Transcript

4.3.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
0:04
I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated March April
0:08
twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a
0:12
reading service intended for people who are blind or have
0:15
other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
0:19
Please join me now for the first article titled for
0:22
centuries Indigenous people lived in these desert canyons. Now new
0:27
technology reveals extraordinary details about this sacred site in the
0:35
Arizona Desert. Researchers are learning so much more about the
0:39
peoples who have inhabited this land since antiquity. By Alistair
0:44
Lee bittsois The Canyon de Che National Monument on the
0:50
Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. Encompasses eighty three thousand odd
0:55
acres of sandstone peaks and plateaus towering above waterways, dots
1:00
with pines, junipers, aspens, and cottonwoods. Viewed from the sky,
1:05
the canyon takes the shape of a turkey's foot, fitting
1:08
since wild turkeys have lived here for centuries. The area's
1:12
best known formation may be spider Rock, a red sandstone
1:17
dagger stabbing seven hundred fifty feet up into the southwestern sky,
1:22
but perhaps its greatest and most mysterious feature is a
1:26
vast complex of one hundred sixty five or more rooms,
1:31
some hewn by the indigenous peoples who have lived here
1:34
for more than a thousand years, drawn by fertile soil,
1:38
fed by springs and streams, abundant wild game, and natural
1:43
protection from the elements to their successors, the Navajo or Denee,
1:49
this most sacred complex is known as zi ya King
1:53
the House under the Rock, a place of deep reverence
1:57
for the remnants of an ancestral culture. On a hot
2:01
September day, I joined a scientific mission to the site.
2:06
Though I'm Denay myself, this was my first visit and
2:09
I had some trepidation because to many indigenous people, zi Yaqin,
2:15
known also as Mummy Cave, as a holy site, considered
2:19
off limits. To cross the sandy Wash from the southwest
2:23
requires four wheel drive. When a truck gets stuck in
2:27
the mud or the sandy soil, you use a winch
2:30
to tow it out. Now and then feral horses emerged
2:34
from the cottonwood trees. As the road unfurled. It revealed
2:39
peach orchards and cornfields ready for the harvest. Ancient native
2:44
homesteads and cultural sites, including the famous White House Cliff.
2:49
Dwellings popped into view, then receded as I moved deeper
2:53
into the canyon, accompanied by Josh Ramsay, a veteran National
2:58
Park Service in PS archaeologists. After two hours, Si Yakin
3:04
appeared around the bend its alcoves, offering tantalizing shelter from
3:10
the September sun. People inhabited this land more than four
3:14
thousand years ago, but the human made structures date to
3:18
between a. D. Three hundred and thirteen hundred, when a
3:22
series of native groups built and occupied a small city's
3:25
worth of homes, meeting houses, and places of worship in
3:29
these cliffs, starting more than one thousand years ago. The
3:33
inhabitants adorned the walls of the complex with decorative earthen
3:38
plasters in white and occasionally green. At the center of
3:42
the complex is the most elevated room, which Denet and
3:46
other tribes consider the holiest spot in this remarkable sight. Suddenly,
3:52
around the thirteenth century, all the inhabitants left, most likely
3:56
fleeing a drought. Geologists say through the succeeding centuries, the
4:02
natural caves protected many of the constructed dwellings inside. In
4:07
eighteen eighty two, Colonel James Stephenson, pursuing ethnographic work on
4:12
behalf of the Smithsonian Institution, led the first team of
4:16
Western archaeologists to this site, where he found two sets
4:20
of human remains wrapped in Yucca's cordage, which had been
4:25
preserved through desiccation. Stephenson's team quickly dubbed the site the
4:31
Mummy Cave, which is how it's still widely known. Ever since,
4:36
anthropologists and archaeologists have come here to study the remarkable
4:40
history contained in these caves. Yet until now, scholars have
4:46
never done a full archaeological and architectural survey of the site.
4:51
Zi Yakin remains a powerful place to many Indigenous people
4:56
who live in the canyon and throughout the Southwest, but
4:59
in recent years it has become clear that the canyon's
5:03
natural ecosystems, like its cultural sites, are threatened by invasive species, erosion,
5:10
and the impacts of a changing climate. Since twenty twenty two,
5:14
a group of fifteen researchers and students led by Ramsay
5:19
of the NPS an agile In Bass, an anthropologist at
5:22
the University of New Mexico, has been surveying the entirety
5:27
of zi Yaquin, hiking, climbing, and occasionally repelling down the
5:32
steep walls of sandstone. Using digital photography and the remote
5:38
sensing method known as lidar, the researchers aim to map
5:42
the complex for the first time, in part to determine
5:45
which portions are most vulnerable to decay and therefore most
5:50
in need of protection. Eventually, the team could recommend some
5:54
structural stabilizing work, perhaps including the central tower complex, and
6:00
by submitting those precious plasters to electron microscopy, they are
6:05
learning about their composition and the people who lived within
6:09
these walls centuries ago. As I approached Sea ya Kin
6:14
in a truck accompanied by Ramsay, the research team came
6:19
into view little dots in the distance, buzzing to and
6:23
fro among the sacred alcoves near where Ramsey, Bass and
6:27
other researchers had pitched their makeshift camps. Their work is
6:32
both hard and delicate. They climb up the canyon's walls
6:36
with their backpacks full of tools and gently collect flakes
6:40
of fallen plasters from the ground to study the fine
6:43
finish that has preserved them. All that's left that is
6:47
expressive of the people who lived here are the plasters,
6:51
Bass said, pointing to the hand prints and finger prints
6:54
left in these decorative touches. The plasters, Bass argued, bring
7:00
us closer to these ancestors. They have a voice. Over
7:07
the next two days, I watched the researcher's work and
7:10
spent time with them over meals by the camping stove,
7:13
which sat among junipers and pinons along the banks of
7:17
a wash. On the third day, threats of monsoonal rains
7:22
cut short my trip, and the researchers sought refuge outside
7:26
the canyon, their important work interrupted by the intensifying weather
7:31
of climate change, the same force that threatens these caves. Bass,
7:37
whose academic background is in art history and historic preservation,
7:42
was clearly excited to examine the complex's architectural and design
7:47
elements in detail. She is especially fascinated by the earthen plasters,
7:53
an ancient art form she's been studying for thirty years.
7:57
She recalled an episode from when she was around twenty
8:01
and working as an interpreter at Mesa Verde National Park
8:05
in Colorado. On a day when the site had no visitors,
8:09
Bass sat in one of the park's ancient alcoves and
8:13
watched a conservator working on a beautiful plaster that had
8:17
bighorn sheep going across it. She said, and on n you,
8:20
then that's what I wanted to do. The decorative plasters
8:25
are just one element attesting to the history of the
8:29
people who have lived here. Artifacts, including tools and rock
8:34
art depicting hunters, antelopes, goats, and more, tell the story
8:39
of the Archaic people who inhabited these lands from twenty
8:43
five hundred BC to two hundred b C. The baskets
8:47
found throughout the cave complex, preserved all this time with
8:51
helped in the dry air, remind visitors that the basket
8:55
maker people built elegant, complex public spaces in these canyon
8:59
worlds between two hundred b C and a d. Seven fifty,
9:05
and the ancestral Pueblo people who dwelled here between a. D.
9:09
Seven fifty and thirteen hundred were also sophisticated builders. The
9:15
Hope farmed in the valley seasonally from the thirteen hundreds
9:19
to the sixteen hundreds, and the Hope and the Pueblos
9:22
still maintain their ties to the site to day Since
9:26
the early seventeen hundreds. The Dnae people have lived in
9:30
the canyon, where they farm and herd sheep and goats
9:33
through fields, sometimes sheltering herds within the Ghostly complex. For
9:39
the Dnae, the canyon was a stronghold against the westward
9:43
expansion of the U West government in the early and
9:46
mid eighteen hundreds. Then in the eighteen sixties, one of
9:50
the most tragic episodes in Dene history occurred here, when
9:54
the American government successfully besieged the Dnae right where I
9:58
stood with Bass and her team. Some historians describe this
10:04
siege as the defining moment in a genocidal campaign that
10:08
forced thousands of Denay people to march hundreds of miles
10:12
at gunpoint from their home lands here in Arizona to
10:16
Hilde or Fort Sumner in present day New Mexico. Along
10:21
the way, hundreds died. Government forces meanwhile destroyed our cornfields
10:26
and peach orchards and slaughtered our live stock. We Denay
10:31
refer to this forced relocation as the Long Walk. Though
10:36
around forty families live within the limits of the monument
10:39
to day, for many, the displacement remains an open wound.
10:45
Though the Navajo Nation government now oversees the sacred area
10:49
in collaboration with the NPS. Some Denay families consider the
10:54
ancestral sites to be tainted ground. For those families and
11:00
for me as a Denay writer, these lands are filled
11:03
with spirits, not all of them benign. As a result,
11:07
I did not undertake this reporting lightly. To walk on
11:11
this land, and particularly to enter any rooms of the
11:15
cave complex requires extreme caution, because to enter is in
11:21
essence to disturb the home of ancient spirit energies, and
11:25
that can bring dangers. Afterward, it is wise to offer
11:30
songs or prayers for safe passage. In the end, I
11:35
decided that I must respect these spirits homes, that I
11:39
would not and should not climb to the holiest parts
11:42
of the complex. Instead, I watched the team work from below,
11:47
and when I left the canyon, feeling conflicted about the
11:50
whole experience, I wondered whether simply visiting had violated a
11:55
sacred code. Later, somewhat shaken from my visit, I got
12:01
in touch with Joseph Pablo, a DNAE cultural practitioner based
12:05
in Nashidi in the Navajo Nation. Pablo pointed out that
12:10
even though I did not go up to the heart
12:12
of the site as the researchers did each day. I
12:16
did share meals with the team, and they may have
12:18
exposed me to the energy of the dead. You will
12:23
get sick from it, Pablo warned me. You will get dizzy,
12:26
you will get cramps. He said it is common practice
12:30
among native peoples to avoid touching the remains of pottery
12:34
at the site, or even to eat food within view
12:38
of zi Ya king. He added that if I spent
12:41
too much time on this type of reporting, it could
12:44
harm my being more deeply in the future. Pablo led
12:49
me through a set of healing rituals used traditionally after
12:53
exposure to the dead. In the DNAE language, the term
12:57
hojo refers to a balanced well spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical.
13:05
Without Pablo, I wondered whether my hojo would have returned.
13:09
I wondered, too, what hojo will mean in the future
13:12
at this site, and whether native groups will ever regain
13:16
true control over their ancestral lands, perhaps bringing some peace
13:22
to the spirits who dwell in these walls. Bass and
13:26
her colleague Douglas Porter, an architectural conservator at the University
13:31
of Vermont, say they feel their own urgency to map
13:34
this solely ground. Part of the work we're doing is
13:39
documenting these places against the threat of loss, Porter says.
13:44
Bass adds the structures are fragile. They are especially vulnerable
13:50
to wind, abrasion and water running off the sheer cliffs
13:54
where overhangs are eroding. Given the likely damage to see
13:58
Yaquin in the future, Porter says, the question becomes what
14:03
do we want to preserve about the site should something
14:06
terrible happen and we lose it. Thanks to comprehensive mapping
14:11
and lidar imaging, the physical topography will be recorded for posterity.
14:18
The spirits are less easy to capture or to flee. Next,
14:26
only fifty Rice's whales are left. Can we do enough
14:30
to protect them before it's too late? In twenty twenty one,
14:35
researchers identified a new whale species and are now scrambling
14:40
to save their natural habitat by Dana Staff. Imagine a
14:47
species with fewer individuals than seats on a school bus.
14:52
Now imagine that each weighs more than the bus itself.
14:57
That's Rice's whale, the only resident baleen whale in the
15:02
Gulf of Mexico and one of the most endangered whales
15:05
in the world. Scientists estimate that about fifty are left.
15:11
These whales were thought to belong to a more abundant species,
15:16
Bride's whale, until twenty fourteen, when DNA taken from skin
15:21
samples showed that they were unique, but biologists needed to
15:25
confirm the new species by comparing its skulls and skeletons
15:30
with those of other known relatives. In twenty nineteen, a
15:35
male stranded in the Everglades, salvaging its skeleton enabled scientists
15:41
to define it as a new species in twenty twenty one,
15:44
which led to an update of the Endangered Species Act listing.
15:49
The whale was named in honor of Dale W. Rice,
15:54
the first scientist credited with writing about what he thought
15:58
was a Bride's subpopulation in nineteen sixty five. Scientists are
16:03
still learning about its distinctive characteristics, including vocalizations such as
16:09
a longer moan than any Bride's whale call, and While
16:13
Bride's whales forage a variety of prey near the surface,
16:18
Rice's whales are deep divers and picky eaters, hunting calorie
16:23
dense fish in a narrow band of the Gulf. Today,
16:28
the National Museum of Natural History displays a piece of
16:32
the stranded whale's boleen, the bristle lined mouthplates they use
16:36
to capture food. It also exhibits its likely cause of death,
16:42
a sharp piece of plastic it swallowed that caused stomach bleeding,
16:46
leading to maciation. But plastic pollution isn't the worst threat
16:52
facing Rice's whales. Their home is a minefield of speeding,
16:57
ship's ear, splitting, seismic blasts from oil and gas prospecting
17:02
that drown out the calls they use to communicate, and
17:05
oil spills. The twenty ten Deep Water Horizon disaster is
17:10
thought to have killed a fifth of all Rice's whales.
17:15
At the moment, we haven't done anything to protect this species,
17:19
says Jeremy Kiska, a biologist at Florida International University. Two
17:25
steps forward in the whales protection are slated for twenty
17:28
twenty five. On May twenty first, federal officials intend to
17:33
replace a flawed twenty twenty assessment of threats to the
17:37
whale which dismissed the known risks of future oil spills,
17:41
to ensure that oil and gas drilling doesn't cause the
17:45
whales further harm, and on July fifteenth, the National Oceanic
17:50
and Atmospheric Administration is set to finalize the legal designation
17:56
of its critical habitat, which will oblige the federal government
18:00
not to fund or authorize activities that cause habitat destruction.
18:06
This is a true test, says Matthew Leslie, a biologist
18:10
at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania who has worked on the
18:14
genetics of both whale species. We say we love wales,
18:19
we like to watch David Attenborough films about whales, but
18:24
can we actually put our money where our mouth is
18:26
and take care of them? Next the otherwise unremarkable rock
18:34
boxes that brought pieces of the Moon back to Earth
18:39
far from ordinary. It took a cutting edge NASA design
18:43
to safeguard these treasures during the Apollo missions by Ilana Cher.
18:50
It's only the size of a suitcase eight by nineteen
18:54
by eleven point seven inches, perfect for the overhead storage
18:58
bin on a passenger air It's even shaped like luggage,
19:03
with a hinged lid and a side mounted handle. But
19:07
instead of being loved home full of socks and souvenirs,
19:11
this special carrion came home with the Apollo astronauts full
19:16
of Moon. Its official name is the Apollo Lunar Sample
19:21
Return Container number one eight, but everyone, including TEIZL. Mure Harmony,
19:28
curator of the Apollo Collection at the Smithsonian's National Air
19:32
and Space Museum, calls it and its handful of fellows
19:36
rock boxes because of what they do fairy samples from
19:40
the lunar surface to a laboratory back on Earth. The
19:45
Apollo missions landed on the Moon six different times between
19:50
nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy two, and on each occasion,
19:54
among their other duties, the astronauts were tasked with collecting
19:59
various bits of the lunar environment, rocks, dust, even core samples,
20:05
and however humble looking, these chunks and powders gave scientists
20:10
on Earth a closer look at some of the deepest
20:13
mysteries of space. How the universe was formed, how to
20:17
determine the age of planets, how comets and asteroids can
20:22
change the composition of a planetary body. As we go
20:26
around the center of the galaxy, the local conditions change,
20:31
says Ryan Ziegler, lunar Sample curator at NASA. Ziegler says
20:37
the weather, tectonics, and magnetic field of the Earth make
20:41
it difficult to measure things like the universe's radiation. You
20:46
need to go to one of these airless bodies like
20:49
the Moon and find old rocks from maybe two hundred
20:53
and fifty million years ago, and then you can understand
20:57
how our whole solar system evolves. And just as those
21:02
lunar samples have proved crucial to our understanding of the universe,
21:07
the box design itself offers unparalleled insight into the Apollo program.
21:13
Every detail on the container, from its polished exterior to
21:18
the chain mail like mesh inside, shows how the Apollo
21:22
team tapt brilliant minds to solve problems large and small.
21:27
Looking beyond the programme's biggest names, we can learn about
21:31
lesser known innovators such as Yvonne Clark, known as Why Why,
21:37
an inventive black mechanical engineer who worked as a NASA
21:41
contractor in the mid nineteen sixties. Clark was so proud
21:45
of her work on the rock boxes and Saturn rockets
21:48
that she encouraged her family to watch every Apollo launch
21:53
to see her designs in action. The box might look simple,
21:58
but it had a delicate task. The samples needed to
22:02
survive huge swings in temperature while being brought aboard the
22:07
lunar module on the trip back to Earth. Even in
22:10
the relative safety of the module, the materials would be
22:14
subject to harsh vibrations. The rock box also needed to
22:18
hold a vacuum to protect its contents from Earth contamination,
22:23
but also to protect Earth in case there were dangerous
22:26
elements lurking in the moon dust. The astronauts also needed
22:31
a box that could manipulate while wearing a bulky spacesuit.
22:36
To meet these needs, the team designed the case with
22:39
a t bar and two big toggle levers, which make
22:43
it possible to open and latch the box even while
22:47
wearing insulated gloves. To prevent leaks, the box was fitted
22:52
with temperature resistant O rings and what's called a knife
22:56
edge seal, where a rigid blade meets a softer metal
23:00
and cuts into it, providing air tight containment. NASA had
23:05
many partners during the development of Project Apollo, and when
23:09
the time came to manufacture the elegantly designed rock boxes,
23:14
the team turned to the US Atomic Energy Commission, where
23:18
containing hazardous materials was a specialty. The boxes were cast, machined,
23:24
and assembled by Union car By Corporation's Nuclear division at
23:29
Y twelve in Oakridge, Tennessee, which was under contract with
23:33
NASA at the time. The Oakridge site created sixteen rock
23:38
boxes for NASA, and number one zero zero eight was
23:43
used in November nineteen sixty nine by Pete Conrad and
23:47
Alan L. Bean during the Apollo twelve moon landing. Mure
23:52
Harmony says that because NASA kept impeccable records, we know
23:56
that this box was deployed during the second of two moonwalks,
24:01
and that the mission brought home a combined seventy five
24:04
pounds of samples that continued to offer insights for scientists
24:09
around the world. The rock box is a great example
24:13
of problem solving, says mure Harmony, adding that scientists still
24:17
look to the Apollo program for inspiration in creating tools
24:21
for space exploration. Ziegler agrees, noting that Mars rovers are
24:27
now collecting samples and tubes that use a similar knife
24:31
edge sealing technology to that of the Apollo boxes. The
24:36
universe remains full of mystery, but we learn a little
24:39
more from each mission, bringing back answers one small box
24:44
at a time. Finally, how text messaging took over the
24:49
way we talk from its start more than thirty years ago.
24:54
Texting has slowly but surely become the dominant form of communication.
24:59
By Scott Over. On December third, nineteen ninety two, in Newbury, England,
25:05
computer scientist Neil Papworth texted two words Merry Christmas to
25:11
Richard Jarvis, a Vodaphone engineering director, who was across town
25:15
at a Christmas party. This simple holiday greeting between colleagues
25:20
was in fact a landmark event in the history of telecommunications.
25:25
Papworth had just sent the first text message. Texting in
25:30
the broadest sense, that is, electrically sending words back and
25:34
forth between people, had arguably been around for nearly one
25:37
hundred and fifty years since Samuel F. B. Morse unveiled
25:42
his telegraph. But on that wintry English eve, texting began
25:47
its journey to the heart of our daily experience. Of course,
25:51
phones still had to catch up. The device. Papworth used,
25:55
the Orbital nine O one, an early mobile phone with
25:59
the blockish an unlovely LCD screen, was a behemoth, a
26:03
corded clunker that more closely resembled a contemporary land line
26:08
than a modern cell phone. In a way. We'd been
26:12
waiting for SMS, or a short message service the form
26:16
of texting that Papworth introduced since Donald Murray added a
26:20
typewriter keyboard to the telegraph around nineteen o one to
26:24
create the teletype machine, which transmitted messages over electrical lines
26:29
for a small fee, usually at a telegraph or post office.
26:34
The telex service, which operated over telephone lines, was in
26:39
operation in Germany as early as nineteen twenty seven and
26:43
spread globally in the years after World War II. Telex
26:48
fell out of favor by the nineteen seventies as fax
26:51
machines rose in popularity, followed by early computer email systems.
26:57
As the decades went along, we inched closer and closer
27:01
to uninhibited electronic text messaging a day, Thomas Edison had
27:05
foreseen with remarkable accuracy as early as eighteen seventy eight.
27:09
In the future, Edison wrote in an essay, every day
27:12
people would send voice messages back and forth using his
27:16
phonograph in tandem with the newly invented telephone. The dictation
27:20
may be as rapid as the thoughts can be formed,
27:23
or the lips utter them. It was a vision of leisure,
27:26
offering the ease of letter writing at the speed of
27:28
the telephone. That blend of casual simplicity came to an
27:32
apex In text messaging. Today, the pinnacle of convenience is
27:36
immediate yet asynchronous communication, sending a message when you are
27:40
available and waiting for the recipient to respond whenever they can.
27:44
In recent years, the rise of voice notes transmissible by
27:47
text has arguably brought us even closer to Edison's original prediction. Meanwhile,
27:53
text shorthand continues to overrun our vernacular T T y L.
28:01
This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your
28:05
reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and
28:09
have a great day.