Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marcia for Radio Eye and to day
Speaker 1: I will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading
Speaker 1: service intended for people who are blind or have other
Speaker 1: disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
Speaker 1: join me now for the first article titled can the
Speaker 1: fragile birds of New Zealand be saved by killing millions
Speaker 1: of predators? This article by Kennedy Warne. To protect their
Speaker 1: most precious birds, New Zealanders have marked key invasive predators
Speaker 1: for total eradication. Now the world's most ambitious conservation experiment
Speaker 1: is entering a brutally efficient new phase, one that could
Speaker 1: change how we decide what's worth saving. The trail was steep,
Speaker 1: overgrown and slippery from rain. I had to grip tree
Speaker 1: trunks and clumps of leaves to keep from sliding down
Speaker 1: the mountain side. It was springtime and in this forest
Speaker 1: reserve in northern New Zealand, chicks were hatching. My friend
Speaker 1: and I were part of a volunteer effort to help
Speaker 1: protect them from a ruthless invasive predator, and packed accordingly.
Speaker 1: Our backpacks contained bags of orange scented rat poison, except
Speaker 1: our target wasn't rats at all. We were after stoats,
Speaker 1: small carnivorous mammals introduced to New Zealand in the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies that are especially deadly to native birds. These animals
Speaker 1: are lean and lithe, with kitten like faces. They'd be
Speaker 1: almost adorable if they weren't such devastating killers. A stoat
Speaker 1: can climb a sixty foot tree to take down a
Speaker 1: fully grown pigeon, grappling the bird off its perch before
Speaker 1: forcing it onto the ground below. Once the bird is subdued,
Speaker 1: the stoat typically sinks a pair of long canines into
Speaker 1: the back of its head to eat its brain, followed
Speaker 1: by bodily organs and eventually the remaining meat. Stoats were
Speaker 1: introduced to control rabbits, but became adept at killing ground
Speaker 1: dwelling birds like our iconic bird, the Kiwi. The challenge
Speaker 1: with stoats is that they are weary of traps and toxins,
Speaker 1: so we were deployed a work around by stalking dozens
Speaker 1: of small bait stations molded plastic boxes screwed into the
Speaker 1: base of trees with toxic petals that rats find irresistible.
Speaker 1: Rats are another invasive predator, but more important for this gambit,
Speaker 1: stoats will also prey on them. If you can poison
Speaker 1: a rat happily enough, then any stout that eats it
Speaker 1: will probably die too. That way, you can rid the
Speaker 1: forest of two predators in a single stroke. Such logic
Speaker 1: may sound heartless, but there is a much larger mission
Speaker 1: at stake for my entire country. Stoats rats another non
Speaker 1: native mammalian pass are destroying the unique ecology of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Over the centuries since these animals were introduced, many of
Speaker 1: our indigenous species have been wiped out because they aren't
Speaker 1: adapted to defend themselves against ground hunting mammals. We now
Speaker 1: find ourselves at a turning point with a chance to
Speaker 1: accelerate steps to undo generations of ecological harm. Although the
Speaker 1: ethical quandary is around directly intervening remain complex, the strategies
Speaker 1: and technology for killing predators continues to improve life on
Speaker 1: the land that came to be called air Torawa, the
Speaker 1: Maori language name for the New Zealand archipelago, avowed for
Speaker 1: eighty million years in the complete absence of terrestrial mammals
Speaker 1: other than a few bat species. Then in the blink
Speaker 1: of an evolutionary eye. That changed when humans started arriving
Speaker 1: around seven hundred fifty years ago, bringing with them, albeit
Speaker 1: sometimes inadvertently, wave after wave of new threats. Today, the
Speaker 1: most common invasive predators have hunted more than fifty five
Speaker 1: bird species to extinction, including some of the only flightless
Speaker 1: song birds ever to have existed, two kinds of flightless geese,
Speaker 1: and a remarkable bird called the Huya, one of a
Speaker 1: family of wattle birds found only in New Zealand. This bird,
Speaker 1: highly sacred to Maori, had a most unusual feature. Male
Speaker 1: and female birds had dramatic different bills. Four fifths of
Speaker 1: the country's remaining endemic birds, including kiwis, are at risk
Speaker 1: of the same fate. Ninety four percent of native reptiles
Speaker 1: are similarly threatened, as are two of our three native
Speaker 1: species of frog. To counteract the destruction, New Zealand officials
Speaker 1: have mounted an offensive for humans to hunt the hunters
Speaker 1: into total elimination. Almost a decade ago, in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: then New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced the government's
Speaker 1: seemingly audacious goal of completely eradicating major predator species by
Speaker 1: twenty fifty. The seven invaders. Specifically targeted are three different
Speaker 1: types of rats, plus doats, ferrets, weasels, and possums. Key
Speaker 1: dubbed this the most ambitious conservation project attempted anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world. The late New Zealand physicist Sir Paul Callaghan,
Speaker 1: one of the first to articulate the predator free vision,
Speaker 1: likened the difficulty of achieving that goal to creating an
Speaker 1: Apollo program our country's moonshot. The effort has been estimated
Speaker 1: to cost upwards of six billion dollars. New Zealand has
Speaker 1: a land area of a hundred thousand square miles, with
Speaker 1: invasive predators spread across not just mountains and forests, but
Speaker 1: also glaciers, dune lands, wetlands, and hundreds of urban areas.
Speaker 1: Any solutions would need to operate effectively on all of
Speaker 1: those frontiers. Nine years after the predator Free campaign launched. However,
Speaker 1: conservationists agree that existing control strategies, even deploying poison to
Speaker 1: kill two predators at once and other techniques developed in
Speaker 1: recent decades, won't get us to zero by twenty fifty,
Speaker 1: or possibly at all. The geographical scale is too small,
Speaker 1: the available resources too thin, the collateral damage too difficult
Speaker 1: to manage, but achieving any moonshot has always required rethinking
Speaker 1: just about everything. Right now, That's what a cologist's, biologists,
Speaker 1: trap makers, ethicists, and engineers are doing, combining their strengths
Speaker 1: to learn from the past while accelorating the pace of innovation.
Speaker 1: Despite the obstacles, the progress their making has them imagining
Speaker 1: a hopeful new future. Birds safe, Predators Gone. No creature
Speaker 1: captures the predicament of New Zealand's native animals evolving in
Speaker 1: isolation better than the Kiwi, the epitome of beloved, weirdness
Speaker 1: and vulnerability. Kiwis are about the size of a chicken
Speaker 1: and have attributes similar to the mammals that were largely
Speaker 1: absent during New Zealand's evolutionary history. There are five species.
Speaker 1: All are nocturnal and flightless, with catlike whiskers and fur
Speaker 1: like shaggy feathers. They even have marrow in their leg bones,
Speaker 1: all unbirdlike features. To encounter a kiwi in the wild,
Speaker 1: watching it probe the leafy rumas pushing its five inch
Speaker 1: bill almost to the hilt as it hunts for grubs
Speaker 1: is to be transported to an Arcadian epoch when birds
Speaker 1: had no need to escape ground dwelling threads. But that
Speaker 1: protective environment changed abruptly when humans arrived from Eastern Polynesia,
Speaker 1: with the first recorded invasive predator, the ciuree rat, which
Speaker 1: may have been carried on their voyaging canoes as a
Speaker 1: food source. The danger grew with the arrival of Europeans,
Speaker 1: who introduced black and brown rats that likely traveled with
Speaker 1: them as stowaways on ships. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: more intentional animal introductions also went awry. Colonial settlers unleashed
Speaker 1: a deadly triumvirate of ferret's weasels and of course, stoats,
Speaker 1: in an ill conceived effort to keep rabbits, which themselves
Speaker 1: were introduced for food and sport, in check. The proposed
Speaker 1: control agents barely dented the rabbit numbers, turning their attention
Speaker 1: to birds and other fauna, which were much easier to
Speaker 1: catch and had no natural defenses against them. Then, in
Speaker 1: an attempt to establish a fur industry, Colonial New Zealanders
Speaker 1: imported the Australian brush tail possum, which is a bit
Speaker 1: larger than its American cousin, with a furry tail and
Speaker 1: luxuriant pelt. These omnivorous eaters quickly spread through the country's forests,
Speaker 1: but the nineteen eighties, more than fifty million possums were
Speaker 1: estimated to be in the wild, consuming twenty three thousand
Speaker 1: tons of vegetation every night, along with birds and their eggs,
Speaker 1: snails and other invertebrates. The accumulative damage inflicted by these
Speaker 1: animals is almost beyond comprehension. At least twenty five million
Speaker 1: chicks and eggs of native birds are believed to be
Speaker 1: consumed by such predators each year. It has been estimated
Speaker 1: that ninety five percent of kiwis that hatch in areas
Speaker 1: where stoats are active do not live to adulthood. Every
Speaker 1: New Zealand habitat is under siege, says Colin Muirk, a
Speaker 1: landscape ecologist at the University of Canterbury. The initial attempt
Speaker 1: to eradicate predators began sixty five years ago on many
Speaker 1: of the country's small offshore islands. The techniques and devices
Speaker 1: used were rudimentary hardware snap traps for rodents, bigger, more
Speaker 1: powerful versions for stoats. Toxic baits dropped from low flying
Speaker 1: aircraft to blanket an entire island with rudenticide, but the
Speaker 1: effort worked. More than three hundred New Zealand islands are
Speaker 1: now predator free and have become sanctuaries for vulnerable creatures,
Speaker 1: such as the tuartara, a lizard like reptile that's evolved
Speaker 1: little since the age of dinosaurs, and the owl faced cacapo,
Speaker 1: the world's only flightless parrot. The elegant tieca or North
Speaker 1: Island saddleback, which is named for a chestnut blaze of
Speaker 1: feathers across its jet black plumage, once survived on only
Speaker 1: one predator free island. It has since been reintroduced to
Speaker 1: others as those areas have become safe to inhabit. On
Speaker 1: the mainland, gains have been slower and hard won. In Miramar,
Speaker 1: a four square mile peninsula in the country's capital city, Wellington.
Speaker 1: It took workers for Predator Free Wellington four years to
Speaker 1: fully rid the area of black and brown rats, stoads,
Speaker 1: and weasels. Doing so required installing more than eleven thousand
Speaker 1: bait stations and traps in residence yards, schools, shopping centers
Speaker 1: and even the studios where sets for the Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings were constructed. These had to be checked weekly
Speaker 1: for at least six months before project staff began the
Speaker 1: extended process of locating any animals that had evaded traps
Speaker 1: and toxins. At least a thousand Miramar households formed their
Speaker 1: own volunteer network to help out through careful management. Key
Speaker 1: predators have also been removed from a three hundred fifty
Speaker 1: square mile swath of wilderness in the country's mountainous southwest,
Speaker 1: proof that eradication is possible in both urban and back
Speaker 1: country regions, but all told, the area cleared so far
Speaker 1: is still less than half a percent of the whole country.
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of New Zealanders have proved willing to
Speaker 1: engage in this effort. Many schools teach students how to
Speaker 1: humanely trap and kill predators as part of a conservation curriculum. Now,
Speaker 1: eradication experts want to accelerate progress by increasing the impact
Speaker 1: of these volunteers. Dan Tompkins, science director of Predator Free
Speaker 1: twenty fifty Limited, a company that allocates government funding toward
Speaker 1: future innovations, says one of the top priorities is to
Speaker 1: draadically reduce the time spent servicing killing devices in the field,
Speaker 1: self resetting traps with dispensers to automatically bait them are
Speaker 1: already doing that. The devices can operate autonomously for months,
Speaker 1: while sharing their catch status and other data, giving projects
Speaker 1: staff a continuous update on predator numbers and activity. One
Speaker 1: popular variety has the trap mechanism housed in a wire
Speaker 1: mesh cage that is screwed to a tree at shoulder
Speaker 1: height to keep it out of reach of curious ground
Speaker 1: birds such as kiwis. A wooden ramped leads predators up
Speaker 1: to the device, which they enter from below, lured by
Speaker 1: the promise of food. The specially formulated bait, appealing to
Speaker 1: both rodents and possums, is a flavored mayonnaise. When the
Speaker 1: animal crosses a light beam, the trap triggers a kill bar,
Speaker 1: crushes the skulls of rats and mice, and strangles the
Speaker 1: much larger possum. Once it has been triggered, a motor
Speaker 1: rebates and resets the trap, rewinding the kill mechanism. The
Speaker 1: carcass then drops out of the trap enclosure to the ground.
Speaker 1: These traps are being deployed across the country. In the
Speaker 1: Southern Lakes region of New Zealand's South Island, Paul cavanaught
Speaker 1: the direct project director for a consortium that supports over
Speaker 1: one hundred volunteer groups and conservation minded organizations, estimates that
Speaker 1: self resetting traps are forty nine times more effective than
Speaker 1: traditional devices. Our self resetting traps have been catching two
Speaker 1: to six possums per night, and we might not need
Speaker 1: to check the trap more than once every six months,
Speaker 1: he told me at a project field site in the
Speaker 1: hills beyond Queenstown. In contrast, a single set trap might
Speaker 1: make one kill and then be out of service for
Speaker 1: a month until a volunteer comes to reset it. Other
Speaker 1: lower tech devices require even more work. Leg holed traps,
Speaker 1: commonly used in the fur trade but also sometimes in
Speaker 1: pest control, don't kill animals outright. New Zealand law requires
Speaker 1: they be checked every twelve hours so the animal can
Speaker 1: be dispatched without undue suffering. Collectively, the four hundred self
Speaker 1: resetting traps at Kavanaughs Field sides dispatched more than seventy
Speaker 1: two hundred pests in twelve months. It's game changing technology,
Speaker 1: he said. We used to say you can't trap your
Speaker 1: way to predator elimination. These traps are challenging that idea.
Speaker 1: Until now, traps have also needed to be placed inside
Speaker 1: boxes or structures with openings just wide enough to admit
Speaker 1: the target predator but prevent non target species from being
Speaker 1: snared accidentally. The problem is many predators are trap shy,
Speaker 1: disinclined to enter the confines of a box or other
Speaker 1: housing despite the temptation of a tasty treat. That's changing
Speaker 1: with artificial intelligence recognition, which allows for a trap that
Speaker 1: is completely open. These traps, expected to debut this year,
Speaker 1: will trigger only when the target predator approaches them and
Speaker 1: an AI powered camera confirms the identity of the species.
Speaker 1: In addition, whereas traditional traps require the target animal to push, pull,
Speaker 1: or stand on a trigger to activate them, AI traps
Speaker 1: do not demand that level of interaction. They ensure an
Speaker 1: instant killed with few near misses, and importantly create less
Speaker 1: collateral damage. While some inventors focus on trap technology, others
Speaker 1: use their understanding of predator behavior to advantage. One product
Speaker 1: that's close to being released commercially is the Spitfire. It's
Speaker 1: designed to turn the grooming impulse of furry animals into
Speaker 1: a fatal last act. The device could use peanuts, but
Speaker 1: to attract predators to reach it, an animal must stand
Speaker 1: on a platform which weighs records its weight. This then
Speaker 1: triggers an infrared beam to assess height, accurately determining whether
Speaker 1: this is a desired target, all within a fraction of
Speaker 1: a second. Once a positive identification is made, the device
Speaker 1: sprays toxin onto the animal's belly, prompting the critter to
Speaker 1: groom and in so doing, in just the toxin spitfires
Speaker 1: can deliver up to a hundred lethal doses and be
Speaker 1: left in the field an attendant for a year. When
Speaker 1: development that excites Tompkins is the impending commercial release of
Speaker 1: the world's first rat selective toxin, a chemical called norbormide.
Speaker 1: It was discovered by accident in the nineteen sixties but
Speaker 1: fell out of use because of inconsistent effectiveness and the
Speaker 1: evergence of second generation anti coagulants. Now it shows promise
Speaker 1: in reducing the collateral damage of eradication efforts. A rat
Speaker 1: toxin that puts no other speed at risk is a
Speaker 1: game changer, he says. For example, the rat toxin I
Speaker 1: carried through the forest could accidentally poison a range of
Speaker 1: birds and animals, including dogs, which might scavenge a poisoned carcass.
Speaker 1: A rat specific toxin could be deployed to remove the
Speaker 1: last holdouts in a rodent population and prevent re invasion
Speaker 1: once an area has been cleared to ensure the removal
Speaker 1: is permanent. New Zealand is now poised to automate the
Speaker 1: mass killing of animals on an unprecedented scale, but some
Speaker 1: animal rights experts argue that the predator eradication community has
Speaker 1: always addressed the obvious ethical implications. I'm not opposed to
Speaker 1: the principles of predator Free twenty fifty, says Nio Busserli,
Speaker 1: co director of the Animal Welfare, Science and Bioethics Center
Speaker 1: at New Zealand's Massy University. But if you're going to
Speaker 1: undertake something that has potential impacts for millions of sentient animals,
Speaker 1: then there's an ethical obligation to do the as you
Speaker 1: can for them. The eradication effort, at least as conducted
Speaker 1: so far, hasn't met the correct standard of compassion. Critics
Speaker 1: argue the campaign in New Zealand to exterminate all non
Speaker 1: native animals relies on the use of poisons, which are
Speaker 1: known to cause intense suffering and agonizing deaths. Conservationist Jane
Speaker 1: Goodall stated in her own ethical review of the eradication programs.
Speaker 1: As I read more and more about this plan, I
Speaker 1: became increasingly concerned. For now, despite their welfare issues, toxins
Speaker 1: remain indispensable to the predator free mission. But as James Russell,
Speaker 1: an ecologist and National geographic explorer who works to restore
Speaker 1: endangered populations, explained to me, there are two kinds of
Speaker 1: animal welfare to consider, that of the predator and that
Speaker 1: of the prey. The harm that predators inflict on native
Speaker 1: species far exceeds the harm we inflict in managing them.
Speaker 1: He argues. The presence of mammalian predators in air Heroa
Speaker 1: is an historical environmental injustice. Russell said, just as we
Speaker 1: try to correct historical social injustices, I believe we should
Speaker 1: try to correct historical environmental injustices. On a late May day,
Speaker 1: I was helping Russell catch and band gray faced petrels,
Speaker 1: one of the few burrowing seabirds that still nest on
Speaker 1: the mainland. A petrel may transfer traverse thousands of miles
Speaker 1: of ocean in its lifetime. To hold one in your
Speaker 1: hands reinforces this feeling of environmental responsibility. Not acting in
Speaker 1: it is ethically fraught to doing nothing about predators gives
Speaker 1: them a license to kill, says Brent Beavin, who manages
Speaker 1: the Predator Fee twenty fifty project for the government's Department
Speaker 1: of Conservation. You make a choice, and it's inactive choice
Speaker 1: either way. Indigenous species are animals that don't belong here.
Speaker 1: Which one will it be? Either way, you're condemning animals
Speaker 1: to death. Mori have another perspective on the issue. For them.
Speaker 1: The natural world to Tayo is literal kin in the
Speaker 1: mayor e. In the Maori world view, human and non
Speaker 1: human are woven together like fibers in a traditional cloak.
Speaker 1: Break any individual thread and the whole garment starts to unravel.
Speaker 1: On Iota, or in Western terms, Great Barrier, an island
Speaker 1: off the coast of Auckland, Mayori are taking the lead
Speaker 1: and removing predators so that the unraveling may be halted
Speaker 1: and the cloak restored. They call the project to my Taunga.
Speaker 1: Let the treasured ones stand strong. They were here before us.
Speaker 1: As Marilyn Davies Stephens, one of the projects leaders of
Speaker 1: the indigenous species, there are tupuna, the Mayori term for ancestors.
Speaker 1: A wrong has been done to our tupuna. We need
Speaker 1: to turn it around. There is escalating momentum now. Sixty
Speaker 1: years ago, when the first New Zealand island was cleared
Speaker 1: of rats, a tiny speck of land at the size
Speaker 1: of four football fields, the attempt had seemed futile. In
Speaker 1: the result miraculous. Each decade since, the size of islands
Speaker 1: cleared of predators as increased by an order of magnitude.
Speaker 1: New Zealand technologies and expertise have been employed for island
Speaker 1: eradications around the world. Success can be measured in other
Speaker 1: powerful ways. When I was a child, a kiwi egg
Speaker 1: used to hang on a nail in the family beach
Speaker 1: house in the Bay of Islands. The shell was huge,
Speaker 1: almost five inches from end to end. Kiwis lay the
Speaker 1: largest eggs relative to body size of any bird, up
Speaker 1: to a fifth of the mother's weight. I marveled at
Speaker 1: that egg, but never saw the bird. By then, stout
Speaker 1: predation had rendered kiwis in the North a rarity, but
Speaker 1: our efforts have changed that. Now in the Bay, I
Speaker 1: hear them every night. Where eradication is working, some two
Speaker 1: million invasive predators have been eliminated in a phased and
Speaker 1: accelerating effort to read New Zealand of the unwelcome hunters.
Speaker 1: By twenty fifty, the greatest progress has been made on
Speaker 1: islands and peninsulas. Up next the rest of the mainland. Next,
Speaker 1: a star among stars. The race to save one of
Speaker 1: the world's largest sea stars from extinction just got interesting.
Speaker 1: The Sunflower sea star, which can span more than three
Speaker 1: feet across, is a ravenous roving apex predator able to
Speaker 1: devour armored animals like urchin, snails, clams, and crabs, but
Speaker 1: a mysterious wasting disease thought to be worsened by climate change,
Speaker 1: has led to an estimated global population decline of over
Speaker 1: ninety percent since twenty thirteen. In a bid to restore
Speaker 1: these hunters, which range across the northeastern Pacific West Coast,
Speaker 1: scientists are learning to breed them in captivity. The entire
Speaker 1: aquarium heard us cheering, says Melissa Torres, senior aquarist at
Speaker 1: UC San Diego's Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
Speaker 1: when her team produced its first fertilized eggs in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, following the lead of Washington State scientists with
Speaker 1: more than three hundred juveniles now growing across six partner institutions.
Speaker 1: The hope is to one day release the species back
Speaker 1: into California waters, where it's considered essentially extinct. All this
Speaker 1: is excellent news unless you happen to be a sea
Speaker 1: urgent by Jason Bittel. Next the Kazanlach Tomb frescoes of
Speaker 1: a fated kingdom. During World War II, Bulgarian soldiers stumbled
Speaker 1: upon a lavishly painted tomb, the first of many to
Speaker 1: be found in an ancient necropolis. Fighting during World War
Speaker 1: II led to surprising discoveries near the Bulgarian city of Kazanlach.
Speaker 1: Bulgaria had sided with Nazi Germany, and toward the end
Speaker 1: of the war the country was bombed by the Allies
Speaker 1: from the west, while the threat of Soviet invasion loomed
Speaker 1: in the east. To protect their lands, the Bulgarian army
Speaker 1: built anti aircraft defenses near the central city of Cousin Loch.
Speaker 1: These works set off a remarkable series of archaeological discoveries
Speaker 1: that would hugely expand knowledge about the ancient peoples who
Speaker 1: lived in the region thousands of years before World War II.
Speaker 1: Their kingdom was called Thrace. Ancient Thrace extended over what
Speaker 1: today is Bulgaria, Northwest Turkey, southern Romania, and southeast Serbia.
Speaker 1: Not unlike nineteen forties Bulgaria, Thrace sat at a geopolitical crossroads,
Speaker 1: surrounded by great rival powers Persia, Athens, and late later Macedomia,
Speaker 1: neighbours with whom Thracian kingdoms formed a series of shifting alliances.
Speaker 1: Much of what is known about Thrace comes from Greek
Speaker 1: sources written by settlers living along the Black Sea coast
Speaker 1: that fringed Thrace, who admired and feared these wild seeming
Speaker 1: people of the rugged interior. They were portrayed by Homer
Speaker 1: as allies of the Trojans in the Iliad and the Odyssey,
Speaker 1: warrior aristocrats who flaunted their gold and fine horses. Thracian
Speaker 1: culture bears the marks of both Eastern and Western influences.
Speaker 1: Their elite drinking vessels made of precious metals were inspired
Speaker 1: by both Persian and Greek styles and motifs. Greeks considered
Speaker 1: the Thracians barbarians, yet Greek contacts led them to associate
Speaker 1: their gods with Apollo and Hermes. Greek writings on the
Speaker 1: Thracians often noted their warlike nature and with relief their disunity.
Speaker 1: They would be the most powerful people in the world
Speaker 1: if they had one ruler, wrote Greek historian Herodotus. But
Speaker 1: such union is impossible for them, and there are no
Speaker 1: means of ever bringing it about. Nevertheless, in four seventy
Speaker 1: nine BC, the Persian retreat after their defeat by the
Speaker 1: Greeks created a power vacuum in Thrace and a chance
Speaker 1: for unity the Thracian Terries. The first emerged as the
Speaker 1: founder king of what would become known as the Odrisian Kingdom,
Speaker 1: under which forty Thracian tribes united. Although Odricia was conquered
Speaker 1: by Alexander the Great's father Philip in three forty two
Speaker 1: to three four, y Odrisian co rulers retained a degree
Speaker 1: of independence. There were ten tensions with Macedonia, but a
Speaker 1: flowering of Odrisian monument building did emerge under King Suthis
Speaker 1: the Third. His power base was centered where Cozenlock in
Speaker 1: Bulgaria now stands and we are. In nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: Bulgarian soldiers found the first of many ancient Thracian tombs,
Speaker 1: the first of the big Thracian discoveries at Kazanloch came
Speaker 1: in April nineteen forty four. Digging trenches, soldiers stumbled on
Speaker 1: a tomb containing richly colored frescoes. Archaeologists would later learn
Speaker 1: that this place, the Tomb of Cozenloch, was not a
Speaker 1: standalone monument. It belonged to a royal necropolis that stretched
Speaker 1: across the landscape for miles around a lost Thracian city
Speaker 1: from the fourth century BC. Archaeologists led by Dimitar p. Dimitrov,
Speaker 1: the director of the Archeological Museum in Sofia, were able
Speaker 1: to begin a scientific investigation of the site in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight. The Thracian tomb of Cousinlock consists of an antechamber,
Speaker 1: a connecting passageway, and a round burial chamber, all richly decorated.
Speaker 1: Although looted in the past, the wall decorations are well preserved.
Speaker 1: The walls of the entrance passageway are completely covered with
Speaker 1: colorful frescoes. Both the plinth painted black and the white
Speaker 1: listl which marks the line from which the roof rises,
Speaker 1: give the illusion of stone slabs. Above these moldings is
Speaker 1: a frieze with stylized plant motifs. There are two battle
Speaker 1: scenes on the frieze, in which infantry and cavalry face
Speaker 1: one another, dressed in Thracian and Macedonian styles. The burial
Speaker 1: chamber itself is a bee high shaped tholos. Inside it,
Speaker 1: archaeologists found fragments of a crown, an amphra, and more important,
Speaker 1: the bones of two people, a man and a woman,
Speaker 1: who were verified as having lived at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the third century BC. Believe the male remains are those
Speaker 1: of Prince Rougos', son of Southes the third, and that
Speaker 1: the female bones belong to his wife. The burial chamber
Speaker 1: contains the tomb most celebrated image, a portrait of the
Speaker 1: couple seated at a banquet table they lovingly hold one
Speaker 1: another's wrists at the feast, surrounded by servants, musicians, and
Speaker 1: a chariot. The scope and magnificence of the necropolis has
Speaker 1: prompted some historians to call it the Valley of the
Speaker 1: Thracian Kings. It is one of the largest Iron Age
Speaker 1: aristocratic necropolis ease in Europe and will over a thousand
Speaker 1: of its structures still wait to be excavated, revealing more
Speaker 1: of Bulgaria's rich ancient culture. This article by Julius Purcell
Speaker 1: and Angel Carlos Aguayo Perez. This concludes readings from National
Speaker 1: Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marsha. If
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed hearing this content, please give us a call
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and have a great day.