Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic magazine dated April twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher. As a reminder, RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of
Speaker 1: the article I began last time, entitled Unraveling the Mysteries
Speaker 1: of the Congo by Melani Goubi. Since twenty thousand five,
Speaker 1: the number of postgraduates in forestry has grown from just
Speaker 1: six to more than three hundred. To day, this new
Speaker 1: vanguard of Congolese scientists is striving to understand one of
Speaker 1: the most massive and understudied ecosystems on our planet at
Speaker 1: a time when it's needed. Most Scattered across some sixty
Speaker 1: thousand acres, Jangambi's dilapidated colonial facilities remain a testament to
Speaker 1: the research stations tainted or origins. The nearest major city
Speaker 1: is Kisangani, about seventy miles away, which is where Belgium's
Speaker 1: King Leopold in eighteen eighty five founded one of the
Speaker 1: first settlements of what would become his own private colony,
Speaker 1: the Congo Free State, after his government refused to sanction
Speaker 1: a state backed expansion into the territory. The king's emissaries
Speaker 1: arrived to discover the rainforest vast tropes of rubber vines
Speaker 1: which could be tapped for latex to fuel the global
Speaker 1: rubber boom to harvest evermore latex. However, the nascent colony
Speaker 1: required a workforce, and Leopold's officials contracted with private companies
Speaker 1: that enslaved indigenous people in vast numbers and estimated ten
Speaker 1: million people were killed as a result of famine, disease
Speaker 1: and the colonizer's brutality. The government of Belgium had wrested
Speaker 1: control away from Leopold by nineteen o eight and established
Speaker 1: the Belgian Congo. During its rule, the new government created
Speaker 1: the National Institute for Argonomic Study of the Belgian Congo
Speaker 1: at Yanambi to explore the rainforest and figure out what
Speaker 1: other crops could be successfully cultivated there. Colonial Belgian researchers
Speaker 1: collected and analyzed tens of thousands of plant specimens and
Speaker 1: stored them at Ngambi, where they are still housed today
Speaker 1: in the Angambi Stations. Archives head librarian, Christian Bessombi Efanta,
Speaker 1: leads me to a corner behind rows of wooden bookcases
Speaker 1: filled with decades of scientific journals. The collection includes black
Speaker 1: and white photographs, several of which he spreads out across
Speaker 1: a large mid century desk, pointing to images of beans
Speaker 1: and seeds at various stages of sprouting, along with close
Speaker 1: ups of the different roots and leaves of many plants.
Speaker 1: Belgians wanted to understand the structure of each existing species
Speaker 1: and determinates economic value. He explains this led to the
Speaker 1: rise of palm tree, rice and coffee plantations, including the
Speaker 1: introduction of a still popular variety of robusta coffee bean.
Speaker 1: Other photographs captured a darker side of the station's story,
Speaker 1: showing black men stuck laboring in the test fields while
Speaker 1: white scientists worked in laboratories. By the time Yogambi was built,
Speaker 1: that the Belgian Congo had ended the Free State's most
Speaker 1: monstrous practices, but the dynamics at the research station remained
Speaker 1: steeped in colonial exploitation. Our grandfathers, our fathers were only
Speaker 1: workers here, Offanta says. They did almost everything manually, always
Speaker 1: under Belgian's orders, regardless of the scale of the work.
Speaker 1: That's how everything you see here, the infrastructure was built
Speaker 1: by our ancestors. They were forced to do many things
Speaker 1: against their will for survival. By nineteen sixty, Congolese pro
Speaker 1: independence leaders had rallied enough support to force Belgian authorities
Speaker 1: to grant the country independence and organize general elections. Belgian
Speaker 1: researchers left without having trained a single Congolese scientists to
Speaker 1: replace them. The Belgians did not want to train anyone
Speaker 1: to be their equal. The goal was to subjugate Afonta, says,
Speaker 1: and so after their departure, everything remained in a state
Speaker 1: of lethargy. But not everyone abandoned Yan Gambhi at independence.
Speaker 1: The workers from surrounding villages recruited by Belgian scientists to
Speaker 1: perform small technical tasks, kept quietly going along about with
Speaker 1: these tasks, even without the guarantee of payment from the
Speaker 1: newly formed Congolese state. And when they became too old
Speaker 1: to carry on, their sons took over, continuing the important
Speaker 1: duty of chronicling changes throughout the region five times a day.
Speaker 1: Observers like Henry Alongui Agualais still do the work that
Speaker 1: has gone on for generations at the research station. One morning,
Speaker 1: I joined him as he heads out to a grassy
Speaker 1: field a few miles away to meticulously record the meteorological
Speaker 1: data available from an assortment of rudimentary instruments that are
Speaker 1: arranged at intervals like a contemporary art installation. Using a
Speaker 1: penned paper, he checks the readings on a pair of
Speaker 1: rain gages, the same ones that were installed in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight, thermometers and a totalizing anemometer which measures the
Speaker 1: speed and direction of the wind over time. My father
Speaker 1: began working here decades ago. It was his life, a
Speaker 1: Gualle says, But he was too tired, so Angualle took
Speaker 1: over the job from his father, who passed away just
Speaker 1: six months after retiring. In the meantime, the Congo Basin's
Speaker 1: lack of reliable data on long term climate change meant
Speaker 1: that the rainforest continued to be excluded or misrepresented in
Speaker 1: global reports and analysis. In twenty twenty one, it was
Speaker 1: one of only two regions worldwide without enough data for
Speaker 1: the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess
Speaker 1: past trends in extreme heat, findings that other governments might
Speaker 1: use in determining what places deserved more resources for continuing
Speaker 1: study or even emergency aid. More than fifty years after independence,
Speaker 1: the Yangambi Station was still operating on a minimal budget,
Speaker 1: with handwritten records stored in a decrepit office alongside stacks
Speaker 1: of yellowing paper bundles. Emmanuel Kasango Yakusu, a forestry PhD.
Speaker 1: Candidate at Ghent University in Belgium who teaches at the
Speaker 1: University of Kisangani, first learned in twenty eleven about the
Speaker 1: ongoing efforts of the station's climate observers while seeking data
Speaker 1: that signal how communities dependent on the forest might face
Speaker 1: new challenges with climate change. When I first walked in here,
Speaker 1: it was like walking into a gold mine, he tells me,
Speaker 1: picking up a bundle dating back to the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So Yakusu began working with the department staff to digitize
Speaker 1: the records, focusing on temperature and rainfall. The team was
Speaker 1: about to chart sixty years of data tracking daily meteorologic
Speaker 1: changes from nineteen sixty to twenty twenty, save for nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, when political unrest meant activities at the station
Speaker 1: ground to a halt. The collective findings published in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three reveal a mean daily temperature increase of a
Speaker 1: third of a degree fahrenheit point eighteen celsius per decade.
Speaker 1: The region has also seen a disruption of rainfall patterns
Speaker 1: toward drier dry seasons and shorter, more intense rainy seasons
Speaker 1: with fewer rainy days throughout the year. The temperature increases
Speaker 1: and changes in rainfall timing and intensity have become more
Speaker 1: pronounced since the turn of the twenty first century. Today,
Speaker 1: the staff at the center are fully trained and equipped
Speaker 1: with computers and a scanner to update the database independently.
Speaker 1: Their work with regional wind patterns influenced decisions on where
Speaker 1: the flux tower should be located and how it should
Speaker 1: be designed. Jose Mobifo nud Yapo, who directs climatology research
Speaker 1: at the SUNS Station, remembers when Yukusu called to announce
Speaker 1: that their hard work was being formally recognized. That day,
Speaker 1: I got my staff together and told them what you
Speaker 1: do here, never re un underestimate it, do it right,
Speaker 1: as per our motto here at climatology honesty accuracy. He says,
Speaker 1: we felt valued for Yukusu. Kimbeisa Nyapopo there and their
Speaker 1: peers shaping the science as a crucial part of recovering
Speaker 1: from when the forest was harvested harnessed for colonial gains.
Speaker 1: For them, the future of their communities is at stake.
Speaker 1: More than sixty percent of the d RC's workforce are farmers.
Speaker 1: Hotter growing seasons with less regular rain means they can
Speaker 1: expect lower crop yields, while more weeds and pests prolipherally.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Kisangani and all my life I've
Speaker 1: seen how farmers struggle to make ends meet, says Yukusu,
Speaker 1: who now also works as a consultant with the World Bank.
Speaker 1: Along with the Congolese government, the Bank is developing the
Speaker 1: region's first climate contingency plan, identifying potential emergencies and designing
Speaker 1: responses with the right kind of bank for local farmers.
Speaker 1: While extreme weather events are becoming the norm in many places,
Speaker 1: most client climate impact research has focused on rich nations,
Speaker 1: leading to an attribution gap as robust levels of data
Speaker 1: are lacking in low income countries, which may leave people
Speaker 1: behind with little support to mitigate, prepare and adapt with
Speaker 1: climate change. Things are going to get worse, says Yukusu.
Speaker 1: They need urgent support. We need to create dynamic agricultural
Speaker 1: calendars and modernize farming techniques. Yukusu and other Congolese scientists
Speaker 1: have been lobbying for international funds to create a network
Speaker 1: of weather stations in the DRC to gather accurate data
Speaker 1: across more Land. DRC has one of the lowest densities
Speaker 1: of weather stations in the world, says Simon Lewis, a
Speaker 1: climate change and rainforest researcher at the University of Leeds
Speaker 1: in England who supports the effort. Lewis led a team
Speaker 1: several years ago to map the extent of the Congo
Speaker 1: Basin Peatlands. The team discovered that they are the largest
Speaker 1: tropical peatlands in the world, storing three years worth of
Speaker 1: global fossil fuel emissions. But as Lewis recounts, his only
Speaker 1: advantage was to receive unrestricted funding to explore this fuzzy
Speaker 1: area via a science prize. The massive logistical and scientific
Speaker 1: efforts demanded on the ground were only possible because of
Speaker 1: the deep local knowledge of our Congolese partners, he says.
Speaker 1: They knew about the peatlands and the potential for major
Speaker 1: discovery there, but the resources were not available to them.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, Lewis joined a coalition of regional
Speaker 1: scientists to create the Congo Basins Science Initiative, a research
Speaker 1: group seeking two hundred million dollars in funding to green
Speaker 1: light more home grown studies, a move that is world
Speaker 1: changing potential to transform our understanding of the rainfall. The effort,
Speaker 1: patterned after a similar successful program in the Amazon, has
Speaker 1: already attracted investment from the United Kingdom, including more graduate
Speaker 1: level scholarships for researchers at partner institutions in Central Africa
Speaker 1: and the UK. Science is extractive in nature, Lewis says,
Speaker 1: we need to build equal partnerships and inclusivity between local
Speaker 1: and foreign scientists, not just because it is right, but
Speaker 1: because it is the only way we can scale up
Speaker 1: the work that needs to be done before it's too late.
Speaker 1: Why the Congo Basin appears to be more resilient than
Speaker 1: the Amazon remains an incredibly complex question, and researchers are
Speaker 1: looking for answers in the trees. Back at Jangambhi, Yakusu
Speaker 1: leads me down a trail through the surrounding forest and
Speaker 1: then signals that we should head deeper. Into the underbrush.
Speaker 1: As we leave the path, the texture of the ground
Speaker 1: suddenly changes, crackling softly as dry branches snap beneath our feet,
Speaker 1: and then grows squishy as we step over the soft
Speaker 1: husk of a decomposing tree trunk. We finally stop in
Speaker 1: front of a huge tree with a wide, smooth trunk
Speaker 1: that jots high into the canopy, part of the Mahogany
Speaker 1: family of trees that belongs to a particular native species
Speaker 1: called Nadrophagma eutile. The tree is part of another long
Speaker 1: term survey that's been happening at the station. To inspect
Speaker 1: it properly, Yakusu unslings his backpack and produces a wood poorer,
Speaker 1: shaped a bit like an oversized corkscrew, placing it against
Speaker 1: the trunk a few feet above the ground. When he
Speaker 1: turns the handle, the hardwood seems to resist at first,
Speaker 1: creaking under the pressure being applied. After a few minutes,
Speaker 1: Yukusu extracts a long, thin core sample of wood from
Speaker 1: the inner layers, which he carefully inserts into a protective sleeve.
Speaker 1: You have to be careful to not let it break,
Speaker 1: he says. Inside the station's Modern Wood Biology lap. Another
Speaker 1: first in the DRC, researchers would be able to compare
Speaker 1: the tree's height and trunk diameter with visible rings from
Speaker 1: the core sample to determine changes in its growth over
Speaker 1: time in relation to the climate. As we've demonstrated the
Speaker 1: rainforest as warming, Yakusu says, this means that the environment
Speaker 1: in which these trees grow is changing and the conditions
Speaker 1: for growth are no longer optimal. In the long run,
Speaker 1: decreased tree growth could lead to higher tree mortality in
Speaker 1: the region, one factor responsible for the Amazon's diminishing capacity
Speaker 1: to store carbon. Already, some tree species are disappearing in
Speaker 1: the research stations archives. Detailed records on a tree from
Speaker 1: the same genus and trando from Mamaga Hollustra show that
Speaker 1: it was once the most studied species at yng Gambhi,
Speaker 1: but in this forest you won't find a single pollustra
Speaker 1: to day, says Yukusu. At the same time, some trees
Speaker 1: are proving more resistant to extreme climate shifts, which could
Speaker 1: hold the key to helping the forest adapt. Chadrak Kafuti
Speaker 1: and Bryce Jovac, two tropical ecologists working at Yanggambi's Wood Lab,
Speaker 1: have been closely studying the adaptation of Peracopsis elata, a
Speaker 1: large leaved hardwood with a surprising capacity to pause its
Speaker 1: growth during periods of drought or when sunlight is scarce.
Speaker 1: That kind of resilience could help direct replanting in areas
Speaker 1: where the forest has been logged for lumber or affected
Speaker 1: by wild fires, which are increasingly common. Without strong environmental protection,
Speaker 1: the Congo Basin is projected to lose twenty percent twenty
Speaker 1: seven percent of its undisturbed rainforests by twenty fifty. But
Speaker 1: these Central African scientists work with the knowledge that the
Speaker 1: rainforest has never been untouched landscape. It is a place
Speaker 1: that has been and will be continually reshaped by human habitation.
Speaker 1: Exploring the outcome of such interactions may lead to other surprises.
Speaker 1: For instance, Nest luambois, a forest ecologist who manages Janggo
Speaker 1: Yang Gambi's wood Lab, is studying whether some human made
Speaker 1: dist urbances, such as clearing for villages and slash unburned agriculture,
Speaker 1: may partly explain why the Congo Basin is still absorbing
Speaker 1: relatively high amounts of carbon today. Over time, these clearings
Speaker 1: have given way to new growth, encouraging trees like Paracopsis elata.
Speaker 1: Before we leave the survey site, Yakusu retrieves the borer
Speaker 1: and fills the hole in the tree with leaves to
Speaker 1: prevent insects from crawling inside and causing damage. He pats
Speaker 1: the trunk gently, as though saying goodbye to an old friend.
Speaker 1: Each of the scientists at Yanggambi has developed a soft
Speaker 1: spot for a particular species of tree, often the one
Speaker 1: each has been studying over the years. For farbres Kimbasa,
Speaker 1: that special plant is the combretum lukehede, a somewhat gnarled
Speaker 1: tree that does not grow any higher than about twenty
Speaker 1: feet here, making it sometimes difficult to spot from his
Speaker 1: perch atop the flux tower. It could keep going, but
Speaker 1: instead it will break and give birth to many small
Speaker 1: trees on the same trunk. He tells me at one point,
Speaker 1: it's sharing and caring for others. What could be more beautiful.
Speaker 2: The next article is from May twenty twenty five National
Speaker 2: Geographic Rediscovering the ancient Empire that history forgot. They forgot.
Speaker 2: They fought the Egyptians and sacked Babylon. They built elaborate
Speaker 2: cities across modern Turkia and beyond, and then the Hittites vanished,
Speaker 2: lost to history for thousands of years. But today new
Speaker 2: discoveries are restoring the legend of a forgotten superpower. This
Speaker 2: article by Andrew Curry. At its height, the ancient city
Speaker 2: of Hutasa, capital of the Hittite civilization, must have been
Speaker 2: on inspiring Built into a steep hill side in what
Speaker 2: is today central Turkya, the city was ringed by tall
Speaker 2: brick walls, who was home to as many as seven
Speaker 2: thousand people, vast temple complexes, and an imposing stone rampart
Speaker 2: visible from miles away. Today, the hillside is home to
Speaker 2: a mystery. No pillars or high walls mark the room
Speaker 2: ruins of the palace and temples that once stood, just
Speaker 2: stone foundations, half covered by dry grass. Some of the
Speaker 2: city's gates still stand guarded by statues of lions, sphinxes,
Speaker 2: and an axe wielding god, but much is gone. The
Speaker 2: mud brick walls have crumbled over the centuries. Floods and
Speaker 2: snow melt have eroded the original hillside, sending buildings full
Speaker 2: of clay tablets cascading down the slopes. Paters still are
Speaker 2: the clues that might explain what happened to the powerful
Speaker 2: Hittites people, a lost empire that researchers are now beginning
Speaker 2: to understand with greater clarity. The disappearance of the Hittites
Speaker 2: around eleven eighty b C. Was a vanishing act with
Speaker 2: few parallels in history. For at least four hundred fifty years,
Speaker 2: the Hittites controlled much of modern day Chyrchia and beyond,
Speaker 2: from close to the shores of the Black Sea to
Speaker 2: the rivers of Mesopotamia and the waters of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2: They built sophisticated cities, impressive temples, and an elaborate palace
Speaker 2: in the rugged countryside Vanitolia. They authored massive archives of
Speaker 2: cuneiform tablets containing numerous ancient languages and sacred rituals. Their
Speaker 2: kings benefited from trade roots that reached far beyond the
Speaker 2: Hittite homeland. Their armies once even penetrated deep into Mesopotamia.
Speaker 2: Their tangle with Egypt's Rameses the Great at the Battle
Speaker 2: of Kadesh resulted in the world's first peace treaty. They
Speaker 2: were able to fight the Egyptians and the Babylonians and
Speaker 2: Assyrians had to treat them as equals. Said Andreas Schachner
Speaker 2: of the German Archaeological Institute, which has been carrying out
Speaker 2: digs at the Hutasa site for nearly a century. Yet
Speaker 2: the Egyptians, the Assyrians, they were all part of historical memory,
Speaker 2: the Hittites were extinguished completely. Scholars didn't register the Hittite's
Speaker 2: existence until three thousand years later, when carvings at ancient
Speaker 2: Egyptian temples and diplomatic correspondents discovered on clay tablets set
Speaker 2: off an international hunt for the location of their capital.
Speaker 2: Little remained at the suspected site besides monumental foundations, but
Speaker 2: digs there in the early nineteen hundreds unearthed a trove
Speaker 2: of clay cuneiformed tablets, confirming suspicions that Hatusa was the
Speaker 2: lost Hittite capital. From what they have continued to unearth
Speaker 2: at Hatusa, once vibrant center of commerce, culture, and conquest,
Speaker 2: researchers have compiled an eloquent record of life in the empire.
Speaker 2: They have assembled details on everything from royal squabbles and
Speaker 2: religious ceremonies to the proper punishment for killing a dog.
Speaker 2: Yet the causes for the empire's collapse remain mysterious. How
Speaker 2: did the mighty Hittites vanish without a trace, and what
Speaker 2: can their sudden end teach us to day. Between early
Speaker 2: June and late October, Shaschner spends seven days a week
Speaker 2: criscrossing Hatchusa and overseeing a team of Turkish and German archaeologists,
Speaker 2: as well as scores of local workers. He traverses the
Speaker 2: city's hills in a battered passenger van. His black dog
Speaker 2: knocks routinely at his side. As director of the German
Speaker 2: Archaeological Institute's excavations, he has been making sense if the
Speaker 2: sites jumbled ruined since two thousand six. Nothing is in
Speaker 2: its original place, Shashner said, with a sigh, There is
Speaker 2: so much destruction. One day, not long ago, I joined
Speaker 2: him at the city's Great Temple Complex, a hub of
Speaker 2: ritual spaces, courtyards, store rooms, and secret chambers, not far
Speaker 2: from what were Hotusa's northern gates. I followed him as
Speaker 2: he wound his way through waste high stone blocks, gesturing
Speaker 2: upward now and again to refer to the plastered and
Speaker 2: possibly painted walls that would have towered thirty feet above
Speaker 2: our heads. He took me to a space once considered
Speaker 2: the center of the Hittite universe. The Great Temple dedicated
Speaker 2: to the storm god Tarhuna and his partner, the Sun,
Speaker 2: goddess of Arna. Foundations surrounding the temple preserve the outlines
Speaker 2: of eighty store rooms that previously contained vessels full of wine, water,
Speaker 2: and grain. Researchers have discovered inventorious hinting at the riches
Speaker 2: stored in the temple's treasury. When the king came back
Speaker 2: from a campaign, all the booty was for the storm god.
Speaker 2: Shashnar told me he would have brought it here. One
Speaker 2: question that Shashnar hopes to solve is why the Hittites
Speaker 2: situated their capital here. There are worse places than Central
Speaker 2: and Atoilia to base an empire, but not many. Half
Speaker 2: Way between the back Black Sea and the deserts of Syria,
Speaker 2: Hutasa sits in a land of unlikely extremes. Fresh Water
Speaker 2: springs are abundant in the rocky, virtually unfarmable mountains near
Speaker 2: by the region's few plains, on the other hand, are
Speaker 2: bone dry most of the year unless they are submerged
Speaker 2: by seasonal floods. Close reading of Hittite texts, combined with
Speaker 2: environmental data shows that droughts gripped the region every few decades,
Speaker 2: regularly pushing populations to the brink of starvation and beyond.
Speaker 2: Archaeologist Brulent Djenk, who works with Shashnar at Tusa, frames
Speaker 2: the mystery of why the city was built here with
Speaker 2: amused admiration considering the climate and surroundings. Its mind blowing
Speaker 2: that they had all this here, said Jenk, teaches at
Speaker 2: Turkya's mardin Artukla University. The real question is how did
Speaker 2: they build an empire in the middle of this central
Speaker 2: Anatourian hell. The answer a combination of resilience, adaptation, and planning.
Speaker 2: For the centuries that they reigned, the lords of Hotusa
Speaker 2: managed to squeeze just a little more out of the
Speaker 2: land than anyone before or since. Based on what we
Speaker 2: know of hurting practices and the myriad animal bones found
Speaker 2: at Hotusa, Shashner thinks the surrounding hills supported tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of sheep and goats, providing a four footed alternative
Speaker 2: to the irrigation dependent farms that supported Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Speaker 2: To supply water for industrial and agricultural uses, the Hittites
Speaker 2: cut storage spot ponds into Hotusa's hillsides dug into clay
Speaker 2: soil to be filled by groundwater. Some were longer than
Speaker 2: an Olympic swimming pool and up to twenty six feet deep.
Speaker 2: Immense air tight underground pits meanwhile, contained enough grain to
Speaker 2: feed their animals in periods of drought. All of this
Speaker 2: infrastructure was surrounded by strong walls that ran for an
Speaker 2: astonishing four miles along the city perimeter, engineered to contend
Speaker 2: with the hilly terrains, steep slopes, and deep ravines. Between
Speaker 2: two thousand and three and two thousand and six, a
Speaker 2: seventy one yard long segment of it was reconstructed using
Speaker 2: only materials that would have been available to the Hittites,
Speaker 2: including wood, rock, and three thousand tons of mud brick.
Speaker 2: Based on this experiment, research calculated that building just a
Speaker 2: half mile of wall would have taken one thousand men
Speaker 2: a year a stunning feet of logistics. Touring the site
Speaker 2: with Shachner, I rode along as he piloted his van
Speaker 2: up a twisting, one laid road to reach Hutasa's highest spot. Here,
Speaker 2: the city's most impressive building projects survives your copy. An
Speaker 2: elongated rampart standing one hundred thirty feet high. And eight
Speaker 2: hundred twenty feet long. The white Stone embankment features a
Speaker 2: narrow gate decorated with sphinx statues, adding to its imposing
Speaker 2: visual impact. A portion of the city's protective wall ran
Speaker 2: across the top. On a clear day, this monumental structure
Speaker 2: is visible from twelve miles away, gleaming white amid the
Speaker 2: green and gray mountaintops. Imagine the ambassador of Babylonia, who's
Speaker 2: seen everything, says Shakner, and then he turns this corner
Speaker 2: and sees this building that's as spectacular as anything in
Speaker 2: Mesopotamia or Egypt. I've seen a lot of sights and
Speaker 2: can't think of any that are as spectacular from a
Speaker 2: long way away as this one. This is how they
Speaker 2: executed control over the landscape. Amazingly, Hatusa still yielding new discoveries.
Speaker 2: The day after my trip up the mountain with Shakner,
Speaker 2: I returned to the summit to meet jank At Karpaki
Speaker 2: and found him at the mouth of a tunnel that
Speaker 2: passes underneath the rampart. He stood in an arched passageway
Speaker 2: that's about nine feet tall, two hundred thirty feet long,
Speaker 2: and wide enough to accommodate two people walking side by side.
Speaker 2: As I entered the unlit tunnel, I became acutely aware
Speaker 2: of the hundreds of tons of dirt and rock above
Speaker 2: our heads. Jentch, the grandson of a stone mason, wasn't worried.
Speaker 2: This is all this all interconnects like a tapestry made
Speaker 2: of stone, he said, gesturing to the tunnel walls. It
Speaker 2: takes really fine masons to make this. Half Way down
Speaker 2: the passageway we stopped bending low. Jank showed me a
Speaker 2: pinkish palm sized painting on a stone wall, a symbol,
Speaker 2: one of two hundred forty nine that he discovered in
Speaker 2: the tunnel in twenty twenty two, with each glyph representing
Speaker 2: a word. The symbols had somehow gone unnoticed by the
Speaker 2: hundreds of archaeologists and hundreds of thousands of curious tourists
Speaker 2: who have passed through the tunnel since it was rediscovered
Speaker 2: in eighteen thirty four. Since Jenks made with the light
Speaker 2: of his cell phone, Shakner has worked with imaging specialists
Speaker 2: to scan the tunnel's interior, creating a three D model
Speaker 2: that might help scientists fathom the symbol's significance. For example,
Speaker 2: some marks appear in threes, like the glyphs for mountain
Speaker 2: and path, and the symbol representing the holy mountain Tudhalia,
Speaker 2: as well as the god by the same name. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's meant to say the path through Mount Tudhalia, Shachner said.
Speaker 2: Far from the tunnel, symbols on a very different wall
Speaker 2: have provided critical information on the reach and power of
Speaker 2: the Hittites. When archaeologists in Egypt uncovered the funeral temple
Speaker 2: of Feral Ramses the Second, also known as Rameses the Great,
Speaker 2: they found references to a battle that remains perhaps the
Speaker 2: Hittite's most enduring contribution to history. In his temple complex
Speaker 2: along the Nile River, Ramses, one of Egypt's strongest rulers,
Speaker 2: documented the most memorable moments of his reign, including his
Speaker 2: twelve seventy four beasts battle with the force of Hittite
Speaker 2: king mutwal Talis the Second at Kadesh, an ancient city
Speaker 2: not far from modern day Damascus. A Florida Stealing relief
Speaker 2: depicts the pharaoh's heroics in the face of what he
Speaker 2: claimed were nearly fifty thousand Hittite warriors. Egyptian and Hittite
Speaker 2: chariots wheel and charge as a larger than life, Rameses
Speaker 2: surveys the bloody chaos. Today, many historians consider the Battle
Speaker 2: of Kadesh the biggest chariot battle ever fought, rather than
Speaker 2: a resounding victory for Ramses, though the clash was probably
Speaker 2: more of a stalemate. In the aftermath, the frontier separated,
Speaker 2: separating the two empires barely shifted. Relations between the two
Speaker 2: powers remained unresolved for fifteen years until Ramses and Mutwa
Speaker 2: Talis's successor worked out the world's oldest known parody treaty.
Speaker 2: This concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine. For today, the
Speaker 2: reader has been Marsha. Thank you for listening, Keep on listening,
Speaker 2: and have a great day.