." "It was a fabulous find." "Ancient silver and copper vessels." "Bronze weapons." "And most extraordinary of all, elaborate gold jewelry." "With Schliemann's usual panache, he announced that he had uncovered the treasure of Priam and the jewels of Helen of Troy." "A photograph of Sophia Schliemann modeling Helen's jewels became one of the most celebrated images of the 19th century." "Yet, Schliemann's account of the discovery was controversial from the start." "The story is certainly fiction in at least one major element, and that is that Sophie was not there." "Sophie had left about three weeks earlier, gone back to Athens." "So she was certainly not there packing the stuff in her shawl and carrying them off." "The question is how much else is true?" "I think that although Sophie wasn't there- and we know that Schliemann was telling a lie about that- that doesn't necessarily mean that the treasure itself is a hoax." "I think, in fact, there are very good signs that it was genuine." "There are discrepancies with regard to where the treasure was found, the day on which it was found, and exactly what was found." "He makes wrong connections." "For example, he misremembers exactly where things were found." "He associates them with the wrong features and so forth." "But I think you also have to consider what he has left us with at the end of the day, and what he has left us with is an enormous volume of material because he was so energetic, and spent so much money and spent so much time at Troy." "A master of 19th century media," "Schliemann informed the world of his success." "But first he carefully smuggled his treasures out of Turkey, ignoring his permit stipulation that all finds belonged to the Turks." "The crafty German was triumphant." "Convinced that he'd uncovered Homer's Troy, buried in myth for more than 3,000 years." "Being Schliemann, however, even fame and recognition couldn't occupy him for long." "Homer pointed him in a new direction, to a city rich in gold." "He turned his sights to Mycenae, home of Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks." "According to Homer, the conqueror of the Trojans had met a violent fate." "Agamemnon returned home to Mycenae, only to find that his wife had taken up with another man." "Late one night, the two murdered the great hero." "It was another compelling tale- sufficient motivation for Schliemann." "And with Mycenae, the fledgling archeologist had an easier assignment." "Unlike Troy, the city had never been lost." "It's picturesque ruins still dominated a hill in Greece, not far from the Aegean Sea." "Hungry for gold, Schliemann began to dig in August 1876." "Within a few weeks, he discovered evidence of a sacred site." "The man's luck seemed unbelievable." "Pressing on, he unearthed a series of royal graves filled with treasures and skeletons adorned with gold." "Leaping to conclusions yet again," "Schliemann declared he had discovered the golden mask of Agamemnon." "As it turned out, later archeologists decided it wasn't the mythical king." "But it didn't really matter." "Schliemann had uncovered evidence of a rich and sophisticated civilization which had flourished 1,000 years before the days of classical Greece." "The objects he'd unearthed were elegant and skillfully crafted." "He'd even found a helmet made of boar's teeth that matched Homer's description." "Schliemann fabulous discovery at Mycenae brought him international fame, even the respect of many of his critics." "Throughout the next decade, he dug at other Greek citadels, accumulating evidence of the wealth and splendor of this previously unknown civilization." "But Schliemann wasn't satisfied." "In his heart, he knew his new discoveries cast doubt on the primitive treasures he'd found at Troy." "How could he be sure that the walls he uncovered deep beneath that mound were the same ones that kept Agamemnon's forces at bay?" "That down those broken street Helen once walked?" "It was time to return to Troy and make sense of that perplexing mound once and for all." "This time, Schliemann proceeded slowly and cautiously, digging on the edge of the mound." "And bit by bit, the old treasure hunter uncovered a layer in the middle that he'd missed in his earlier days." "Here, finally, was what he had been searching for all along:" "the ruins of broad streets, massive walls, and a much bigger citadel." "Schliemann should have been thrilled." "But instead, his heart sank." "It meant there was a lot of rethinking to do." "In a sense, he saw before his eyes 20 years of work just going down the drain." "For four days Schliemann retreated to his tent, searching for answers." "From the beginning, he'd assumed that Homer's Troy lay at the bottom of the mound." "Now his new discovery changed everything." "If he'd finally found the Troy of the Trojan War in this middle layer, then 20 years ago he'd made a tragic mistake." "For in his haste to dig to the bottom, he destroyed much of what he'd been looking for." "He'd never know what treasures had been lost." "Exhausted, Schliemann vowed to continue the following season." "But it was not to be." "Suffering from a terrible pain in his ear, he traveled to Germany for surgery, then headed home to Greece." "He never got there." "Buried in Athens with a state funeral," "Schliemann was mourned even by his critics." "For 20 years he'd lit up the world of early archeology with his drive and enthusiasm." "Pursuing his childhood dreams of ancient Greek heroes to the end, he pushed back the frontiers of European history." "In the process, he put the young science of archeology on the map." "Among the many he inspired was a brilliant young man named Arthur Evans who visited Schliemann several years before his death." "Reaching beyond Schliemann's discoveries, the intrepid Englishman would also track down a legend into the far corners or Europe's hidden past." "He would reawaken an even older civilization buried in myth and oblivion for more than 3,000 years." "Unlike Schliemann, Arthur Evans seemed destined to become an archeologist." "His father, a wealthy paper manufacturer, was a pioneer in studying the past." "Born in 1851, Arthur spent his childhood in the English countryside digging for Roman coins." "But as the boy grew older, his nickname grew increasingly annoying" ""Little Evans," son of John Evans the great." "He's kind of, in his early years, like a rebel without a cause." "He's looking for something to get hold of to be different than his father and to prove his own worth." "And so as an expression of this sort of rebelliousness, he did the most romantic thing he could think of, which was to travel to the Balkans." "From his first sight of the Balkans in 1871," "Evans rejected any notion of returning to his father's business." "Instantly at home, he haunted the bazaars, delighting in the colorful mixture of East and West." "To Evans the fact that the land was at war only added to its appeal." "The Slavs were rebelling against the Ottoman Turks after years of domination." "Evans became a roving reporter for the Manchester Guardian." "Affected with bad eyesight, he disdained glasses." "Instead, he used is walking stick which he named 'prodger' as a kind of antenna." "The mad Englishman with the walking stick became a familiar sight, and a thorn in the sight of authorities." "He was quite a romantic." "Much more volatile than his father." "He did things like wearing a red cloak and riding on a black horse at the Turkish Burgess, really quite dangerous difficult territory." "He did it with a sense of drama." "He wanted to be a spy, and he did some very rash things." "Evans sympathies were with the Slavs and their struggle for independence." "As the years went on and the conflict intensified, his articles became more and more impassioned." "His recklessness began to worry his wife Margaret, whom Evans had married after several years in the Balkans." "The young couple had settled into Brovnia, Croatia," "Arthur's version of paradise." "But in 1882, Evans articles caught up with him." "Thrown into jail as a spy, he languished there for seven weeks." "Characteristically, the young adventurer found a novel way to communicate with his wife." "Breaking a tooth off his pocket comb, he drew blood from his arm." ""Dear Margaret"" "He wrote in his blood," ""I'm fine, but it would be wise to get a lawyer."" "His family did succeed in getting him released." "But Evans was expelled from the Balkans." "For him, paradise was lost." "Once home in England the landscape looked grey and leaden." "Arthur missed the Mediterranean and found that he couldn't sit still." "So he and Margaret took off on a grand tour, a holiday that would have a lasting impact on his future." "In Greece, the young couple visited the customary sights revered by educated Europeans as the essence of beauty." "Evans was unimpressed." "He was more interested in truly ancient ruins, like the ones at Mycenae." "Ever since the first newspaper accounts more than a decade before," "Evans had been fascinated by the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann." "He visited the German archeologist at his home in Athens." "With great pride, Schliemann showed the younger man the objects he'd unearthed at Mycenae." "Evans was captivated." "His nearsighted eyes would often notice details others missed." "And what excited him here were the tiny sealstones used to press a design into wax or clay." "Their intricate symbols reminded him of picture writing like the Egyptian hieroglyphs." "Could it be that this early European civilization had also mastered the art of writing?" "And if it was so advanced, thought Evans, then surely another civilization must have preceded it." "He seemed to feel almost instinctively that there had to be something earlier." "I think that as one of the great contributions, really, that Evans made was the sense that Mycenaean art wasn't the beginning of something;" "it was the end of something." "So he had this sense that there must be something earlier to find." "And that, of course, was one of the things that pointed him in the direction of Crete." "In 1893, Evans' wife Margaret died of tuberculosis." "The couple had been living in Oxford for ten years where Evans served as director of the Ashmolean Museum." "Without his companion, Evans was bereft." "For the rest of his life he would only write on black bordered note paper." "Clearly, he needed a new adventure." "His mind returned to his meeting with Schliemann and the enigma of the sealstone." "He'd heard that the island of Crete was full of these little treasures." "It was time to see for himself." "In 1894, Arthur Evans went to Crete, a sleepy island in the Aegean Sea." "In ancient times it had been fabled as a rich and populous land." "Now under the control of the Ottoman Turks, it was timeless and unspoiled." "Exactly the sort of place Arthur Evans liked." "He traveled all over the island looking for sealstones unearthed by the plow." "Here women called them 'milkstones' and wore them around their necks to ensure enough milk for their babies." "Finally, he came to a great mound, still identified by the locals as the site of Knossos, in Greek mythology, the palace of King Minos." "Arthur Evans couldn't resist the power of the myth, that beneath this hill once lay the labyrinth of the monstrous Minotaur." "As the story goes, every year the City of Athens was required to send tribute to King Minos." "Seven youths and seven maidens were sent into the labyrinth to face the Minotaur, the terrifying monster half man and half bull." "No one came out alive." "Then a youth named Theseus devised a scheme to mark his trail with a ball of thread." "The hero met the Minotaur in a great battle." "Triumphant, he followed the thread to freedom." "When Arthur Evans arrived at the great mound, it looked like any other hill with no evidence of a palace, let alone a labyrinth." "But Evans met a man who had found some huge storage jars close to the surface." "He claimed there was much more waiting beneath the earth." "Evans began to negotiate with the land's Turkish owners." "It took him five years and the patience to wait until Crete gained its independence from the Turks." "Evans had learned as a collector that the only way really to control an artifact was to own it." "So Evans decided to own his greatest artifact, and to buy Knossos because he knew that as landowner he would have a right to do whatever he wanted on it." "On the 23rd of March 1900, Arthur Evans broke ground at Knossos." "In an effort to heal scars from the recent war for independence, he hired both Muslims and Christians, men and women, to work the dig." "Evans himself was almost overcome with excitement." "There is a bit of schizophrenia almost in Evans where he is trained by his father as the scientific archeologist." "At the same time, the romantic explorer is desperate to get at the treasure." "It didn't take long." "Exactly one week after he began digging," "Arthur Evans found clay tablets inscribed with two different systems of writing never seen before." "Evans called them 'Linear A' and 'Linear B.'" "He would spend the rest of his long life trying to decipher them." "Even more extraordinary lay in wait." "Arthur Evans found in the very first week of his excavation a wonderful gypsum throne, a stone throne still it in a place, in a room beautifully decorated with frescos, it was flanked by griffins." "And he was instantly able to announce to the world this is the oldest throne in Europe, this is the beginning of European civilization." "The civilization Evans was uncovering seemed amazingly advanced." "While the rest of Europe was still living in huts, these ancient people had resided in comfort and splendor." "Essentially it really was like a grand European palace where you had running water actually running through the building itself." "This sort of thing, most of Evans' readers in the London Times didn't have." "You know, flushing toilets in their own houses and fresh water running through the houses." "Elated by the extraordinary treasures of Knossos," "Evans boldly announced to the world that he had found a completely unknown, unimagined civilization." "Older than Schliemann's Mycenae, and more than 15,000 years older than classical Greece." "He decided these remarkable ancient Europeans needed a name." "'Minoan' he called them after the legend of King Minos." "This time Arthur Evans had found a cause equal to his boundless imagination." "As the years went on, the challenges set in." "Winter storms damaged the vulnerable ruins." "Evans realized he had to devise a way to protect them." "It was only the beginning of his conservation problems." "Soon his workmen found evidence that the palace had actually had several stories." "Evans sent two experienced silver miners tunneling into the earth." "They dug for weeks, eventually revealing the remains of four magnificent flights of stone steps." "Evans found the only way to preserve the staircase was to restore it to its former glory." "All it would take was a bit of imagination." "Really what started off as a first- aid to keep the building in tact grew out of hand a little bit because he began to really enjoy what he was doing." "Little by little, Evans began to restore Knossos." "Using his own fortune, he transformed the ruins into rooms, based on his personal vision of Minoan architecture." "The project was controversial from the start." "Evans used modern materials like steel and reinforced concrete, melding the ancient with the latest in 20th century architecture." "Evans was trying to recreate a total experience in the same way that we try to set up virtual reality mazes where people can experience architecture." "Evans was trying to do the same thing at Knossos." "He was criticized for building a movie set, and in a sense that is what he was doing." "He wanted people to be able to walk through and experience the building." "But really one is experiencing Evans' vision more than anything else when you visit Knossos." "Even Evans critics today admit that the palace would be a confusing maze without his unifying vision." "As more and more ruins continued to be unearthed," "Evans hired architects to help him make sense of the twisting corridors and rooms." "He began to think that the palace itself had inspired the myth of the labyrinth, for he found 1400 rooms stretched over 6 acres." "The palace was reasonably well preserved, but nothing like as well preserved as it now feels." "It is really quite important to walk into a place and have a sense of walls and ceilings as well as just foundations the come up to about knee level." "So with things like the grand staircase, of which he was hugely proud," "I think a lot of people have cause to be grateful to Evans for allowing them the chance to walk down a Minoan staircase and to be surrounded by Minoan columns and even restored frescos on the wall." "It has been a wonderful experience." "Evans was inspired by the frescos." "The fragments suggested a world surprisingly modern, a handsome people who lived in harmony with nature." "But the images were indistinct and broken." "So Evans took another leap." "He hired a team of artists to help him fill in the blanks." "What emerged from Evans palette was a world of grace of sensuality, unlike any other in ancient times." "There were no images of war." "Women were on an equal footing with men." "Priestesses led the worship of a mother goddess." "How much of this inviting world was truly Minoan, and how much the creation of Arthur Evans?" "He idealized the Minoans." "He had no real concept that there could be an darker side to their nature, any war-likeness." "They were, for him, sort of latter-day hippies, really." "They were people who lived in an almost perfect world, a world which I think Evans saw in contrast to the real world." "They were always a bit of an escape for him." "During Evans years at Knossos, the outside world was shattered by the violence of World War I." "Evans was horrified by the brutal technology and raw power of the 20th century." "Just as he had escaped from industrial England in his youth, he found solace in the refined world of the Minoans." "They became almost real to him, a perfect people who lived in an ideal world." "In his writings only once did Evans admit that his Minoans might have had a violent side." "He couldn't help noticing that everywhere he looked in the palace he saw menacing images of bulls." "They reminded him of the innocent youths and maidens sacrificed to the Minotaur." "One fresco haunted him, a charging bull with a young acrobat in the midst of a suicidal leap." "What could be the meaning of this cruel sport, so like the bloody rituals of the Roman amphitheater?" ""The sports of the Roman amphitheater may thus in Crete may be trace back to prehistoric times." "Perhaps the legends of Athenian prisoners devoured by the Minotaur preserve a real tradition of such cruel sports."..." "Arthur Evans" "But most of the time Evans Minoans seemed to have lived with all the grace and polish of their eminent discoverer." "He was Sir Arthur now, widely honored and renowned." "He entertained frequently, but remained a private person, more at home in the world he created." "He spent much of his later years writing a history of the Minoans called," ""The Palace of Minos."" "In defiance of modern technology, he wrote all four volumes in longhand with a white goose-feather quill pen." "Many of his friends said his handwriting was even beginning to look like Linear A." "Throughout his writings Evans insisted on the superiority of his Minoans." "He believed they had dominated the Aegean, lording over the more warlike tribes of mainland Greece." "Even in the face of conflicting evidence, he insisted that only an earthquake precipitated their fall." "Other archeologists disagreed." "They pointed to evidence which showed that the Minoans had been conquered by the Mycenaeans sweeping in from Greece about 1450 B.C." "Evans could never accept the image of his Minoans as a captive people." "To the end of his life Evans remained true to his dream of the Minoans." "All over Crete other excavators were digging, revealing the outlines of other palaces that had flourished at the same time as his Knossos." "Their methods were not the same as his- science had taken over archeology." "No longer would a single vision recreate a civilization." "The days of the treasure seekers were over." "There are instances where we can see him as being wrongheaded, pigheaded, just plain wrong." "But what really strikes you very forcibly is that if you're starting any piece of Minoan research, if you're asking any questions, you can almost always go back to Arthur Evans' writings and find a starting point." "You may not agree with what he says about it, but he almost always been there first and thought of the question." "Regardless of whether it was true or not, Evans image of Minoan culture- its elegance and grace- captivated the Western imagination." "It continues to inspire more than a million visitors to Knossos every year." "The treasure he'd unearthed was more than gold." "It was the vision of a civilized world deep in the dark recesses of the European past." "Ashes to ashes." "Dust to dust." "Death always gets the final word - no matter how we mock it." "Sworn to eternal silence, the Dead seem beyond our reach." "Yet to some scientists, they speak volumes." ""When I look at a mummy, I'm looking at an encyclopedia."" "Through the lens of modern science, the grave has become a window on the past." "Today we can learn intimate details about how the Ancients lived- and how they died." ""...that's really, that's, that's really a common way that they did it - the strangulation or blows to the head..."" "Bit by bit, their portraits emerge from flesh, bone, and DNA." ""Bringing the people back to life, I think that that's the fun part of it."" "The unearthing of the past reveals the tangled roots of our family tree." "But some see only the desecration of their ancestors." ""They must be put back into the bosom of sacred Mother Earth."" "As the Living defend the Dead, battle lines are drawn." "In truth, those who passed here long ago still dwell among us." "From fragile remains, their life stories unfold." "And as we hear them, they become a part of us all." "Listen now to the voices of the Dead." "This is the driest place on earth:" "the Atacama Desert in Chile." "Life has found a foothold here:" "not in the blazing sands, but in the slender river valleys that stretch across the desert from the Andes to the sea." "The city of Arica stands where two rivers meet the Pacific Ocean." "Countless generations of fishermen have thrived here, and many families have deep roots." "Whenever ground is broken, there's a good chance these roots may come to light." "The city's arid soil has yielded several ancient burials, to the delight of scientists from the local university." "But physical anthropologist Bernardo Arriaza, now with the University of Nevada, will never forget a visit to a site where the water company was digging trenches." "I remembered in 1983, it was a quiet day when the water company called us." "They said they had found something unusual, so that really caught our interest." ""And we get called all the time, and you never know what you're going to find, so that's also the exciting part of going." "You don't know what it's going to be." "And this time it was quite incredible, actually."" "The shovels had exposed a plot of nearly a hundred mummies." "Some would be dated to 7,000 years ago- 2,000 years older than the mummies of ancient Egypt." "Eerie masks were sculpted over their faces." "Wigs were glued directly to their skulls." "Bodies were completely made over- paste and paint on the outside, grasses and earth within." "Men, women and children were mummified." "Even this eight inch long fetus." "These elaborate mummies were created by a people called the Chinchorro." "They lived along the coast in simple huts, and left little behind- no monuments, no written texts." "But from their bones and artifacts," "Arriaza has compiled a profile of their lifestyle." ""The Chinchorro people were fishermen." "They fished from the rocks with fish hooks made of shells." "They also collected shellfish and hunted sea lions with harpoons." "And they wove beautiful nets to gather their food." "Their clothing and ornaments were minimal." "All their emphasis went into mummifying the dead"" "Why would a simple people transform their dead into such elaborate creations?" "Arriaza has a theory." ""Someone is being mummified, it's a lot of energy investment, it's a lot of caring." "Even the fetuses are fascinating." "Why?" "Because they have long hair, they have the mouth open." "That's conveying life." ""We tend to see our dead as someone that's farther away." "We don't want to see the dead with open eyes- no, you think, wow, that would scare me." "You want to see the dead completely dead." "In the case of the Chinchorro, they're seeing the dead as part of the living."" "Virtual works of art, their mummies were not intended for the grave." "They played an important role in the very heart of the community." "The mummy was an honored emissary who moved between this world and the next- sending word to the ancestors, interceding before the gods." "The people rendered thanks with songs and offerings." "Mummification helped ease the loss of a loved one, and strengthened bonds between the living." "It made the community whole again." "Such rituals may have quelled the awful fear of what lies beyond death- no less a mystery 7,000 years ago than today." "One of the earliest expressions of the human spirit, death rites date back at least 100,000 years." "Even the Neanderthals buried one of their own beneath a blanket of flowers." "Every culture on earth has evolved rituals to bid a final farewell to the dead." "Some consign the body to the embrace of the earth." "Others ensure the release of the soul through fire." "In today's crowded world, the practice of cremation is on the rise wherever land is at a premium." "We even send our dead into space." "For about the cost of a terrestrial burial, a company in Texas will load a container of ashes on a small rocket." "After orbiting for several years, the ashes eventually fall into Earth's atmosphere and vaporize, like a tiny shooting star." "It's a fitting twenty- first century sendoff... but would have been unthinkable in one of the greatest civilizations the Earth has ever known." "The ancient Egyptians believed the body had to last forever." "Without it, the deceased could not rise again in the next world to enjoy eternal life." "To prevent decay, the bodies of the dead were drained of moisture, and reduced to the consistency of leather." "Everyone wanted to be mummified." "There may have been cut-rate embalming for the poor, first-class treatment for the rich." "Even animals were mummified, to accompany the dead on their final journey." "Over some thirty centuries, countless mummies were made." "But countless were also destroyed." "Almost from the moment they were sealed, the Pyramids and nearly every other well- appointed tomb were ransacked by thieves." "Kings or commoners, bodies were hacked apart and left in tatters." "Things got worse when Europe developed a taste for mummies." "By the 12th century, they were imported by the ton to be ground up and mixed in potions purported to cure everything from headaches to impotence." "In 1798, Napoleon's campaign spawned a new wave of "mummy-mania."" "Over the next century, hundreds were dissected both in laboratories and at fashionable unwrapping parties." "The supply seemed endless." "Mummies made cheap fertilizer and fuel." "In the 19th century, trains from Cairo burned stacks of them to power their steam boilers." "Our fascination with mummies continued unabashed well into the 20th century." ""Is it dead or alive?" "Human or inhuman?" "You'll know." "You'll see." "You'll feel the awful, creeping crawling terror that stands your hair on end and brings a scream to your lips!" "The Mummy!"" "Today, Egypt's mummies are treated as fragile time capsules." "Science now has the tools to explore their secrets without destroying them." ""Take this side off right here."" "Researchers can coax clues about daily life 3,000 years ago from the tiniest samples of tissue and bone." "Egyptologist Bob Brier, of Long Island University, knows more than most about mummies." "But just how a mummy became a mummy was a question that irked him for years." ""The party line among Egyptologists was always," "'Oh we know how they did it, they removed the brain through the nose, they removed the internal organs." "We know pretty much how they did it.'" "But there's no papyrus that tells how to mummify a human." "The Egyptians never wrote down how they did it." "It was a secret, probably a trade secret."" "A brief description was recorded by Greek historian Herodotus around 450 BC." "For Brier, it was not the final word." "I started to do a mental mummification, trying to just imagine exactly what happened." "At some point I realized, the only way we'll ever really find out is to do it."" "In 1994, Brier set about to perform the first Egyptian- style mummification in two thousand years." "In Cairo, he tracked down the embalming spices mentioned by Herodotus, including frankincense and myrrh." "He would also need special equipment." ""We had to have replica tools made of all the instruments we thought the embalmers used." "So for example, we had to have obsidian, an obsidian blade flaked by somebody in the Southwest who knew how to do this." "We had to have a silversmith make bronze tools just like ancient Egyptian bronze tools."" ""Not since the time of Sneferu has its like been done." "Now I'm a little bigger than the average Egyptian..."" "Copying ancient designs, Brier built an embalming board for the elevation of the corpse and drainage of fluids." ""And I'll tell you, it might be good for the dead, but it's not good for the living."" "With his colleague Ronald Wade, at the University of Maryland Medical School," "Brier would mummify a man who had donated his remains to science." ""There were quite a few surprises along the way as we did the mummification." "One was in removing the brain." "Everybody always thought that you kind of pull the brain out a piece at a time through the nose, at least that's how all the articles say it was done." "We tried it, it didn't come out that way."" ""What we figured out, what the Ancient Egyptians did was they inserted a long hook and then moved it around, using it like a whisk." "And then broke down the brain until- it was almost like a, a milk shake consistency, and then turned the cadaver upside down, and then the brain ran out." "That's how they did it."" "Internal organs were removed through an incision made with an obsidian blade - sharp as any modern scalpel." "Then the body was covered with several hundred of pounds of natron - a naturally occurring salt, Brier had imported from Egypt." "Internal organs were treated separately." "Left in place for about a month, the natron was supposed to leach all moisture from the body." "For Brier, the suspense was overwhelming." ""What would we get?" "Would it look like a mummy?" "Or would it need another 3,000 years before it looked like the things in the museums?"" ""One of the things that was really almost shocking was when we took the natron off, we had a mummy."" "A striking demonstration that people are mostly water, the body would shrink from more than 160 pounds, to just 45." ""What are the oils in it, Bob?"" ""The oils are frankincense, myrrh oil, palm oil, lotus oil, and cedar oil." "There are five that I got."" "Brier anointed the body with oils considered sacred by the Egyptians, then began wrapping." ""Nice and tight."" "Accurate to the last detail, he used more than a hundred yards of pure linen inscribed with Egyptian spells." "Internal organs were placed in replica funerary jars, created by local college students." ""It's been perfumed and now it's going to be wrapped and we place it inside the jar."" ""A lot of people don't realize that we did the project not to get the mummy, but to get knowledge." "And the project isn't over." "Our mummy, it seems, is what we say, dead and well." "He's been at room temperature now for about two years, no signs of decay, it's stable." "So we think we did it right." "But he's still being used in research projects around the world." "We get requests for tissue samples, from people doing studies on ancient Egyptian mummies." "This is the only mummy in the world for which we know exactly what was done to him." "It's the only, so to speak, ancient Egyptian mummy that we have a full medical record on." "So it's an important mummy."" "If only in the annals of science, Brier's mummy has achieved immortality- a fate the Egyptians would surely have approved." "The quest for eternal life still goes on today- just in a different form." "Cryonics involves freezing the body in liquid nitrogen immediately after death." "Practitioners have faith that scientists of the future will have the know-how to revive them." "The sad truth is the human body- about two thirds water, plus a few basic chemicals- is simply not built to last." "Exposed in warm weather, a corpse could be reduced to a skeleton in a matter of weeks." "Underground, or underwater, the process usually takes somewhat longer." "Bone may last from months to millennia." "But when conditions are just right, Nature makes mummies." "In northwest China, near the route of the fabled Silk Road, the searing sands have yielded more than a hundred heat- dried mummies." "Surprisingly, they have the features of Caucasians, and date back two to four thousand years." "Many must have lived in the region centuries before the opening of the Silk Road around 200 BC." "Scholars had long been puzzled by ancient Chinese texts describing figures of great height, with red or yellow hair." "Cave paintings in the region lent credence to the accounts, but the discovery of the mummies adds an important piece to the puzzle." "Their existence suggests foreign traders settled in China much earlier than previously believed." "The bogs of northern Europe have long inspired legends- among them the "boogie-man."" "Two thousand years ago, the Celts and their kin believed bogs were an entrance to the realm of the gods." "They tossed in tribute of silver and gold- and other strange sacrifices." "Bogs are filled with a natural "embalming fluid", acidic water low in oxygen and rich with tannins, the same chemicals used to cure leather." "Over time, this brew converts dead vegetation into peat, long harvested as a heating fuel." "It also works wonders on bodies." "More than a thousand "bog mummies" have come to light;" "most are some 2,000 years old." "Often, their bones are dissolved, while their skin is transformed into a supple leather that retains a breathtaking impression of life." "Many bog mummies bear signs of a violent death- slit throat, strangulation, or hanging." "Many scholars believe they were sacrificed to fertility gods by early farming communities." "They were plunged into the bog, so the wheat would rise again." "More than 2,500 years ago, the Altai mountains of Siberia were home to a nomadic people called the Pazyryk." "They lived by the horse, and moved great herds across the land in search of pasture." "Horses were their measure of wealth and status." "The Pazyryk buried their dead in chambers dug deep into the icy earth." "In 1993, Russian archeologists opened an undisturbed chamber." "First, they found the remains of six horses killed by blows to the head." "Surely, they thought, this must be the tomb of a powerful man." "The coffin itself was completely sealed in ice." "To everyone's surprise, it contained a young woman- her features gone, but her body intact." "Tattoos of mythical creatures adorned her sturdy hands." "Was she a Priestess?" "Warrior?" "Healer?" "Her identity eludes us, but she provides a new image of women in this ancient culture." "On the west coast of Greenland, a rocky cove once harbored an Eskimo village, home to a people called the Inuit." "Some five hundred years ago, misfortune struck here, and eight bodies were laid to rest in a dry, sheltering cave." "Cause of death remains a mystery." "But these freeze?" "dried mummies, in superb fur clothing, rank as one of the most spectacular archeological finds from the arctic region." "The frozen heights of the Andes preserve a record of the past." "Five hundred years ago, the Inca ruled these highlands, and worshiped the mountains as gods." "Traces of their sacred sites are scattered throughout the peaks." "For nearly two decades, anthropologist Johan Reinhard has sought out the high altitude sites of the Inca." "But in September 1995, he first climbed Mount Ampato in Peru with a different goal in mind." ""Ampato's been a peak that's always been a mystery." "It's always stood out there and people haven't really climbed it very often and haven't seen much that's been on it."" ""And the idea was just to get some pictures of another volcano that was erupting nearby, never really thinking we'd find anything on the summit." "Now the reason for that is is that it's never been seen without a permanent snow-capped summit."" "The eruption had showered Ampato with dark ash." "Even at more than 20,000 feet, much of the snow had melted." "When my assistant, Miguel Zarate, and I, we reached the summit," "I was taking some notes when Miguel just continued on and, all of a sudden, gave a whistle and pointed." "And I looked and, sure enough, it was clear from even, forty, fifty feet away, that there were feathers sticking out of the slope."" "They adorned three Inca figurines once buried, now exposed by a rockslide." ""We were still looking down the slope and very quickly saw this bundle, laying right out on the ice." "I asked Miguel to pick it up and move it a bit." "And as he did, all of a sudden we were looking into the face of this dead young woman."" "Mummified by the cold, she had been sacrificed and buried on the mountaintop some five hundred years ago." "When her rocky tomb collapsed, her face was exposed to the sun." "But her body was intact-skin, muscle, bone, even the blood in her veins frozen solid." "Scientists estimate she was twelve to fourteen years old when she died." "Never before had the richly patterned clothing of an Inca noble woman come to light." "She is probably the best-preserved mummy ever discovered in the Americas." "In May 1996, the Maiden is flown, still frozen, to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore." "A state-of-the-art CAT scanner produces a detailed three-dimensional image of her body." "Her strong bones and teeth, well-formed muscles and internal organs speak volumes about Inca nutrition and health." "It's a stunning sight for the man who carried her down the mountain." "Then Johan Reinhard learns the secret of the Maiden's death." "A fatal two-inch fracture mars her skull." ""You can see it pretty nicely just rotating it around but, uh, would it, would it make sense that she may have been hit by a blow?"" ""Absolutely, that's, that's really a common way that they did it- the strangulation and blows to the heads were, were common ways to do human sacrifice." "We just didn't see it."" ""I kept having visions of what it was like carrying her in the dark, with the volcano and snowfall and everything." "And seeing this modern machinery and you could look at the screen and view bones and even organs." "It was just amazing, she just began to come alive."" "To the Inca, human sacrifice was the ultimate offering, an act of gratitude when the gods were generous;" "a desperate plea when they were angry." "Archeologists now know the Ampato Maiden died during a long-term volcanic eruption." "The cataclysm could have had devastating effects on the region." "Daily showers of hot ash." "Air thick with smoke." "Water sources poisoned." "Crops and livestock decimated." "A circle of priests would have led the Maiden to the highest reaches of Mount Ampato." "It was a grueling climb that took days." "She alone shouldered the fate of her family and her people." "To be thus chosen was a great honor." "In exchange for her life, she would earn an eternity of bliss and a place among the gods." "Soon after she died, the eruption spent itself, and the snows returned to Ampato, sealing the Maiden in ice for the next five centuries." "Even now, she serves her people well." ""She's providing us with so much information, that I hope that we are giving back something to her by deepening our respect and understanding for the culture that she came from, and the Inca civilization five hundred years ago."" "Across the globe, another chain of snowy peaks yields a messenger from the past." "The Alps seem impenetrable from the air." "But for millennia, shepherds and traders have hiked their mountain passes." "Today's trekkers are mostly tourists." "Every year, millions enjoy the alpine splendors of southern Austria." "In the fall of 1991, unusual weather turns snow to slush." "On September 19th, a couple of hikers stray from a marked trail, hoping to find a shortcut." "Instead, in a melting glacier at more than 10,000 feet, they spot something that stops them in their tracks." "Four days later, delayed by bad weather, an Austrian forensic team arrives." "This is not an uncommon sight in the Alps." "The frozen bodies of mountaineers are sometimes found decades after they perish among the peaks." "But this body is so deeply icebound the team borrows an ice axe and ski pole from a passing hiker." "Somewhat puzzling are the scraps of leather pulled from the slush around the body." "Not to mention the strange artifacts." "Team members conclude this body has been frozen a very long time." "They turn it over to experts at the University of Innsbruck." "Still wearing a strange shoe stuffed with grass, it's the body of a 25 to 40 year old man, shriveled but virtually intact." "Teeth show heavy wear." "Simple blue tattoos adorn his lower back and legs." "Seventy objects were found near his body." "A quiver of animal skin containing fourteen arrows." "A leather waist pouch, not unlike a "fanny pack."" "Bits of leather and grass rope." "A flint dagger." "Most telling, an axe with an exquisite copper blade." "To archeologists, the design of the blade suggests its owner may have died 4,000 years ago." "It was not the final word." "Skin, bone and grass samples are sent to four eminent European laboratories for radiocarbon dating." "All four conclude the Iceman died about 5,300 years ago- which makes him the oldest frozen mummy ever found." "Almost immediately, word gets out." "The University of Innsbruck is overrun, and a humble man from the Copper Age becomes an overnight sensation." "Few archeological discoveries have so completely dominated the headlines." "Nicknamed after the Otztal Alps," ""Otzi" provides endless inspiration to local entrepreneurs." "Who was he?" "How did he die?" "We may never know." "But his body and artifacts have begun to yield glimpses of a lifestyle practiced more than 5,000 years ago." "X-rays speak of lifelong physical stress:" "broken ribs, heavily worn joints, arthritis." "In his left foot" "With an endoscope, scientists remove a sample from the Iceman's stomach and found remnants of meat and grain- his last meal." "His lungs made a startling sight, blackened by hours spent near open fires, in close, smoky quarters." "Clinging to tatters of the Iceman's fur clothing, grains of primitive wheat suggest he had passed through a farming community near harvest time." "Found frozen in the snow near his body, a sloe berry also helped pinpoint the season of his death:" "the fruit ripens in early autumn." "At the discovery site, now determined to be inside the Italian border, researchers sifted through six hundred tons of snow." "After days of melting and filtering, they recovered part of a plaited grass cloak." "Another fragment, the upper edge of the cloak, held hairs that fell from the Iceman's head after death." "Chemical analysis would show the hair was heavily coated with copper particles the kind that are airborne near the smelting of copper ore." "Not an unusual finding- if the Iceman was a coppersmith, or an assistant to one." "Finally, every last inch of the Iceman's body became digital information, in a three?" "dimensional CAT scan." "This "virtual Iceman" allows for unlimited study without risking the fragile, frozen remains." "It also provides a ghostly foundation for a skilled artist, as he resurrects a traveler from a distant time." "Something drives him to the heights-trade or duty." "He may be a renegade on the run." "He knows the mountains well, but fails to heed the warning signs." "Perhaps he has no choice but to press on." "He climbs higher than the trees, beyond hope of any kindling to build a fire against the terrible cold." "In the lee of a rocky ridge, he'll lay down his belongings and wait out the night." "He knows that with sleep comes certain death." "But his senses are already numbed." "His lonely death deprived him of funeral rites by his people." "But this everyday man, frozen in time on his way somewhere, has helped write a new chapter on daily life in prehistoric Europe." "In southwest England," "Somerset is a region of limestone cliffs and deep gorges." "Home to some 3,000 people, the town of Cheddar is known not just for its namesake cheese, but for a series of spectacular caves sculpted by an underground river." "Some 9,000 years ago, Ice Age hunters camped here, and left one of their dead in the damp darkness." "Today a replica of "Cheddar Man" marks the spot." "He lived before the age of farming, when bears and wolves roamed the land." "The oldest complete skeleton found in England, it seems Cheddar Man died of head injuries around age 40." "In 1996, a fragment from his tooth was analyzed by scientists at Oxford University." "The ancient bone yielded traces of DNA." "A tiny fraction of Cheddar Man's genetic fingerprint was revealed." "A local television producer decided to test whether any of Cheddar Man's descendants were still living in the area today." "The high school became involved in his experiment." "Students from local families were asked to donate DNA samples." "Why are those two unpopular and who are they unpopular with?" "History teacher Adrian Targett, himself a native of the Somerset region, helped coordinate the volunteers." "A simple cheek swab was all it took to collect the necessary cells for DNA analysis." "To make up an even twenty, Targett donated a sample, too." "At Oxford University, the DNA was parsed and sorted." "Within weeks, results were in." ""On the basis of what we've got here, that would be an identical match which would mean that they had a common maternal ancestor." "So, who do we match this up with?" "Let's see..."" ""Number 12."" ""Number 12, so who's number 12?"" "On a Friday afternoon, the volunteers were assembled to hear the news." ""You're all agog, no doubt, to know who it is?" "Who is related to the cave man found in Cheddar?" "Yes?" "What would it feel like if it was one of you?" "Because it's probably going to be of interest to people all over the world that there is a link, over 9,000 years, to this person found in the cave." "Think you could stand the publicity and visits to California and wherever?" "Yes?" "So, who is it?" "It's Adrian Targett!"" ""Thank you very much!"" ""This is the man that's closest related to Cheddar Man."" ""I'm overwhelmed!"" ""How do you feel about that?"" ""A bit surprised!" "I was just about, about to say, 'I hope it's not me!"'" ""Adrian, what was your instant reaction when you were told that you had this amazing line back 9,000 years to a caveman?"" ""Well, it was a great shock, but then I realized that was why I had been put in next to the person who was doing the filming."" "The study of "dead DNA"?" "is becoming a powerful tool for unraveling relationships long buried in the past." "It can help illuminate patterns of gene flow between ancient populations, or family ties among rulers in a bygone dynasty." "DNA gave this man the oldest documented pedigree in the world." "But there's more to it for Adrian Targett." "It's essentially about our roots and connections and families, and I think, at heart, most people want to know more about themselves, where they come from, and of course this story does just that."" "The goal of archeology is to understand our past." "Much of what we know about long vanished peoples comes from the excavation of their graves." "This work has shed light on the very roots of humanity." "But it has also disturbed the sacred sites of earlier cultures." "In recent years, the collecting and handling of human remains have become more controversial, as native peoples around the world demand a new respect for their ancestors." "The conflict is especially heated in North America." "In the last century, countless Indian burials have been stripped bare." "Today, museums and institutes across the United States house the remains of some 300,000 Native Americans." "In 1927, this thousand-year-old burial site in Illinois was opened to the public." "The Dickson Mounds Museum would prosper." "But in the 1980s," "Native Americans registered complaints about the exposed skeletons." "By the 1990s, protests were held outside the museum." ""...in our own land." "So this movement, the American Indian movement, is said to be first a spiritual movement."" "To political activist Vernon Bellecourt, of the Ojibwa tribe, and to many others, the burial display was deeply disturbing." ""We practice our spiritual way of life." "We still have our language, our prayer songs and, and many of us who follow the traditional teachings of our, of our grandfathers and grandmothers, we then take exception when we see our burial sites being desecrated and the physical remains of our ancestors" "who are in an open burial pit for tourists and others to witness." "We decided to take some direct action."" "In 1991, Bellecourt and four other activists were forcibly removed from the museum for attempting to rebury the skeletons." "One year later, museum officials closed the display, and completely covered it with earth." "Under a law passed in 1990, federally funded institutions have begun to return Indian remains to their tribes." "Native peoples in Australia, New Zealand," "Africa and elsewhere are calling for similar policies." "Across time and space, the voices of the dead still reach us- in the most surprising ways." "In 1991, a British housewife purchased a book at an antique market near her home in the town of Bromsgrove." "Since childhood, Elizabeth Knight had been captivated by Native American culture." "Her new book included a 1920s essay about an Indian chief who visited London- and never returned home." "It was the story of Chief Long Wolf." "Legend has it, he was a seasoned Sioux warrior who fought at Little Big Horn." "Documents suggest he was one of several Indian "prisoners of war"" "released by the US Government to the custody of Buffalo Bill Cody." "In 1892, Cody's Wild West Show toured Europe." "Chief Long Wolf, at age 59, was the oldest performer in the troupe." "In London, the show was applauded by Queen Victoria." "But Long Wolf developed pneumonia." "As he lay dying, he asked his wife to take his body back to the land of his ancestors." "But on June 13th, he was buried, under the sign of the wolf, in London's Brompton Cemetery." "His wife and child returned home." "In time, his gravesite was forgotten." "The chief's final wish touched Elizabeth deeply." ""I had the book for a couple of weeks and," "I put the book back on the shelf several times, but eventually I had to take it down and said to my husband," "'I'll have to do something about this because it's really bothering me."'" "Some 35,000 gravestones rise from the grounds of Brompton Cemetery." "On May 1, 1992, Elizabeth searched the aisles until she found the weathered wolf." ""I made a vow to try and help him." "To try and find his family, because I knew his spirit would forever wander."" "Half a world away, in Tempe, Arizona, Long Wolf was far from forgotten." "A retired mechanic, John Black Feather was born and raised in South Dakota, not far from the site of Wounded Knee." "John had always known his great grandfather was buried in London- but he had no idea exactly where." ""I've been hearing about Long Wolf ever since I was about five years old." "My mother always talked about trying to find him but still, we didn't know how to go about finding him." "That's like looking for a needle in a haystack."" "In 1992," "John's wife spotted a newspaper article that changed everything." "Elizabeth Knight's letter marked the beginning of four years of planning and fundraising." ""Maybe you should writer her, a letter to her right away and see what..."" ""I always knew that he would one day come home." "I never thought I'd be involved with it a hundred years later, but, I did."" "September 25th, 1997." "The Black Feather family come to London to claim one of their own." ""It's not a sad day for us." "It's, it's, it's gonna be like a great homecoming for him when we get him back to South Dakota."" "For Elizabeth Knight it is a day of promises kept." ""This is a moment of resolution, of achievement, and blessing."" ""It was the most extraordinary day of my life." "And I'm sure Long Wolf's spirit was there."" "On September 28th, 1997, Long Wolf is laid to rest in a small cemetery in Wolf Creek, South Dakota." "His descendants reenact an ancient rite, this gesture of love beyond death." "More than anything else, it may be what makes us human." "We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us." "We walk in their footsteps." "We live on their graves." "Each time we speak their names, or honor their ways, perhaps they do live again." "To be remembered, and nothing more." "That alone may be the secret to immortality." "The earth does not easily yield its secrets." "Yet around the world scientists are unraveling the compelling story of human evolution." "It is a saga that blends the rigors of science with the romance of a detective story." "We have only traces that hint at who our ancestors were and how they may have lived." "It is like a gigantic puzzle with most of the pieces forever missing." "Today, biological scientists may quibble over the details of evolution, but they all agree that evolution is a fact." "Animal studies now shed light on why some distant ape like creature became an upright walker and how it may have confronted the perils of life on open ground." "Once barely noticeable on the landscape, humans would come to dominate the earth." "The tool, mother of all inventions, was a key to our success." "Tools chipped from stone helped bring us to where we are today." "Now new tools help us better understand what paths we may have traveled along the way." "Much of our current knowledge our understanding of who we are and where we came from has come about only in the last 30 years." "Can we reconstruct the past?" "Can long silent voices be summoned across the vast reaches of time?" "Join us as we probe the MYSTERIES OF MANKIND." "By nature mammals are intensely curious." "We humans are the most curious of all." "And perhaps nothing arouses our curiosity more than the intriguing question of our origins." "What about the cavemen?" "Caveman?" "Well, what do you think he is?" "A caveman." "At the close of the 16th century when William Shakespeare wrote:" "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, no one had any concept of the vast array of players who preceded us." "Today we yearn to know just who the actors were in this greatest of dramas." "When did they appear on the stage and when did they finally depart?" "The story is elusive at best, like peering into mists that float above an unfamiliar land." "Here and there through a dusky veil we think we catch a fleeting echo of some distant call feel primordial eyes watching us across the ancestral dark." "A thread of kinship surges within us." "Then, just as we grasp at a clue, the phantom voices melt away." "In the early 1900s the scientific world believed that the cradle of mankind was in Asia." "Then, in 1924," "South African anatomist Raymond Dart was brought a skull workmen had found in a limestone quarry." "Dart outraged the scientific community by announcing that this primitive, apelike child was a hominid a member of the family of man." "And, he said, it had walked upright just as we do." "Dart named the species Australopithecus Africanus southern ape of Africa." "For more than a decade Dart's only vocal supporter was paleontologist Robert Broom." "Dart was finally vindicated when Broom, in the 1930s and 40s, discovered an assortment of adult australopithecine fossils." "Africa's Great Rift Valley has been geologically active for millions of years an ideal setting for the burial of fossils and their later re-exposure here, Olduvai Gorge would become known as the "Grand Canyon of Evolution"" "because of two maverick scientists." "Coming here in the 1930s, Louis Leakey and his wife, Mary, undertook one of the most persistent efforts in the history of anthropology." "What particularly excited the Leakeys about Olduvai was the presence of primitive stone tools scattered across the eroded landscape" "Their passionate dream:" "to find the remains of the creatures who fashioned these tools to find the earliest known human." "It would be nearly a quarter of a century before their single-minded perseverance finally paid off." "The year was 1959." "We appeared to have got what we were looking for." "Here at last was a man or a man-like creature, apparently the earliest known man in the world." "It would turn out to be a teen-aged male, and not a true human, but a more primitive hominid an australopithecine." "And yet surely, like us, he had cried when hungry as a baby, wobbled his way onto two upright legs, knew pain, love, and joy." "Then in the way of all flesh, he died." "The boy died near the edge of what was then a lake." "The skeleton is missing, perhaps washed away or destroyed by scavengers." "Fortunately, the skull was buried by sediments." "Over the centuries water soluble minerals turned bone to stone as layer upon layer of deposits buried the skull ever deeper into the earth." "Some layers were volcanic ash laid down when a nearby volcano erupted." "Gradual geological uplift typical of the Rift Valley and subsequent erosion brought the fossil once again to the surface." "The odds of finding a hominid fossil are said to be one in ten million." "Because the Leakey's fossil was found in a deposit with volcanic ash, it could be accurately dated." "Volcanic ash contains radioactive potassium that decays into argon gas at a known rate over time." "Human evolution was then believed to begin no more than one million years ago." "Yet here was a fossil nearly double that age." "The scientific world was stunned." "Today, the addition of lasers to the dating technique enables scientists to date minuscule samples even more accurately." "A single grain of ash, seen magnified here many thousands of times, can produce a date much more reliable than ever before possible." "The name and age of a fossil tell little about how the creature actually lived." "But perhaps the behavior of living primates can." "Charles Darwin wrote that we are most closely related to the African apes." "But at that time no one knew how closely or to which species." "The answer would come from a most unlikely source the test tubes of molecular biologists." "Twenty years ago Dr. Vincent Sarich and his colleagues at the University of California were among a small group of scientists dating evolution with molecules and test tubes instead of fossils." "Sarich's group compared a blood protein in 13 species of primates, including humans, and charted when each had diverged from a common ancestor." "The dates differed radically from those obtained from fossils." "Among the great apes, beginning millions of years ago, the line that led to orangutans was the first to split off from a common ancestor." "The evidence suggests gorillas were next." "According to Sarich, chimpanzees and man may have diverged as recently as four to five million years ago." "Such a recent divergence was almost impossible for many scientists to accept." "Laymen were equally reluctant to listen." "There is still a very strong resistance to looking at human beings in an evolutionary context, especially behavioral." "Because we want to retain a separateness." "We don't want to see ourselves as having any non-human in our ancestry." "There are significant differences between us." "We are essentially hairless" "Oh, he likes the beard." "We are habitually upright walkers, we have a much larger brain, and we have the gift of spoken language." "But genetically humans and chimpanzees are 99% identical." "Chimps may even be more closely related to us than they are to gorillas." "In 1960 Louis Leakey, with uncanny intuition, sent a young woman into the field to study chimpanzees." "Jane Goodall's 27-year old study has become a classic and confirms Leakey's conviction that chimps have much to teach us about the behavior of early humans." "Understanding of chimp behavior today helps us to understand the way in which our early ancestors may have lived." "Because I think it makes sense to say any behavior shared by the modern chimpanzee and the modern human was probably present in the common ancestor." "And if it was present in the common ancestor, therefore in early man." "A mechanical leopard was instrumental in an experiment with chimpanzees conducted by scientists from the University of Amsterdam." "Anthropologists have long puzzled over how our ancestors defended themselves against predators." "How could such small creatures, not yet intelligent enough to make stone weapons, have possibly survived?" "Leopards are natural predators of chimpanzees." "Here, as the chimps attack, we catch a glimpse of how our ancestors, having left the safety of the trees, may have first met the challenges of life on the ground." "Once the leopard is decapitated, the chimp may not comprehend that it is "dead,"" "but it clearly knows the enemy is no longer a threat." "If a chimpanzee has the intelligence to defend itself with natural weapons, it seems likely our early ancestors did the same." "The chimpanzee has never become an habitual upright walker." "Why did we?" "Upright walking is so fundamental we seldom think about it, and yet it is one of the crucial ways we are set apart from all other mammals on earth." "When did our ancestors take that first tentative step out of the trees to brave the vast African landscapes?" "Important answers would be found in the Afar Triangle region of Ethiopia." "Here, in 1974, an international expedition of 15 specialists headed out to the remote badlands known as Hadar." "Co leader of the team, Dr. Donald Johanson describes himself as superstitious." "After two frustrating months on the sun scorched slopes, he woke up one morning feeling lucky and so noted in his diary." "Later that very day the team discovered bones that made headlines around the world" "at the time the oldest, most complete hominid ever found." "To anthropologists who usually consider themselves lucky to recover a tooth or a broken fragment of bone, this 40% complete skeleton was a bonanza." "Nicknamed Lucy, she quickly became the object of intense study." "What is most exceptional about a skeleton as complete as Lucy is all the information that we as anthropologists can glean from a skeleton like this." "For example, looking at her femur or her thigh bone, which is only about 12 inches in length, we know that she was no taller than three and a half or four feet." "Now that brings up the question or was it perhaps a child?" "If we look at the state of development for example, of the third molar or the wisdom tooth, it is fully erupted and is already beginning to wear." "So that relative to modern humans, she was an adult when she died." "We're able to tell from the weight bearing area of the hip socket, for example, that she probably only weighed about 50 or 55 pounds." "From the size of the brain case, there is enough of the brain case preserved to suggest to us that the brain was very small about one fourth the size of a modern human brain." "Historically, large brains have been considered the fundamental human trait." "In the 20s when Raymond Dart suggested a small brained creature walked upright he had only a skull to work with." "Here was a significant portion of a skeleton a creature with some very ape like features that walked upright." "Lucy had an ape like brain, a human like skeleton, and teeth both ape and human like a startling mixture of traits." "Yet clearly she was a hominid, a member of the family of man." "Returning to Hadar the following year, the team combed the slopes hoping to discover newly exposed fossils." "They never dreamed they would find anything as exciting as Lucy." "But the Johanson luck proved even better than the year before." "We have the femur and the foot and the knee!" "They had come across the first fragments of 13 individuals, possibly members of the same band." "They may have all perished together perhaps in a flash flood." "The fossils from Hadar and similar ones from Tanzania represent from 35 to 65 individuals." "Based on the abundant evidence," "Johanson and his colleagues felt confident in announcing an entirely new species." "They called it Australopithecus Afarensis and put forth the still controversial idea that it is the common ancestor to other Australopithecines who eventually died out, as well as the line that led to true humans." "In the laboratory fragments of skulls and jaws from several males were combined into a composite plaster skull by Johanson's colleague, Dr. Tim White." "After initial discovery and analysis scientists rarely work with an original, fragile fossil." "In fact, the fossils are usually returned to the country where they were found." "But these durable casts are exact replicas down to the most minute details." "In Alexandria, Virginia, the composite skull begins a magical transformation in the hands of anthropologist turned artist, John Gurche." "Gurche has been fascinated with human evolution since childhood." "Today he combines the talents of an anatomist with those of a master sculptor." "His workroom is a cross between an artist's studio and a scientific laboratory." "Placing the eyes is often a special moment." "I base the position of the eyes on scientific data, but there's also often a mystical side of it as well." "That is often the moment when I begin to feel that I'm being watched by the thing I'm working on that it is not so much a thing of clay and plaster, but is actually a living being." "What I really want to do is get at the human past, and having the scientific data behind me makes it much more rewarding for me because I can believe in what I'm doing." "I can believe that the face that's developing in front of me is very much like the face of the individual that it actually belonged to." "The really fascinating thing about working with Australopithecines is that you have something that's right on the line between being human and not human." "You have a lot of features that are ape like and yet it's in the process of becoming human." "The reconstruction will take Gurche more than two months." "It is painstaking, arduous work that often continues well into the night." "I'd really like to be able to make the claim for this kind of work that it's a hard science." "Unfortunately, it's not." "It's as good as it can be without actually going back in time and coming face to face with our ancestors." "The end result is often a surprise even to me." "I'm basing the restoration on clues one by one that I'm getting from the bony anatomy and the cumulative effect of those clues is often a surprise." "A face long lost to the tides of time emerges out of plaster and clay." "We come face to face with one of out earliest known relatives across a chasm of three million years." "More than half a million years before Lucy and more than a thousand miles away, a volcano erupted spewing ash across Tanzania's Serengeti Plain." "Then a moment was frozen in time." "An amazing sequence of chance events created a record unique in the pageant of prehistory." "Soon after the eruption the rain clouds that had been threatening parted." "Then three hominids, perhaps of the same species as Lucy, walked by." "Their footprints left an impression in the dampened ash fall." "Only because the sun then came out did the footprints harden." "And only because continued eruptions laid down yet other layers of ash were the traces entombed more than three and a half million years." "Today this area, not far from Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania, is called Laetoli." "Here, in 1978, a team led by Dr. Mary Leakey finds what is one of the most astounding archeological discoveries of all time the very footprints not seen on this earth since the eruption of one volcano millions of years ago." "Dr. Leakey and her team begin the delicate process of removing the cement hard rock." "To Dr. Leakey the prints are more evocative than any fossil." "They tell a vivid story of one fleeting moment in time." "The track of footprints that you see here on my left was a truly remarkable find that we made this season." "It's a trail left by three people who walked across a flat expanse of volcanic ash three and a half million years ago." "We can say they were relatively short." "We can estimate that their height was probably between four and five feet." "We can say they had this free striding walk." "One assumes they were perhaps holding hands or" "They are so evenly spaced, the tracks, and they're keeping step, always left foot for left foot and right foot for right foot, that it may, for all we know, have been a family party." "The emotional impact of the footprints is universal, but scientifically they arouse debate:" "Were these creatures related to Lucy, and could their upright walk so long ago have been the same as ours today?" "Tim White helped excavate the Laetoli footprints." "Now, to answer some of the questions raised, he has devised an experiment." "With our closest living relative, he walks across an expanse of wet sand." "Its consistency is roughly the same as damp volcanic ash." "Here we have my footprint with a strong heel strike and the big toe in line with the other toes." "The chimpanzee's footprint is here and the knuckle print is right behind it." "We see the chimpanzee's toe is divergent, whereas the human toe is in line with the other toes." "The human foot also has a dramatic arch to it." "The chimpanzee foot and its print lacks this arch." "And at Laetoli we have evidence from three and a half million years ago of a large toe in line with the rest of the toes and a longitudinal arch and a strong heel strike." "In other words, the human pattern has been established three and a half million years ago in Tanzania with these early hominids." "Some scientists feel that only by studying the locomotion of apes can we know how Lucy and our other early ancestors actually walked." "At the state University of New York at Stony Brook, a team led by anatomists Randall Susman and Jack Stern videotapes the movements of an orangutan." "They have also extensively studied chimpanzees." "Come on." "Electrodes implanted in the arm and leg muscles send signals to monitoring equipment." "Clothing holds the transmitter in place on the animal's back." "That's good bipedalism." "Keep him going." "On their screen Susman and Stern receive a superimposed image of the electrical output of the muscles as the animal moves." "One intriguing finding:" "The hip muscles used by apes in climbing are used in many of the same ways as human hip muscles are in walking." "So the transition from tree dweller to ground walker may have been relatively simple." "The pattern of muscle usage was already in place." "Good boy." "But Susman and Stern, unlike Johanson, White, and others, believe that these ancestors did not walk exactly as we do, but more like an ape when it walks on two legs." "They maintain that those creatures, like apes, still spent much time in the trees and had not yet fully adapted to life on the ground." "In earlier days, anthropologists compared and contrasted stones and bones, but could only ponder questions about behavior." "Today they can directly address some of the fundamental issues of our ancestry." "How did Lucy and the others live?" "Where did they sleep?" "What did they eat?" "In the line of other Australopithecines to which Lucy may have given rise, there were smaller creatures known as graciles and robust ones with puzzlingly massive jaws and teeth" "The fossil teeth themselves hold clues to what these hominids were eating." "Thousands or millions of years later, the wear on the teeth remains." "Let's see if we can't acquire that image." "Dr. Fred Grine, also at Stony Brook, studies diet, using a scanning electron microscope and computer graphics." "Different foods leave distinctively different marks on teeth." "Comparing the two patterns of a gracile and robust australopithecine side by side, it becomes quite evident that the wear patterns are very dissimilar, and that, therefore, the foods they would have eaten would have been dissimilar." "The scratches and the polished surfaces found on a gracile Australopithecine molar would have been produced by soft foods such as soft fruits and leaves, whereas the pitting which characterizes a robust Australopithecine molar would have been produced by hard food objects such as seeds and nuts." "Shrouded in myth since their discovery" "Australopithecines were long characterized as blood thirsty killer apes." "It now seems far more likely they were vegetarians who should be seen in their more rightful place in the human evolutionary drama." "Robust Australopithecines flourished for well over a million years, then disappeared an apparent evolutionary dead end." "It is possible they lost out in competition with another, more intelligent species a hominid tool user a line that would eventually lead to modern human beings." "Like the remains of their predecessors the fossil bones of the tool users are almost always discovered in deposits formed along lake shores or streams." "The areas around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya have a record of both human and animal life that is perhaps unmatched in the world." "Every week during the field season, a light plane from Nairobi brings expedition leader Richard Leakey, son of Louis and Mark Leakey." "Despite an early decision not to follow in his parents' footsteps," "Richard's passion for paleontology won out." "For two decades he has been digging here with remarkable success." "Over the years since 1968 the Turkana region has yielded ten to fifteen thousand fossil remains." "Most are animal, but amazingly more than 300 are early human." "Leakey has been called the "organizing genius of modern paleontology"." "He heads a team that scours the exposures daily for several months at a time." "They cover every foot of the 600 square mile area each year." "Looking for new evidence in any scientific discipline is exciting." "In our field it's particularly rewarding because every year there is a new opportunity." "These vast areas of desert are periodically washed by rain." "and every time it rains, there's a chance that something new will be exposed something new that's going to tell us something that we never knew before." "It's going to expose a completely new chapter in our understanding of human origins." "And it's really great fun to be out there on the desert realizing that although you were there the year before, this year it will be different because it rained a few months ago and something new must have washed up somewhere." "It's simply a question of finding it." "In 1984 a small piece of skull was found." "It was immediately recognized as human by Leakey's colleague Kamoya Kimeu." "With anatomist Alan Walker and the rest of the team, he went on to unearth a seemingly endless array of bones." "The rest of the skull and face were found and painstakingly glued together from 70 separate pieces." "The bones were clearly those of a Homo erectus, a species on the path that eventually led to modern humans." "The skeleton, a boy of about 12, was dated at more than a million and a half years old." "Far more complete than even Lucy, it is one of the most remarkable finds in the study of human evolution." "The boy differs little from a modern human in stature and body proportions." "An artist imagines what he might have looked like;" "Richard Leakey reconstructs what his life may have been like." "The area that he was living in was probably lake margin, swampy ground near the lake edge." "There was grassland;" "there were forests;" "there were permanent rivers running into the lake." "Probably an enormous amount of animals plains animals, carnivores, scavengers." "I suppose one could visualize an area like one of the better national parks in East Africa today, teeming with wildlife ideal conditions for an early human." "I think it's remarkable because it's so complete." "But perhaps another aspect that is often overlooked is that many people who don't like the idea of human evolution have been able to discount much of the work we've done." "On the basis that it was built on fragmentary evidence just little bits and pieces." "And who knows." "Those little bits of bone could belong to anything." "To confront some of these people with a complete skeleton that is so manifestly human and is so obviously related to us." "In a context where it's definitely one and a half million years or a little more is fairly convincing evidence." "And I think many of the people who are fence sitters on this discussion about creationism versus evolution are going to have to get off the fence in the light of this discovery." "A Homo erectus head would have looked very different from our own." "It had a heavy brow ridge, jutting face, and a smaller braincase." "It is very likely their skin was dark nature's protection against the tropical sun." "Some scientists believe Homo erectus was the first hominid to hunt." "In earlier times our ancestors, themselves prey, were probably accepted without fear at Africa's water holes." "But when they began to hunt, the other animals would sense them as a threat." "Exactly when hunting began may never be known." "But it is clear that the tools made by erectus were far more sophisticated than any that had been made before." "Even the earliest and most primitive tools marked a momentous advance for humankind the first evidence of culture." "And, as intelligence grew over time, tools became ever more refined and specialized." "Learning how tools may have been made and used provides a window into the behavior of our ancestors." "Dr. Nicholas Toth of Indiana University has become a master of the technique." "Many scientists had believed that the objective of the earliest toolmakers was to create these large cobbles and that the chipped off flakes were merely the debris." "Toth's experimentation led him to conclude it was quite the reverse." "The razor sharp flakes, he believes, were often the tools our ancestors made and used." "If you take a hard look at your average human being, we're very poor carnivores." "We have small canines;" "we don't have slashing claws;" "we're not very strong;" "we don't look anything like a hyena or a lion." "And I think with the simplest flake stone technology, you can butcher an animal from the size of a gazelle to the size of an elephant with absolutely no problem." "Even hyenas will not tackle the biggest bones on a carcass." "But with the simplest tools used like a hammer and anvil, an early hominid could get at the marrow inside." "Almost completely fat, marrow is high in calories, essential to a hominid roaming the African landscape." "When an animal bone is butchered, the edge of the tool leaves cutmarks." "Often ignored in the past, cutmarks are now recognized as vital clues to the behavior of early humans." "They can tell us, for instance, which animals our ancestors ate, which parts of these animals they may have favored, and ultimately they may reveal when hominids became successful hunters." "In the past scientists often suspected cutmarks were man made if tools were found nearby." "Today they know many factors from the natural world can plant false clues." "One factor not often considered came to light in unusual experiment conducted by Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer." "In Asia she had been puzzled by grooves and scratches on bones eight to nine million years old, long before hominids existed." "Later, in Africa, she saw how bones frequently are trampled by migrating game herds." "Could random trampling, she wondered, leave marks that could be confused with those made purposefully by a tool." "Dr. Pat Shipman of Johns Hopkins University has been experimenting with cutmarks since 1978." "She believes that by creating them herself and examining them microscopically, she and other can better define what is a true cutmark and what is not." "Into a scanning electron microscope, or SEM, she inserts a gold coated cast of the marks she has made." "Compared with regular microscopes, the SEM offers greater depth of field to look at three-dimensional structures." "It seems likely that marks on bones found in sandy soil may remain open to interpretation." "But for others," "Shipman has found that what distinguish a true cutmark are the fine lines within a groove." "Experimenting, she says, is the best way to suggest what happened to a bone thousands or millions of years ago." "The problem for us today is to tease out of the past, to coax out of the evidence the specialness of early hominids." "And once we know where we started and how we started and what was important then, we may have a very different idea of what it is to be human." "Homo erectus was the first human species to leave Africa." "Sometime after a million years ago, their fossil remains, and those of a number of African mammals, first appear in other tropical regions of the world." "Some scientists believe that by then meat had become an appreciable part of the diet." "With the addition of this important protein, this intelligent and curious creature would have been well equipped to expand out to unknown lands." "We know from preserved remains and tools that erectus reached China," "Java and southern Europe." "On the Sussex coast of England, quarry workers were the first to unearth a site called Boxgrove." "It may hold answers to the life style of the species that came after Homo erectus." "About 350,000 years old," "Boxgrove is an unusually important site." "It covers a hundred acres, and it contains vast numbers of tools and animal bones that are extraordinarily well preserved." "Erectus probably never reached this far north in Europe, but his descendants did." "They were the earliest form of our own species, Homo sapiens." "Here flags mark the locations where their tools or fragments have been found." "Animal bones abound." "Deer teeth." "Part of the lower jaw of an extinct bear." "A large pelvic bone with cutmarks that hint at a tool user's presence." "Yet strangely, no human remains have been found." "So untouched is the site that if one could peer back through the centuries, here would sit an ancestor chipping stone to make a tool." "Nearby, what may have been that very tool is held again in a human hand for the first time in 350,000 years." "Perhaps it was used to scrape wood, prepare a hide, or dig for roots in the ground." "It may have helped kill the deer or bring down the bear." "But where is the maker of the tool?" "Once Boxgrove was a beach front, ideal for the preservation of fossils." "Why no people have been found remains just another missing piece in the human puzzle." "These pre modern Homo sapiens seemingly evolved from Homo erectus, but their exact relationship to erectus, as well as to the more modern humans who followed, is still unclear." "One of the most puzzling of these pre modern Homo sapiens was Neanderthal." "Some scientists think they were a short lived side branch on the family tree." "Indeed, the longest ongoing controversy in paleoanthropology has been who were the Neanderthals?" "But there are more questions than answers." "We do know the Neanderthals were not the dimwitted brutes so often portrayed by cartoonists." "But one characteristic attributed to them is true." "They were cave people." "At Kebara Cave in Israel, a Neanderthal excavation in run jointly by Israeli and French teams." "When carefully studied, layers in a cave can tell a rich story." "Too often in the past they were dug with reckless abandon." "Thirty years ago Kebara was attacked with pickaxe and shovel." "Today, dental probes and fine brushes move methodically, inch by inch." "Each pail of dirt is screened for even the tiniest fragment of bone or stone." "Each piece will then be washed, identified, labeled, and cataloged." "By far the greatest number of finds at Kebara have been these well fashioned tools." "Literally hundreds of thousands have been unearthed." "The leader of the Israeli team is Professor Ofer Bar Yosef." "He has clear evidence that over many thousands of years" "Neanderthals repeatedly occupied Kebara Cave." "What we can see here are the fireplaces as built by the people around 45-46,000 years ago." "And this is one of the special features of Kebara Cave that we can see these fireplaces which are built one on top of the other and always at the same place in the central area of the cave." "They were either heating the area of the cave during wintertime or also using them for cooking." "And then when you still have the hot ashes, spreading them so they can sleep on them." "One problem that we should always keep in mind is that we cannot and we should not perhaps excavate the entire cave area because we have to preserve part of it for future archeologists who will probably use better techniques of excavation or better approaches." "And, therefore, we'll never know the entire picture of what really happened everywhere." "We do know Neanderthals camped in this natural shelter, or at least came here with food, perhaps huddling in groups around the warmth of a fire." "We also know some of them died here." "Neanderthals were the first people to bury their dead." "This skeleton, except for the missing skull which may have been used in some ritual, is among the most complete Neanderthals ever found." "What the meaning of burials was in the life of these long vanished ancestors cannot be known for certain." "But the fact that they buried their dead links them to us in deep and meaningful ways." "From Neanderthal excavations throughout Europe and the Middle East, a picture of how they lived has gradually emerged." "Theirs was a non-settled existence." "A socially organized people, they traveled in groups as they moved from place to place in search of food." "Hardy and robust, they were probably much stronger than most modern people." "They survived even in harsh Ice Age conditions." "Whether they had language as we know it is unclear." "But surely, in some sophisticated way, they communicated with their own." "Then about 30 to 40,000 years ago these intelligent, well-adapted people mysteriously disappeared." "They may or may not have evolved into modern Homo sapiens." "If modern Homo sapiens evolved elsewhere and then migrated," "Neanderthals may have simply lost out to them." "Anatomically much like us, these early modern humans stood at the threshold of everything we usually define as human." "Farming and the rise of great cities would await a later time." "But these early modern humans were the very first to create fine art." "This rich record of the past ranks among the greatest artistic achievements of humankind." "We know these people spread to every habitable part of the globe, but where had they come from?" "One scientist at the British Museum of Natural History in London thinks the answer has been found." "Physical anthropologist Dr. Chris Stringer." "The research on the origin of modern people is interesting obviously because it deals with the origins of all living people alive today." "And my idea of an African origin is based partly on the fossil evidence." "I feel that modern people appeared earliest in Africa and then later on in other parts of the world." "But there is also genetic data, and the genetic data also support the idea of an African origin of modern people." "At the University of Hawaii one of the primary genetic researchers in this field investigates the migration patterns of modern races" "Dr. Becky Cann believes her research adds rather startling information to the theory of an African origin." "All humans who are alive today can trace their ancestry in their genes back to a single female who, we think, lived in Africa sometime perhaps two hundred thousand years ago" "Dr. Cann bases her theory on studies of DNA extracted from women." "She traces backward in time one part of the DNA molecule that only females can pass on." "The genetic work is supplemented with interviews about the women's maternal ancestry." "Could I ask you about your maternal grandmother, your mother's mother?" "My grandmother was born on August 10, 1903 in Macau," "Macau is the coast of China." "Dr. Cann has studied Americans of European," "African, and Asian descent, as well as Australian Aborigines." "By comparing small segments of DNA from these women," "Dr. Cann assesses the similarities and the differences." "The more alike the DNA, the more closely related two individuals are." "With a computer," "Cann suggests different migration patterns over the centuries." "If she is right, modern humans, like earlier hominids, evolved in Africa." "In Africa it seems that the evolution of modern people first began and from there we all trace our ancestry." "So we're all very closely related." "And that goes for all people American Indians," "Australian Aborigines, Eskimos," "Europeans we all trace our origin to Africa, and under the skin we are all Africans." "Old concepts of human diversity die hard." "But certainly we must consider the possibility that human equality is a fact of our evolution that it's in our very genes." "We are all time travelers together, the most recent players in a drama that began at least four million years ago." "In the detective story of human evolution we know in a broad sense how the plot turned out." "But we know very little about the chapters along the way." "There are too many fossils that are merely fragments and too many gaps in time for which we have no fossils at all." "The science of anthropology is little more than a hundred years old." "But as it moves forward, it opens new mysteries, poses greater riddles." "To begin filling in the numerous blanks, the discovery of new fossils is essential." "New technologies will add other pieces to the expanding puzzle." "But that is all we can expect random puzzle pieces." "Never can the entire picture be known." "For scientists the excitement of the quest never diminishes." "And as the rains come again next year and the next, they know that somewhere in thousands of square miles, with a bit of luck, they will find new and even more provocative clues to the ongoing drama of our human past." "The mere suggestion of this creature strikes fear into the hearts of many." "Legendary serpent." "Stealthy predator." "This king of the rattlesnakes won his reputation for good reason." "In truth, his world is one full of danger, one that we know little about." "Look at that!" "One man has set out to change that and nearly dies doing it." "Dr. Bruce Means ventures through the inland waterways that went from Georgia through Florida's panhandle." "A freelance scientist, he is often on his own and prefers it that way." "For 25 years now, Means has pioneered the study of North America's largest and most feared viper." "Means journeys into this personal heart of darkness on a mission." "He fears for the fate of the venomous snake he is after, the Eastern diamondback rattler," "a proud and complex recluse slithering toward the black hole of extinction." "For over 50 years, I've wondered in nature by myself, sometimes barefooted, but usually with just my sandals on." "Where I'm heading takes some getting used to." "There's marsh and muck, but on the other side there's this paradise where the longleaf pine forest grows and this special creature I love so much survives." "Diamondbacks are almost impossible to find." "Sometimes in the summer, though, you can use the gopher tortoise for a guide." "Pregnant snakes often make their temporary homes in the long burrows that the turtle digs." "So if you find a tortoise, he can sometimes lead you to a diamondback." "There!" "There's the gopher tortoise about two feet down." "The gopher tortoise shovels out his own burrow, creating a home for hundreds of other creatures large and small." "There's another gopher of sorts, the gopher frog." "The Florida mouse and its pups." "And something we've been searching for, something menacing." "Incredibly, this is also the home of the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake." "A serpent scaled in diamonds, it is among the most highly evolved of all snakes, among the most dangerous, and among the most unlikely roommate any tortoise ever had." "The perfect odd couple." "Diamondbacks only prey on warm-blooded animals, so the coldblooded tortoise is safe from the snake." "Still, the snake is not harmless and the tortoise is not taking any chances." "The Eastern diamondback rattlesnake is as American as the bald eagle." "It is the largest rattlesnake in the world." "This is a singular serpent." "Many snakes swim, but few take to surfing like this rattler." "It seems as at home at sea as it is on land." "It is the king of American snakes more forbidding, almost invisible and utterly silent, but for its warning." "Its signature, the menacing rattle, signaling the nearness of sudden death." "The snake's trademark is made up of scales left behind each time the snake sheds its skin." "They scratch together when shaken." "Amazingly, the frequency is the same as an ambulance siren." "The rattle evolved in the ancient dance of survival." "Twelve thousand years ago, a menagerie of strange animals roamed the Atlantic Coast mastodons, lamas and bison, like this one, were as plentiful as deer." "All are gone now from the region but for this survivor, the Eastern diamondback." "Having melted into his environment through camouflage, the viper may have evolved a signal to spook off these big mammals." "Instead of being trampled, the snake rattled out a warning don't tread on me." "Like the snake, Means prefers to be left alone." "So often, it's just the doctor and the diamondback, man on snake, and sometimes snake on man." "I had hoped to be one of the few herpetologists who studied venomous animals and to say at the end of a career that I had never been bitten." "Means didn't get his wish." "He suffered his first bite in a laboratory accident more than two decades ago." "Then a few years later, he paddled out to a distant and deserted barrier island off the Florida coast to take a wildlife inventory." "The hazards of meeting up with a killer snake were the furthest thing from his mind." "I was wandering through the dune of vegetation and I encountered a rattle snake about a three and a half foot, beautiful looking female." "Had my camera, so I start taking photographs." "The snake wanted to start fleeing and I grabbed it by the tail and threw it up into the open, and it coiled up, so I got more photographs." "And at that point, I should have been satisfied, but for some crazy reason, and I'll never know why," "I decided I wanted to capture the snake." "I got in front of the snake, and I'm trying to pin the head of the snake when it struck at me and I misjudged how far the snake could strike." "It could strike further than I realized." "And it, one fang got me on the forefinger." "I looked at my forefinger and there was a pinprick of blood there, just beginning, a little jewel of red." "I thought to myself, "I cannot believe I let this happen." "When he was bitten in the safety of his lab, he collapsed in just four minutes, his legs rubbery and useless." "Now, he faced a half mile trek back to his canoe." "He had no communications and no choice." "The scientist in him understood that with every step he took, his chances at survival dimmed, because the long march pumped the venom faster through his body." "And he knew from his last experience that the legs go first." "The entire time it took me to get myself to safety, there was one thing that overwhelmingly occupied the whole episode:" "I kept thinking, "You're gonna do it." "Don't let this fear get you." "Don't panic." "Keep going."" "And I set my teeth, I mean, I literally clenched my teeth, and I said, "I'm gonna do it."" "As the pain spread, the paralysis set in, and he still had to paddle nearly a mile across the channel separating him from the mainland." "Almost 30 minutes had passed." "Means knew from experience time was running out." "I had many thoughts of my life passing, you know, before me, and most of all I worried about my children and my wife, about what they would think if I would not make it." "And worst of all, here I was in a canoe, and suppose that I panicked in the middle of the water and drowned and disappeared and they'd never have known what had happened to me." "So I kept that thing in mind, "I'm gonna make it." "I'm gonna make it."" "And I get all the way to shore." "So when I got on the shore, I tried to get out of the boat," "I couldn't move my legs." "I was totally paralyzed from the hips down." "I just threw myself over in the boat into the water." "My stuff dumps out into the water." "I pull myself out of the boat, and didn't bother with it;" "it floated off a ways from me." "And I literally clawed my way to my car." "When I got to the car, I had a problem getting the key in the door, and my car happened to have an idiosyncrasy about opening up, but fortunately it opened for me." "I dragged myself up into the car, pulled myself onto the seat." "Then I found out I couldn't drive." "It's a stick shift." "So I had to grab my right leg, pull it in, put it on the accelerator, grab my left leg, pull it in on the clutch." "I pushed the clutch in, started the car, gave it some gas." "And I was able to twist and pull it down and I popped the clutch." "I kept it in first gear and I tore off down the road towards help not being able to shift, so I was in first gear, going, "Rrrrrr," down the road." "The few minutes it took to drive to Survey Headquarters were an endless nightmare." "All I could do is just turn the key off and let it," ""Chugchugchug" to a stop, open the door." "And then I had to let myself down onto the pavement." "The pain was like salt poured in an open wound, and worse, he was growing weaker and weaker." "No longer able to drag himself over the hot knobby pavement, he had to roll in order to move, but he couldn't roll in a straight line." "So he plotted a circle across the burning parking lot to his last, best chance for survival." "Means reached his destination only to discover that his ordeal had just begun." "Nearly an hour had passed since the rattler sank its fangs in Bruce Means's hand, and now the scientist was discovering that the cure was as bad as the bite." "Twenty-six vials of antivenin were pumped into his veins to stem the tide of the snake's poison." "But the medicine proved an even more lethal toxin, because Means was allergic to it." "People around me could see the twitching that goes on a thing called muscular fasciculation." "The hair follicles around the mouth and I'm fully bearded move in a circular motion." "My whole face was involved in these strange rhythmical movements of the skin, which are characteristic of Eastern diamondback snake bites." "He spent ten days hovering between recovery and death, often in intensive care, as his body rebelled against the antivenin." "But he survived." "And less than 24 hours after he left the hospital, he was back at work, back to the snakes that nearly killed him." "What is the allure?" "Why is Means willing to risk the snake's fatal attraction?" "You know, this is a magnificent creature." "It's at the pinnacle of evolution and we know so little about it." "Apart from its beauty and its mystery, it has a rightful place in nature." "And now, it's at risk." "It's actually a very benign creature." "It likes to lie coiled up and hidden waiting for food and, once in a rare while, for a mate." "The survival of the Eastern diamondback depends on bogs like this and on these dwindling stands of longleaf pines, a once vast torrent of forest that tumbled south and west from Virginia to Texas." "These lofty but threatened woodlands sustain an immense web of wildlife and are the keystone to the Eastern diamondback's survival." "The powerful connection between the pines and the diamondbacks was little understood when Bruce Means arrived in Florida's woodlands." "The snake was feared and hunted, but never studied." "More than 20 years ago," "Means pioneered the use of radio signals to track the Eastern diamondback's behavior." "He carefully introduced a harmless, mouse sized transmitter into the sedated snakes, which beamed their whereabouts." "In summer, he combs the forests for his latest subject." "At this point, sometimes I get so close that I can't see them." "They're camouflaged very well in the grass." "I have to be very careful I don't step on one." "Ah, there it is." "Whew!" "A big one." "Little head." "Whoa!" "Big body." "Hello?" "Who are you?" "Whoa, is he heavy." "Look at the size." "Oh!" "This is a big snake, but it's not nearly as big as rattlesnakes get the Eastern diamondback." "This guy is about four and a half feet long and I would estimate about five and a half to six pounds in weight." "They come a lot bigger." "A ten pound snake, is not uncommon, which would be almost twice his bulk." "And I've known of 12 and 13 pound snakes." "The next thing I need to do is be sure that I don't endanger myself and also that I am careful not to cause him to hurt himself, so I'll partially narcotize him by putting an inhalant and it'll take about five minutes for him to become totally placid." "I'm not going to put him entirely out." "And then we can work with him." "Let's see how he's doing." "Yeah." "What is important here is I know he's under sufficiently for me to work with him when he's lost his writhing response, which you see him lying on his back now." "Now he's not out." "I have to be quite careful with him, anyway, but he's probably out sufficiently for me to flip him over and then capture him." "Alright, notice he's not thrashing." "He would be doing that were he not somewhat groggy." "So the first thing I do is get a measurement and he is 120 millimeters is now rattle length." "And his tail now that rattling indicates he's not, he's quickly coming out of his narcosis, but I have his head in my hand." "So it's 1200 millimeters in length and 120 tail, that's about 10 percent of the body length, which is about right for a male." "Females have about 10 percent less tail length." "This is a young snake." "This animal may only be in his third year of life." "That's amazing." "A lot of people don't realize a snake that big could be a juvenile." "But this one's probably just sexually mature." "Could you imagine what one twice that size in volume would look like?" "The Eastern diamondback really represents the epitome of snake evolution." "And there are several reasons for that." "One is that it has this remarkable heat sensitive pit right there, which is an advancement among snakes." "Another, of course, is this elaborate venom and fang apparatus." "The venom is a complex liqueur having several different proteins in it 8 to 10 and, depending on the species, more." "Each one of those proteins has various functions." "Many of them are enzymes." "They break down the tissue or in the case of the Eastern diamondback, it actually has quite a bit of nerve attacking components in its venom." "So the initial use that the venom is put to is to immobilize its prey, so it doesn't go too far away and the snake can go find it." "The snake employs its fierce weapons with surgical precision." "And it strikes with lightening speed." "Its jaws are lashed by sinew and powerful muscles that snap open the fangs like a switchblade." "Sacks similar to salivary glands pump the venom through hollow channels just like a hypodermic needle." "Though the bite is instantaneous, the snake pumps its venom several times to force a lethal dose into its victim." "After locating its prey, the snake begins the laborious process of feeding." "And it always starts with the head." "First one half of the jaw, then the other walk along the prey as it is ingested." "Small sharp teeth in the palate and lower jaw curve backward sliding over the food, pulling it in." "The body moves forward like an accordion as muscles in the throat draw the prey down." "A full grown snake could survive for a year on three or four lunches like this one." "Though bitten and nearly killed by the Eastern diamondback," "Means says his research makes plain the snake doesn't deserve its menacing reputation." "The Eastern diamondback rattlesnake is not a sinister animal." "A lot of people might think that." "They rely on several mechanisms to avoid your presence." "The first is camouflage." "There's a rattlesnake close by." "Normally you can't see the snake, because well, I know where it is but he's hidden in the grass and they're very difficult to see, so the rattlesnake is not rattling." "And they don't want to rattle because they don't want to attract your attention." "Human beings will go over and kill it." "But watch what happens if I walk slowly towards the snake, and it perceives that I'm aware of it, which it does now, you can hear it rattling." "This snake doesn't have a huge rattle string, but he's beginning to rattle." "In fact, he's not rattling a lot." "This is a very complacent animal." "I might have to be a little more threatening." "You see that he's orienting to me, as I walk around him, his head's turning." "Oh, this guy's quite complacent." "He can stick and reach me if he were to strike now." "Now if I back away from him, he'll stop rattling, which he's done." "Generally, they rely on camouflage." "Interestingly, I touched the snake to stimulate it, it did jump, but it still didn't strike me." "And it'll probably strike at this point." "Look at that." "It did sort of lethargically as I passed it." "This is sort of the common, average behavior of the Eastern diamondback." "Some will strike, but in general most of them don't." "They're not the sinister animal that people think." "And they by no means chase people." "They don't go after you." "So how can you loathe an animal that really doesn't have dirty deeds in its heart?" "August is a brief but crucial passage for the Eastern diamondback." "Males are on the move now trailing the pheromones of females." "More than ever, the males are out in the open and exposed to danger." "The females are less restless during this time, awaiting a mate or preparing to give birth near the safety of a burrow." "Birds of prey are the curse of the diamondback." "From the treetops, a red-tailed hawk can spy a snake a half a mile away." "A pregnant diamondback, storing fat for the dozen young maturing inside her body, would make for a feast." "Sensing danger overhead sends the tortoise and the pregnant rattler down into the safety of the burrow." "The hawk is undaunted and the male is still in the open." "Its talons over fangs." "The hawk dances gingerly around its dangerous prey." "The victor shrouds its victim from intruders." "For this rattler, the mating game is over." "The gopher tortoise's well engineered burrow is both a safe haven and a refuge." "The tunnel usually slopes some six feet underground, but an ambitious turtle will tunnel 30 feet or more." "Over time, as many as 350 creatures may come and go as tenants here." "The gopher frog calls this hole in the ground home." "Like the tortoise, it's cold blooded and so it's safe from the diamondback." "The sheepish looking gesture is really a reflex protecting its delicate eyes." "The barging gopher tortoise leaves no doubt who is landlord of this burrow." "He bulldozes past the other tenants who are preparing to head out into the night." "Though the turtle's tunnel is little more than a narrow hallway, the warm-blooded Florida Mouse occupies a one room apartment dug into the wall." "It's tiny, keyhole sized entryway keeps out the big diamondback." "Though coming and going is still a risk, she and the snake tend to keep different hours." "The diamondback usually hunts by day and the Florida mouse is nocturnal." "In the warmest months, the Eastern diamondback may stay out after hours, but not to hunt." "Instead, it will find a spot to curl up and wait out the night." "As the orange light of day parts the clouds, the diamondback nestles motionless at the base of a tree." "Rattlers are ambush hunters, using patience, stillness and stealth." "A family of squirrels ventures out into the day, unaware of the deadly interloper nearby." "The fleeing squirrel has moments to live." "No matter where the squirrel dies, the snake will find it." "I know when I was bitten, my body fell apart." "As big as I am, I had a chance." "But for a small creature like the squirrel, it's all over in an instant." "How the snake tracks its wounded prey is not yet clear." "Means thinks a stricken animal gives off a special scent, a unique signature that distinguishes it." "Food goes down headfirst, so the feet fold easily through the gaping jaws." "The diamondback gets its meal," "and there will be no more tales of alarm from this squirrel." "The diamondback brought a subtle advantage to its encounter with the squirrel, a sixth sense, hunting through its heat sensing pits." "Means wants to understand the world as the snake perceives it." "The growing tip of the longleaf pine is warm." "That's interesting." "A pioneer in research, he has embarked on a new series of experiments." "He uses a thermal camera to reveal a world invisible to humans, a world of heat radiating all around us." "Here is my imprint of my hand, right on the ground, where you can see nothing but leaves with the naked eye." "It's absolutely different." "Now for an experiment, I have brought a cute little laboratory rat." "Good morning you cute little rat." "Are you ready to be a star?" "We're gonna put him down on the ground to see what he looks like through this infrared camera." "Alright, Mr. Rat, wander around." "Whoa!" "This is fantastic." "The thermal camera dramatically shows how heat from the warm-blooded mouse strips it of both cover and camouflage." "While no one knows what the snake actually perceives, the camera offers visual evidence of the Eastern diamondback's advantage in hunting warm-blooded prey." "For the Eastern diamondback, heat is an ally and in surprising ways." "Lightning is as common to Florida as coastline, and the bolts become firebrands setting the forest aflame." "The snake depends on these fires, because they sustain the longleaf pine forest, the diamondback's principal habitat." "Fire burns out underbrush, allowing for new growth." "The diamondback is well adapted to these fiery conditions and seeks refuge from the flames." "This cotton mouth was not so lucky." "There are the quick and the dead and the well adapted." "After the fire, a mosaic of ash and old growth patch the earth." "A turtle navigates the embers trying to find food." "Within a few days, fresh greens will have punched through the ashes and new palmetto sprays will have fanned out." "This is the miracle of the longleaf pine forest." "Here the role of fire is not to kill;" "it's to rejuvenate." "Even tortoises seem to sprout from the soil after a fire" "newborns hungry for the green shoots." "August in the piney woods is a season of upheaval." "And the pregnant diamondback feels it most." "A month before labor she hunkers down, feeding stops, movement stops for the most part." "Labor lasts 12 exhausting hours, as she gives birth to a clutch of a dozen little diamondbacks." "Though the young are carried within her body and born live, they hatch from sacks identical to eggs but without the finishing touch the shell." "From the beginning, young rattlers can deliver a lethal dose of venom and soon bear the first button of their baby rattle." "Conventional wisdom says snakes don't make good mothers." "But Means believes Eastern diamondbacks may." "The mother stays close to the clutch in the first crucial days of life, although the reason may simply be exhaustion." "Deadly as the diamondback may be, they grow into a world of treachery." "Few survive their first year, for danger lurks in every direction even from other snakes." "The kingsnake is known as a muscular hunter a constrictor that kills by suffocating its prey." "Tongue flicks sample the air." "The diamondback senses a dangerous foe the kingsnake, dinner." "The kingsnake gets its name because it eats other snakes and it's immune to its opponent's venom." "Pinning the diamondback in its corkscrew coils, it crushes its victim, than swallows it whole." "It leaves the trophy till last." "More treacherous than the snake's natural predators the commercial hunter." "While against the law, practices like this go on to this day." "Hunters are paid $10 a foot for diamondbacks, as much as $60 a snake." "Outwitted, the rattler is lured into betraying itself with its last line of defense." "The hunter listens for the telltale rattle." "A spray of gasoline chokes the burrow." "The snake is desperate to escape the fumes and abandons the sanctuary of the tunnel, winding up in a bucket." "The burrow that had harbored so much life may now become a wasteland." "No one knows how long the gas fumes may linger." "If the snakes are not killed outright, many are brought to rattlesnake roundups, which have been entertaining audiences for decades." "It's 39 years we've had this roundup." "It's a way of controlling the snakes down in this country." "And I don't really know if it has that much of an impact, but we seem to get a lot of snakes every year." "Each year, Eastern diamondbacks are captured for roundups that attract crowds as large as 25,000." "That's essentially a diamond there." "Yeah, we come up here for rattlesnake burgers." "They tell us they're really good." "Yeah, you know I had to say chicken." "Chicken?" "Then I said take the alligator too." "People want to cook them, kill them and wear them." "They even want their venom, which the roundups milk at bargain prices for medical researchers." "Means attends roundups to take a head count of the rattlers, trying to gauge the impact these events have on the Eastern diamondback." "The snakes are treated badly." "They're exploited for money, then killed, with no thought for them as a renewable resource." "Worse than the roundup, says Means, is the skin trade." "Hides become fashion." "It is an ironic end for the Eastern diamondback, the magical camouflage that had hid the snake so well now calls attention to its wearer." "This is out of control and needs much more regulation." "Even alligators are licensed and tagged now." "But dead diamondbacks, they're treated as party favors." "Roundups give people the wrong message." "The truth is these snakes are not expendable, they're not evil." "People need to realize the value of what they're destroying." "This is already a snake hard pressed to survive." "But roundups and snake skin boots are just one threat." "Humans keep upping the ante on the snake's future, and dangers are everywhere." "In the summer, hot highways become killing gauntlets or worse burning barriers, cutting the snake off from its habitat." "Little more than two percent of the rattlers' ancient territory remains." "Humanity's pattern of destruction, the precious longleaf pinelands replaced by regiments of future two by fours, plowed over by agriculture, slashed apart by highways, and fragmented into withering islands, the leftovers of development." "There may not be enough land left to the snake to sustain it, let alone provide a future." "And as the snake goes, so go his neighbors." "What the diamondback needs is a better image, more public relations, some fans." "One of the roundups in the Eastern United States has done a wonderful job of this very sort of thing." "They don't even call it a roundup anymore, because they do not roundup snakes." "It's called a festival." "And they are very frightened of people." "If you come across one, he'll usually coil up, shake his tail, and back away from you." "And they put emphasis on environmental education." "They have just as many people that come to the festival." "They'll crawl down in there and live there with the turtle and just stay there." "Every now and then something will spook a rabbit, he'll run down the hole, he'll get a meal served to him like meal service." "These civic organizations that are involved in running the festival in the communities generate just as much income as any of these roundups that put the accent on beautization and misuse of the creatures." "It may be that it's already too late for the Eastern diamondback." "While well adapted to the trials of nature, the torments of humans are pushing the rattler to its limit." "Means fears that before we fully understand the snake's role in the environment, it may be gone." "But even he acknowledges that the snakes have found some surprising ways to survive." "Florida's torrents flood the lowlands and tiny streams become channels." "Even the tortoise goes with the flow, if sometimes reluctantly." "The hazards of the deep abound." "Carried along on the stream, the hard-pressed animals take with them the future." "Means believes the snake's survival skills might help it endure." "Swimming makes it mobile." "Streams become highways, escape routes from the destruction caused by development, and these streams sometimes ferry snakes all the way out to sea." "The Eastern diamondback island hops." "It's been found way out as far as the The Dry Tortugas." "That's about 120 miles from the Florida Coast." "This could be the snake's salvation, but like everywhere else, the islands are prime real estate for development." "Propelled far and fast beyond their normal range, the diamondbacks become pilgrims protected by their isolation." "Where the snake's habitat is overrun by development, the flood carries survivors to another, more welcoming place, their distant island, though it may be full of fiddler crabs." "Still, on his own, Means scours the barrier islands, studying the snakes in their remote habitats." "The Eastern diamondback is likely to be an endangered species very soon." "It has a special role in nature and it won't take much for it to be lost forever." "The snake simply needs a place to live and the opportunity to survive." "Even after 25 years of research," "Means says his efforts remain a work in progress." "What's clear is that the snake plays an essential role in nature, both as predator and prey." "Means's aim is to help us know this animal before it's too late." "It's my greatest wish that in my lifetime," "I'll still be able to come to places like this and see the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake." "I hope that continues." "Bruce Means reminds us that the diamondback's rattle may be more than a threat, that it may have a deeper meaning, that nature is sending us a message," ""Don't tread on me."" "This is the story of a pool and the animals that cannot live without it." "It's a place where hippos and crocodiles survive in mysterious harmony." "A crowded pool... where predator and prey are drawn together and where strange things happen that have rarely been seen before." "At this pool thirst can be dangerous, and drinking..." "becomes a deadly game of chance." "When the pool shrinks in an unrelenting drought... there is a desperate fight for life." "A wild anarchy takes over that only the fittest can survive." "Here in a strange communion hippos attend the last feast of the crocodiles." "A river in Africa..." "It's known as the Luvuvhu or Hippo river, and where land and river meet there exists a rich concentration of animals." "For countless years, this river has sustained life in the northern reaches of South Africa's Kruger National Park." "When good rains have fallen there is abundant water for all, but this year little rain fell, the river dwindled to a narrow channel, and finally stopped flowing." "The pools that remain in the river-bed are life sustain oases, and this which is one of the largest and deepest, and has never been known to go dry, is a favorite refuge for hippos and crocodiles." "For those who have to drink here each day the challenge is to drink and survive." "With over 60 crocodiles congregated here caution becomes the first rule." "Wise in the ways of the pool, oxpeckers, on their floating islands, drink safely, and these unpredictable giants don't seem to mind the few extra ounces of their company." "But, more extraordinary is this young crocodile, the smallest in the pool, who's become a regular passenger and is possibly safer basking on the surprisingly tolerant hippos than with its own kind." "Wily baboons have another strategy." "They dig pits at the pool's edge and drink the seepage water, rather than risk a croc attack." "In contrast, this female impala is so stressed by thirst she's beyond caution." "Dazed and distracted she finally drinks in the worst possibly place." "Crocs aren't the only problem here." "These impala have run afoul of a white- crowned plover, whose eggs are in a depression in the sand." "These birds only rest nest near water, and so, when the river dries, the fringe of the pool becomes prime real estate." "But it's also a busy and dangerous throughfare - crocs come here regularly to bask." "Crocodiles lumbering up the bank are a major hazard for the fragile eggs." "But, unlike the timid impala, the crocs ignore the birds' warning cries." "Lucky this time..." "and she settles down again to brood." "Hippos spend their nights grazing, often far from the pool, and, by day, they too like to lie in the warm sun." "A large wet snout, applied with surprisingly gentleness, seems all that's needed to clear some space on the crowded beach." "There's no hurry..." "we're all relaxed and easy here, and the great reptiles gradually respond to gentle nudges until all accommodated to their liking." "Another close call for the plovers." "As the crocodile returns to the pool." "But it's all just part of the price for a good waterfront site." "Hippos are a nuisance for the plovers" " they don't leave much space between them." "The rains that usually revive the river are late this year and the water level in the pool drops rapidly." "Fishing birds move on and find good pickings among the fish trapped on the shallows." "The yellow-billed stork's juggling act is no game, but a way to tire the fish into relaxing its sharp, erected spines." "Crocs eat fish too..." "they're also cunning thieves... who deliberately harass the birds into dropping their fish." "The herons must wet their catch before they can swallow it, and the crocs watch closely, waiting to move on and panic the bird at just the right moment." "Sometimes these waterbirds appear to live a charmed life and to be mysteriously immune from attack by crocodiles." "But birds and reptile understand each other well." "And the crocs seem to know these birds are just too alert to be easily caught." "But not all birds are crocodile smart." "Green pigeons don't often drink." "Usually they get enough moisture from the fruits they eat." "But in the heat of this dry year the birds are forced to come to water." "And they're innocent of any danger." "The sight of crocodiles spinning in a feeding frenzy is enough to frighten most animals away." "But as the crocs tear apart an nyala bull, something amazing happens." "A hippo moves on and begins to mouth and lick the bodies of the feeding crocs." "Hippos are strictly vegetarians." "She hasn't come for a share of the spoils." "Why she intrudes in this way is a mystery." "She is more powerful than the crocs and her dominance over them is absolute." "She prods and licks the face of the biggest croc on the pool - even as it struggles to swallow the skull of the antelope." "And then, as if her curiosity has been satisfied, she loses interest and leaves the crocs to their feast." "Elephants don't have to worry about crocodiles when they drink, but they still prefer the cleaner water in the pits and vigorously dig them out." "In the riverbank, near the pool, a large colony of nesting bee-eaters are feeding their young." "They must forage continually in the hot sun to satisfy their needs." "To cool off, every afternoon, they fly over the pool and dive for their drinks." "For some of the crocs this is the signal to take up positions." "The odds are heavily in favor of the bee-eaters and most survive the croc strikes." "A thirsty lioness comes to water." "She tries a pit but finds it full of bees." "She decides to risk the pool." "In heat like this the bees need water, too." "Lions can go without water for a long time..." "But this one is a nursing mother." "She must drink." "Maybe the bee-pit isn't so bad after all." "Large flocks of queleas are in the area, searching for seed and grain." "As they stop by the pool to drink, their busy fluttering at the water's edge inspires the crocodiles with a keen and almost sporting enthusiasm." "The monitor lizard is the scourge of both ground nesting birds and the egg lying crocodiles." "It's a voracious predator, particularly partial to eggs..." "And the feisty plover immediately declares war." "During the heat of the day the sand becomes unbearably hot and burns the skin between the impalas' hooves." "For the plovers on their nest, this is when easy access to water pays off." "The bird is soaking its breast-feathers until they are weighted with water." "It then hurries up the scorching sand to reliever its mate." "The plovers are brooding on sand that feels hot enough to fry an egg, and by mid-day they are changing guard at the nest every ten minutes." "Without the constant protection of their cool wet feathers, the eggs could not survive the heat." "The sand is so hot..." "it's a wonder she doesn't fly down." "These buffalo have just one thing in mind." "Their usual watering places are dry now and they've had a long, hot journey to get there." "One of the calves strikes out on its own and is soon in dangerous company..." "But these aren't the biggest crocs in the pools and the lucky calf quickly returns to the herd." "The crocs intentions are clear enough but before they can find a small enough victim the buffalo decide it's time to leave." "An irritated hippo helps them on their way." "The drought and heat are now so severe that some animals with small young cannot supply enough milk, and thirsty youngster follow their mothers to water before they're weaned or wise enough to know how to drink." "In an instant both croc and fawn vanish into the pool... leaving behind a bewildered mother." "Somewhere under the surface of the pool the crocodile lies low with its prey, waiting for an opportune moment to eat without having to share." "The most carefree creature in the pool is this baby hippo." "She frolics around her mother in that special state that belongs to all young things." "She is oblivious to the dangers in her world." "The pool is steadily shrinking and is already too small for so many animals." "But the hippos can't settle fights caused by overcrowding." "There is no place else to go." "As usual now, the hippos subside in an uneasy truce." "Subdued by the day's heat, and temporarily at peace, the baboons relax around the pool." "His peace is shattered by a familiar cry of outrage." "He's innocent but he's too close to the nest and the plover has a good eye for trouble an young male baboons..." "are especially targeted." "A sudden spat between rival crocs send a ripple of panic through the pool." "It's small wonder that the plovers are having trouble." "A fresh track shows that a crocodile ploughed right over their eggs." "This is their third nest of the season that's been lost to the crocodiles." "Starting again from scratch the plovers perform the ritual of selecting a site for a new nest." "The baby hippo is exploring her world." "The restraint of the crocodiles seems out of character, but with two tons of devoted mother nearby she is free to treat crocodiles with the same bold familiarity as the adult hippos do." "These great artist of violence are obliged to hold a kindly pose as the hippo child wanders on her playground of gently smiling dragons and slobbers on their tails." "A yellow-billed kite checks pool for an easy meal, and sights a dead fish." "The surrounding land is parched and bare and each night the hippos, must trek for miles to find grazing." "Other animals wander in the river-bed in search of the few remaining pools." "But most now are little more than reeking mud wallows, full of dead and dying fish..." "Even so, the impala would drink here, but the pool is dominated by a single croc," "the last of a group of more than forty that were here a month ago." "The monkeys won't risk it - and drink, instead, in deep footprints." "The fawn's attempt to drink is a small disaster." "Now it's covered with stinking mud." "The mother sniffs her offspring but doesn't recognized it in this foul disguise." "The crocodile that has held back the drinkers suddenly leaves." "Perhaps there is no future for it in this tiny pool." "The mother has made up her mind." "This is not the sweet smelling youngster she came with." "But the fawn knows better." "The little impala is persistent." "Soon the mud will wear off and the mother will again accept her." "The crocodile reappears, covered in fresh red earth." "She thrusts her head into the mud and swings it from side to side." "At first her peculiar behavior is a puzzle." "And then her secret is revealed as her muddy jaws open gently to release the newly hatched babies she has carried down from her nest on the riverbank." "This is the reason she has remained in the pool so long." "She would never desert her young..." "she is their only protection." "But between predators and the thick mud, there is no chance for the little crocs." "And all will die within an hour." "Back in the big pool crocodiles writhe and heave over another carcass." "And once again, hippos are amidst the frenzy." "There's nothing for them to eat, yet something attracts them here." "With jaws clamped tight on the carcass, the croc spins until a piece breaks off." "The hippos seems content to gently interrupt the spinning crocs from time to time." "But no one knows why they attend these terrible feasts." "For nine months little rain has fallen." "And the animals risk death for water." "The hippos calm is disturbed by the violent arrival of the croc's latest victim." "For this one there will be no lucky escape." "The baby hippo is already wedged deep among crocs close to the impala carcass and the biggest crocs in the pool." "The mother then does a strange thing." "Rousing herself to investigate the scene, she pushes her baby almost on the impala, and then retreats leaving her calf between these jaws and the meal." "The mother's presence is enough to ensure her safety..." "Though the baby seems less certain." "But the mother knows they wouldn't dare, and she drifts back on top the secure slumbers of the strong." "The pool has become so dangerous that most animals prefer to drink from the pits..." "But a fierce comedy of survival results when so many are desperate for water." "Large make baboons commandeer the pits and drink every mouthful of water that seeps in." "They can scare off most animals, but sharp horns have the advantage and the baboon reluctantly gives way." "Competition at the pits is so fierce that those that can't cope with a big baboon have to take their chances at the pool." "A nursing mother must have water, but she takes a terrible risk to get it." "The mother has torn herself free..." "But the baboons can see that another croc has her baby." "The croc will lose its prize to the others unless it leaves the pool." "But when it does a big baboon is waiting." "The croc drops the baby." "But the brave rescue is too late." "The drought continues." "It has become the worst in living memory." "The pool has dwindled to a mud wallow and many of the hippos have left on a final quest for water." "But for an increasing crowd of animals their only chance of salvation lies here." "For the plovers, no eggs have survived these cruel and chaotic conditions." "Every day an assemble of desperate animals gathers around the pool." "These baboons, who are seldom peaceable, reach new levels of aggression among themselves." "Even mothers with small babies do not escape the brutal bullying." "Baboons still dominate the pits but a female nyala, driven by thirst, is ready to fight for a drink." "Each day now a few baboons appear with blood on their hands." "Their victims are impala fawns." "Some are orphans of the drought, others, only temporarily lost and alone." "Trusting and totally defenseless, they are easy prey for a strong male baboon." "Unaware of the fate of her offspring, the mother ranges up and down the pool, calling." "A hungry warthog roots around for choice pieces of rotting catfish... while a kudu, heedless of the crocs, drinks the mud..." "The baboons didn't keep his kill to himself for long.'" "Yet the contest seems to be as much about male dominance as ownership of a carcass." "Meanwhile the warthog sees a good opportunity." "She's little slow and no match for an agile baboon." "As their pool dies around them the hippos and crocs lie marooned on the mud, like creatures made of clay," "half-formed and waiting for their creator to complete them." "A baboon risks all on a thin crust of mud as she searches for puddles on the surface." "While all around her lie more than a hundred crocs, indistinguishable from the mud." "The mother is brave but the life and death struggle is between these two." "If baboons have nightmares this is surely one of them." "Torn between terror and wanting to help, the mother is unable to rally any support." "She has escaped with muddy legs..." "a sore face and, possibly a haunting memory." "Right now she needs some hands on grooming;" "but there is none to be had just a curious stare." "When everything seems to have reached the end of endurance, the sky fills with clouds, and relief seems at hand." "The spell of the drought is broken." "The crocs return to life and begin immediately to devour the ripe remains of some old feast..." "that was locked in the mud." "But the rain was just a fleeting reminder of better times." "It does not break the drought." "The withering heat returns and draws all remaining moisture from the pool." "The last hippo has moved on and will probably die in a hopeless search for water." "Only one old crocodile is left." "He was the largest, the dominant croc." "He shows no signs of leaving." "He remains in his empty pool like a stranded nightmare." "The other crocs have taken shelter from the scorching sun in the vegetation around the pool." "They lie motionless in the shade, surviving on their last reserves." "The old male croc only pushes deeper onto the mud, covering himself with the remains of his pool." "Six weeks later, in the center of the pool, at the place where the water was deepest, lies the skeleton of the big male croc, dominant to the end." "Close by, are the bodies of more than thirty baboons, who succumbed when temperature reached nearly 120 degrees." "And in the surrounding bush, where they had sheltered from the sun, are the desiccated remains of the crocodiles." "But there are survivors." "In holes, dug deep into the riverbanks, there are a few crocs." "Entombed in the cool dark, they're able to conserve moisture and wait for the return of their river." "For some day, beyond the distant hills, where the weather is made, it will rain again... and the end of the drought will come trickling down the riverbed." "No wild calls will welcome this sight, but, as the river surges..." "And flows deep enough to swim in, who is to say that the crocodiles won't rejoice... and the birds won't revel in that first flooding." "In nature there are few happy endings..." "instead there is a continuing." "When the river returns..." "survivors will replenish its banks and the great cycle of life and renewal will begin again."