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National Geographic : 2015 Jul
Contents
Ancient Worlds EXPLORE PHOTOS: ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE OFFICE, TRENTO (ABOVE); ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD The warming world is reveal- ing the buried past. In the far north of Italy, at altitudes above 6,500 feet, the frozen corpses of World War I sol- diers are melting free of their icy tombs. They’re casualties of the White War, waged by Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops from 1915 to 1918. “Many were very young,” says lead archaeologist Franco Nicolis, who notes that diaries and unsent letters have been found since the early 1990s. “I think of the mothers who never saw their boys again.” Before being properly buried, each thawed body is analyzed by forensic anthro- pologist Daniel Gaudio. But without ID tags, he says, DNA traces alone haven’t led to a family match. Retreating glaciers promise more opportunities. In sum- mer Nicolis will guide visitors to a site 12,000 feet up. “Inside this base, this wooden cabin, you can still smell the war.” —Jeremy Berlin Two Austro-Hungarian WWI soldiers lie fused together on the Presena Glacier in the Italian Alps. Coldest Casualties EXTINCTIONS IN EGYPT THROUGH THE AGES Animals both fantastical and real cover a ceremonial stone cosmetics palette sculpted in Egypt in about 3200 B.C. The actual creatures, including wild dogs, giraffes, hartebeests, wildebeests, ibex, oryx, and ostriches, must have roamed Egypt at that time but are not found there today. A recent study used such artifacts as well as texts and fossils to track the disappearance of animals over the course of 6,000 years. “ What’s unique about Egypt is the high-resolution reporting,” says Justin Yeakel, an ecologist on the research team. Animals that dropped out of the finely detailed human observations helped reveal how wildlife populations changed over time. —A . R. Williams
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