Babel News Network

Early in the 1900s Hanns Vischer, a Swiss who worked for the British Colonial Service in Nigeria, heard stories of the “deadly road” across the eastern Sahara desert from northern Nigeria to the Mediterranean coast at Tripoli. The route, used for centuries by slave traders, is almost unknown today – travelers who make the crossing now favour a more westerly road route to northern Niger. In 1906, Vischer completed the route from Tripoli south to Lake Chad, and described his travels in a book published in 1910, “Across the Sahara” — including accounts of the torrid heat, and threats from tribal raiding parties.

“I had entered (the Sahara) frivolously, like a fool,” Vischer wrote. “I left it as one stunned, crushed by the deadly majesty I had seen too closely.”

In 2002, explorer and camel campaigner John Hare followed Vischer’s route from south to north. The image above is from the National Geographic story of his trip and links to a high res PDF of the map. Interviews and video about Hare’s journey can be found at NPR.

“… when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.”

T.B. Macaulay (1840)

But who their mingled feelings shall pursue
When London’s faded glories rise to view?
The mighty city, which by every road,
In floods of people poured itself abroad;
Ungirt by walls, irregularly great,
No jealous drawbridge, and no closing gate;
Whose merchants (such the state which commerce brings)
Sent forth their mandates to dependent kings;
Streets, where the turban’d Moslem, bearded Jew,
And woolly Afric, met the brown Hindu;
Where through each vein spontaneous plenty flowed,
Where Wealth enjoyed, and Charity bestowed.
Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet
Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street;
Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time,
The broken stairs with perilous step shall climb,
Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round,
By scattered hamlets trace its ancient bound,

And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey
Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way.

Anna Laetitia Aikin [Barbauld]
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812)

Just four kilometres from the site of the discovery of Lucy, in Ethiopia’s Afar region, fossil hunters have found the remains of an A. afarensis child dubbed “Lucy’s Baby.” The skeleton, thought to be that of a three-year-old girl, is the oldest and most complete hominin fossil yet found.

It has taken researchers five years to separate much of the fossil from the sandstone block in which it was found. The skeleton consists of an almost complete skull, the entire torso and parts of the arms and legs. Her discoverers think she may have been killed in a flood 3.3 million years ago.

The new fossil reinforces the theory that Australopithecus afarensis lived at least part of its time in the trees, although the lower body is adapted for walking upright. She has long curved fingers, and slanting shoulder sockets similar to those of a climbing ape like a gorilla. The skull is complete enough that researchers have been able to identify the balance organs of the inner ear, which also seem more ape-like than human. The human sense of balance is adapted not just for walking upright, but also for running distances on two legs – something that apes can’t do.

“Seeing Angkor Wat bathed in the eerie surreal light of the eclipse led me to experiment with new techniques to attempt to capture the spiritual beauty of Angkor. Standard photography techniques could not convey the dreamy, otherworldly essence of the site so I turned to other alternatives and eventually found that the images resulting from using infrared film rendered the subjects most closely to my personal vision of them. These prints combine the impressionistic, moody effects of infrared film with a subtle sepia tone to achieve this effect.”

Photographer John McDermott’s IR images of Asia seem to me to show the ruins and pagodas in a sort of dream time, rather than on the day they were shot – the visitors to this pagoda in Myanmar are faded, almost like ghosts, but the ancient gold dome shines like new. I love how the IR film blackens the blue sky, which reminds me of the solar eclipses I’ve seen.

The 2006 shortlistfrom the BP Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition has been published, and the technical section has this great sidescan sonar image of the wreck of a German U-boat lying on its side on the sea floor at a depth of 225 metres, submitted by Ernie Tapanes of Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc.

“I would like to send to my family in Bassada a sum of money. Please excuse me and goodbye. This is the end of my life in this big Moroccan sea.”