On this day 45 years ago, in a stunning upset, the U.S. Olympic hockey team consisting of amateurs and college students, defeated the long-dominant and heavily-favored Soviet Union team, 4-to-3, on home ice, in Lake Placid, New York. This underdog’s victory over a hockey juggernaut, which later led to an American gold medal, was dubbed the ‘Miracle on Ice,’ and was voted the greatest sports moment of the twentieth century by Sports Illustrated. WATCH the crowd go wild and hear the commentary in this ABC anniversary tribute… (1980)
In the Amazon, One Woman’s Ingenious Canopy Bridges Are Helping Monkeys Cross the Road Safely
Why did the monkey cross the road? Because someone built a bridge for him.
Deep in the Amazon Rainforest, motorists hauling along the few highways that bisect the great ecosystem will have seen a series of rope bridges extending from the tree tops over their heads.
They are the result of one ingenious and now-decorated conservationist who decided to climb up and be counted.
Fernanda Abra has worked alongside one of the many indigenous groups of the Amazon—the Waimiri-Atroari people—to create a unique-in-the-world system of wildlife road crossings specifically for tree-dwelling species.
Primates like the Groves’ titi monkey and golden-handed tamarin have witnessed their homes cut in two by asphalt roads, and often have no choice but to brave the white lines on foot.
In fact, as CNN reports, it was on asphalt that Abra saw her first Groves’ titi, one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates.
In response, this postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian’s Center for Conservation and Sustainability launched the Reconecta Project (remember, it’s Brazil, so it’s pronounced He-conecta)
Leveraging the Wairmiri-Atroari’s knowledge of where local wildlife pass and congregate, the project has used grant funding to build 30 wildlife road crossings that present as a horizontal rope and or wire bridge. Some incorporate Tyrolean traverses as well.
Each crossing has a camera trap mounted on the anchor poles so that Abra can monitor who is using the crossings. The data will help inform conservation actions, including population estimates, as well as where to put more road crossings.
AIDING THE AMAZON: Grove of 100 Giant Trees Discovered in 2019 Are Tallest in the Amazon–and Now Protected by State Park
“Every time I see the video of the monkey using my canopy bridge, it’s wonderful because we are avoiding the situation of road mortality,” says Abra. “Connecting the population, we can make it stronger and allow it to grow.”
Abra and Reconecta won the 2024 Whitley Award for Nature in honor of her work protecting the region’s primates.
OTHER GOOD CONSERVATION STORIES: True ‘River Monster’ of the Amazon Has Recovered Thanks to New Sustainable Fishing
The best part about the story, aside from the fact that drastic reductions in road mortality in species like the Schneider’s marmoset, Spix’s red-handed howler monkey, and the Guiana spider monkey, is that the Reconecta Project is expanding out from the Brazilian state of Amazonas to Mato Grosso, where she’s already canvassing universities, philanthropists, and governments for funding to build more of these bridges.
“What amazes me about Brazil is the richness that we have, the wonderful biodiversity we have here,” says Abra, “and I will do everything that I can as a person, as a professional, as a conservationist and researcher to protect this rich biodiversity.”
WATCH the video of her work, narrated by Sir David Attenborough…
World’s First All-Timber Wind Turbine Blades are Cheaper, Recyclable, Fire-Resistant and Stronger than Carbon Fiber
A company making wooden wind turbine blades has successfully tested a 50-meter-long prototype that’s set to debut soon in the Indian and European markets.
Last year, the German firm Voodin successfully demonstrated that their laminated-veneer timber blades could be fabricated, adapted, and installed at a lower cost than existing blades, while maintaining performance.
Now, Voodin has announced a partnership with the Indian wind company Senvion to supply its 4.2-megawatt turbines with these wooden blades for another trial run.
Wind power has accumulated more than a few demerit points for several shortfalls in the overall industry of this fossil-fuel alternative.
Some of these, such as the impact on bird life, are justified, but none more so than the fact that the turbine blades are impossible or nearly impossible to recycle, and that they need to be changed every 25 years.
Wind turbine blades are made from a mixture of glass and carbon fiber heated together with sticky epoxy resin, and these materials can’t be separated once combined, which means they go into landfills or are incinerated when they become too battered to safely operate.
GNN has reported that folks will occasionally find second-life value in these giant panels, for example in Denmark where they are turned into bike shelters. In another instance, they’re being used as pedestrian bridges.
But there are way more wind turbine blades being made every year than pedestrian bridges and bike shelters, making the overall environmental impact of wind power not all green.
MORE INDUSTRY LEADERS: World’s Largest Wind Turbine Manufacturer Says All Its Blades Will Soon be Fully Recycled
“At the end of their lifecycle, most blades are buried in the ground or incinerated. This means that—at this pace—we will end up with 50 million tonnes of blade material waste by 2050,” Voodin Blade Technology’s CEO. Mr. Siekmann said recently. “With our solution, we want to help green energy truly become as green as possible.”
The last 15 years have seen rapid growth in another industry called mass timber. This state-of-the-art manufacturing technique sees panels of lumber heat-pressed, cross-laminated, and glued into a finished product that’s being used to make skyscrapers, airports, and more.
OTHER WAYS TO RECYCLE BLADES: Retired Wind Turbine Blades Get Turned into Bridges and Reinforced Concrete
At the end of the day though, mass timber products are still wood, and can be recycled in a variety of ways.
“The blades are not only an innovative technological advancement but a significant leap toward sustainable wind production,” said Siekmann, adding that this isn’t a case of pay more to waste less; the blades cost around 20% less than carbon fiber.
Additionally, the added flexibility of wooden blades should allow for taller towers and longer blades, potentially boosting the output of turbine by accessing higher wind speeds.
Now partnered with Voodin, Senvion will begin feasibility analysis in the next few months, before official testing begins around 2027.
SHARE This Innovative Use Of Wood And Wind To Create Electricity…
Japanese Team Saves Nearly-Extinct Herons by Hand-Rearing Chicks
With Japanese know-how and the unwavering support of Japanese experts, Bhutan’s national bird is being hatched and hand-reared in captivity successfully for the first time ever.
The major hurdle to rearing chicks was overcome, and two healthy birds were just hand-reared, bringing the total captive population to five—a crucial lifeline to a bird that numbers less than 100 in the wild.
The critically-endangered white-bellied heron faces extinction due to habitat disturbance from human activities and predation. Professor Satoshi Shimano and his team from Hosei University, Japan, collaborated with the White-Bellied Heron Conservation Center (WBHCC) in Bhutan, to revive the species through direct intervention.
This heron is the world’s second largest, a symbolic bird for the people of Bhutan, and also a typical ‘umbrella species’ that requires a habitat with a vast, preserved environment. In recent years, the white-bellied heron population has decreased significantly.
As of 2024, it’s estimated there are fewer than 45 left in the world, although the official count stands at 60. It’s endemic to the Indian subcontinent, with approximately 25 individuals sighted in Bhutan, and the rest across the border in India. Conservation efforts for the species are limited and fragmented across the region.
In 2021, the Royal Society for Protection of Nature (RSPN) in Bhutan decided to begin efforts to artificially breed white-bellied herons outside their natural habitat, and the WBHCC was constructed and began operation in 2022. The WBHCC, located in the mountainous areas of south-central Bhutan, a six-hour drive from Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, is supported by the Royal Government of Bhutan, international donors, agencies, and global philanthropists.
Two of the center’s three herons were collected as chicks from wild nests, and the other was rescued as a wounded bird. The center plans to collect not only chicks but also eggs from wild nests to artificially hatch them in an incubator. This was because monkeys were observed eating the heron’s eggs during incubation.
Since pair-bonded adults build their nests on steep cliffs and high trees, collecting chicks and eggs is extremely dangerous. A single nest typically produces around four eggs, and only 3–4 white-bellied heron pairs have been confirmed to nest in Bhutan.
The RSPN planned to establish 16 founder populations (8 breeding pairs) by 2028 and release at least 50 herons in the wild by 2050 as part of the population restoration programs, but by 2023, it had only produced 3 chicks, all of which had to be euthanized because of genetic abnormailties resulting from inbreeding, or so it was believed.
Back in 2018, Professor Shimano met a Bhutanese graduate student, Mr. Pema Khandu, who was working to conserve his national bird. Having witnessed the extinction of the Japanese populations of the oriental stork and the Japanese crested ibis, Dr. Shimano readily volunteered to help.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Inspired by Avatar and His Asthma, Indian Man Creates ‘Biosphere’ to Connect Adjacent Land to National Park
“We must not let Bhutan make the same mistakes we made in Japan,” Shimano remembered saying.
Professor Shimano recruited Japanese veterinarians Dr. Takashi Nagamine and Dr. Yumiko Nakaya, from the Okinawa Wildlife Federation and planned a trip to the WBHCC. They concluded that the chick deaths were actually more likely due to hand-rearing techniques rather than genetic abnormalities.
A support team was formed, composed of experts from the Hyogo Park of the oriental white stork and several member associations affiliated with JAZA (Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums). These experts had been involved in the captive breeding of oriental storks, Okinawa rails, and Japanese crested ibises. The team visited the WBHCC twice in March and April 2024, during the breeding season, taking the Japanese experience with these birds with them. Equipment and supplies were donated to the WBHCC.
MORE OF ASIA’S GREAT BIRDS: Asia’s Extraordinary Jumping Bird Now Thriving in Captivity–a Hopeful Halt to Population Slide
Even in Japan, it took more than twenty years to establish the artificial breeding technique for the storks and ibises.
“Japan, which knows the pain of having lost the endemic Japanese lineage and the subsequent efforts that followed, should be the one to make use of its own technique overseas,” said Shimano. “Everyone on the team is committed to supporting the white-bellied heron for the next 20 years.”
Leg abnormalities were known to occur frequently in the ibises and storks during growth. Similar leg abnormalities were observed in the white-bellied herons that died in 2023 and in those hatched in 2024. Rei Matsumoto, a veterinarian and senior researcher at the Hyogo Park of the oriental white stork, instructed that the bedding material be changed to twigs of a thickness that the chicks could easily grasp.
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As a result, one of the two chicks showed improvement in its legs and began to grow well.
“There have been past cases where efforts to prevent the extinction of both the crested ibis and the oriental stork have failed. In order to prevent a repeat of this, I hope that by providing the knowledge that Japan has, we can increase the number of these birds, even if only a little,” said Matsumoto.
The team is hopeful that, within 5 to 10 years, when the captive population rises to around 30 individuals, they will release a few into the wild.
SHARE This Asiatic Collaboration To Save A Beautiful National Bird…
Horses and Humans Go Blind for Similar Reasons, So This Medicine Might Cure Both
Whether one sports hooves or toes, a mop or a mane, autoimmune uveitis can strike away eyesight equally.
A cure for this form of blindness common in horses, but also people, is now undergoing trials that may benefit both.
An interdisciplinary team from the Univ. of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, and College of Medicine—ophthalmology, has published findings on an eye-drop medicine to treat uveitis, a leading cause of blindness in both species.
The disease amounts to 10% of new blindness and visual handicaps in the US every year; affecting around 30,000 people.
Named for the uvea, the middle layer of the eye, and ‘itis,’ the suffix that denotes inflammation, eyesight loss occurs when structures of the eye break down from the disease, and light to the retina is blocked.
If caught early, medicine can prevent uveitis from causing loss of eyesight, but in more advanced cases, the damage is often already done, and the eventual effects irreversible.
“It turns out that the place where the drug sits to have its effect in the eye is the same in people and in horses,” said Joseph Larkin, associate professor at UF/IFAS.
“We think that if we’re able to prove its effect in horses, we’ll also be able to treat the disease in people. People go blind if they have this disease, so it definitely alters their quality of life permanently.”
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The eyedrops Larkin and his team developed contain a synthetic peptide that acts to block the inflammatory pathways which cause the inflammation that results in a breakdown of the eye tissue structures in autoimmune uveitis in both horses and humans.
Previous treatments have often proved ineffective due to the condition’s tendency to recur.
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Research has already been conducted using this eye-drop therapy on blind or light-sensitive horses at the UF/CVM, in which the horses were documented to have regained calmness and composure during exposure to bright light.
The next step will be a clinical trial in horses.
SHARE This Crossover Medical Breakthrough With Your Friends…
“Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.” – Leo Buscaglia
Quote of the Day: “Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.” – Leo Buscaglia
Photo by: Curated Lifestyle for Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Good News in History, February 21
197 years ago today, the first issue of the Cherokee Phoenix was published using the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah. Sequoyah, also known as George Gist, was a Cherokee polymath who was one of the few people in history from a pre-literate group who created the original written system for that group’s language. Just as Sequoyah’s Cherokee language is still in use, the Cherokee Phoenix is still in print today, nearly 200 years after its first publication. READ more about its origins… (1828)
Countries Are Breathing the Cleanest Air in Centuries and Offer Lessons to the Rest of Us
An article at Our World in Data recently explored trends in air quality across a selection of high and middle-income countries, and found that not only is the West breathing better air than at perhaps any point since urbanization, but that developing nations likely won’t need 100 years or more to arrive at similar outcomes.
Published by Hannah Ritchie, the article focuses on two kinds of gases emitted from industrial activity: sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx). Both enter the air we breathe from the burning of fossil fuels—coal in particular—while the latter is emitted mostly from internal combustion engines.
Bad air quality is responsible for millions of lost life years worldwide from respiratory problems, cardiovascular issues, and neurological disease—all of which can develop and become exasperated under prolonged exposure to air pollutants.
As seen in this chart, emissions of SO2 have just dipped under levels seen at the earliest periods of British industrialization. Before this, city and town air quality would have been badly tainted through emissions of wood smoke, so it’s safe to assume that 2022 marked the best British air in many centuries, not just the last two.
SO2 enters the ambient air primarily in urban environments through the burning of coal, and the significant reduction in coal use across the West has seen this number plummet.
But as regards middle-income countries like China and India that still rely on coal for electricity—all is not lost, as the next chart shows.
While the UK consumption of coal and emissions of SO2 have fallen in lockstep, the US and China present as excellent case studies for nations—like India, the fourth example—who rely on coal for electricity.
Even if coal consumption is increasing, SO2 emissions can fall even below baseline, with the diligent application of existing technologies for “scrubbing” coal.
“In 1990, the US included a cap-and-trade scheme on SO2 as part of its Clean Air Act Amendments,” Ritchie writes. “Each coal plant was given a ‘cap’ for how much SO2 it could emit, forcing it to either implement technologies to reduce its emissions, trade credits with other plants, or pay a large fine for every tonne of extra sulfur it emitted.”
This was hugely successful, as over just a single decade, emissions had dropped double-digit percentages.
Scrubbers are an apparatus that clean the gases passing through the smokestack of a coal-burning power plant. They exist as large towers in which aqueous mixtures of lime or limestone absorbers are sprayed through the emissions, known as flue gases, exiting a coal boiler. The lime/limestone absorbs some of the sulfur from the flue gases.
These have been used to tremendous effect in China, which despite tripling its coal use since 2000, has actually reduced SO2 emissions to pre-2000 levels. India does not use, nor does it mandate coal scrubbers, which explains its upward trajectory in both use and emissions.
One important note that the article failed to mention: if a country is burning coal, it means they aren’t burning wood or dung. While seemingly more natural than coal or oil, these produce their own, more significant health hazards, as the particulate matter in wood smoke is much larger and higher than smoke from fossil fuels.
Air quality in a city will increase if switching to coal from wood and dung, in the same way that switching from coal to natural gas will accomplish the same. Additionally, more years of life will be lost for having no electricity compared to coal-powered electricity.
But not all emissions come from power production. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is generated through the burning of gasoline, diesel, and kerosene in internal combustion engines, and much like SO2 emissions, there exists a gradual upward trend throughout the 20th century.
In the UK, NOx emissions have fallen to levels seen in 1950, even as the number of road-driven miles in the country has steadily increased to near the highest levels in the country’s history.
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This was largely accomplished by the increase in fuel efficiency and exhaust systems on automobiles mandated by the EU in the 1990s. The Euro 1 rating was introduced in 1992, and the bloc is now on Euro 6.
“To comply with regulations, car manufacturers have had to innovate on technologies that can reduce the emissions of NOx and other pollutants from car exhausts,” writes Ritchie. “These technologies have included catalytic converters, filters for particulate matter, gas recirculation—which lowers the temperature of combustion and therefore produces less NOx from the exhaust…”
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Over the Last 3 Decades, Nearly Everyone in Bangladesh Gained Access to Basic Electricity
In the chart above, the nations of South Africa, Brazil, and China are those that have adopted similar emissions standards, while those below are those that haven’t, demonstrating how quickly these harmful emissions can be cut out of the air if smart regulation is imposed.
Beijing—once synonymous with face masks and grimy skies, now enjoys a routine weather phenomenon called the “Beijing Blue,” in other words, a blue sky. This, GNN reported, was accomplished by a “war on pollution” that led to an average life expectancy increase of 4 years for the average Beijingren.
SHARE This Great Map Towards Easy Breathy Progress On Social Media…
Bamboo Panels on World’s Longest Sea Crossing Withstand 6 Years of Sun and Typhoons–Still Solid as Ever
Reprinted with permission from World at Large.
Six years after their installation on the world’s longest sea crossing, thousands of bamboo panels have withstood six years of intense exposure to the elements without issue.
A report published by engineers in the Chinese paper Science and Technology Daily claims the panels are “as solid as ever,” a mark of success for China’s blossoming bamboo engineering industry, where the world’s fastest-growing plant is becoming its fastest-growing construction material.
While walking last spring through the city of Lucknow, India, I saw a tall concrete water tower under construction. The concrete was clearly setting; it was that dark grey color typical of wet cement, and every right angle was sharp as a knife edge.
I was left in utter shock as every square foot of structure all the way up to the basin at the top was supported by a half-dozen tall trunks of bamboo. Hundreds of them had been used, and they cluttered the future water tower like an artistic child’s popsicle stick sculpture.
It was a sight endemic to Asia—the home of bamboo, undoubtedly one of the world’s most remarkable plants. This member of the grass family contains more than 1,400 species spread out over 115 genera, including some which can grow over a meter a day.
But speed isn’t bamboo’s only characteristic. Some species display a tensile strength similar to steel. Some match up with hardwood lumber, and others far surpass concrete for PSI. It loves marginal land, sequesters 50% more carbon dioxide than typical trees, and some bamboo species even spark like flint when struck with an axe.
These properties make bamboo a rapidly emerging material for so much more than just the eco-friendly cutting board or bedspread you saw in IKEA.
Besting the elements
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is the world’s largest and longest sea crossing and is described sometimes as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
It consists of three cable-stayed bridges, four artificial islands, and an undersea tunnel all of which cover 34 miles (55 kilometers) of open sea beyond the Pearl River Delta.
Stretching for many miles along these installations, the scenic observation platforms are lined in 215,000 square feet of DassoXTR bamboo floor panels that have withstood sunlight, typhoons, and seawater corrosion, remaining “as solid as ever,” according to the report in the Daily.
These panels have been specially engineered to act as composite building materials through an innovative heat treatment to remove the tendency of bamboo to rapidly decay due to its rich nutrient stores.
BAMBOO BUSINESS: India Law Allows Villagers to Claim 2000 Acres of Bamboo Forest to Turn Poverty into Prosperity
Lou Zhichao, from Nanjing Forestry University’s Bamboo Research Institute, has been working on treatments like these to improve bamboo’s versatility and durability. The heat treatment was perfected in 2016, but since then his institute has developed a low-emission adhesive with reduced formaldehyde and phenol levels specifically designed to create composite bamboo products while adhering to strict emissions codes for the European market.
“China is not only the world’s largest bamboo producer but also holds a comparative advantage in processing capabilities,” Lou told the Daily, which added the total Chinese market is worth around $74.2 billion.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Pakistan’s First Female Architect Delivers Bamboo-Built Relief Shelters to Flooded Countryside
“Maintaining China’s leadership in bamboo technology innovation is crucial. The industry should focus on advancing automation and smart manufacturing while actively shaping international standards.”
In 2023, China announced a three-year plan to promote “bamboo instead of plastic,” to increase bamboo utilization by 20% by 2025 in an effort to reduce plastic waste. That means more bamboo in everything from construction to packaging.
SHARE This Amazing Engineering With The Humble Bamboo On Social Media…
Jet Engine Exhaust is Turned into Electricity to Power Dallas International Airport
An intuitive piece of hardware is collecting a days’ worth of renewable energy from airplane engine exhaust before take-off from a Dallas airport.
“Boarding is completed” is a common refrain heard over the intercom system in the moments before taxiing to the runway.
At that moment, the pilot will begin a series of engine tests and pre-flight checks during which time the turbine engines are idling with their ferocious noise and exhaust fumes.
A company called JetWind has realized that all that idling force is like the strong winds needed to power a wind turbine, and has built a series of pods that can capture it during the 5-10 minutes the aircraft is sitting at the gate waiting for clearance to taxi.
“The main goal of our project is to harness the consistent wind created by jets and convert it into an eco-friendly energy source,” JetWind’s founder and president Dr. T. O. Souryal told Interesting Engineering.
“What was once considered wasted energy can now benefit energy grids, ultimately promoting smarter and more sustainable infrastructure across the globe.”
Three years of testing between 2021 and 2024 have informed the official deployment of JetWind’s flagship product at Dallas Love Field airport. 13 sets of pods will sit beneath the gate hooked up to external batteries that connect to the grid the airport uses. Solar panels add to the energy generation, and the whole set can create about 30 kilowatt-hours of renewable energy, enough to power a family home for a few days.
While on its own it isn’t nearly what the average airport will consume during a day of operations, when combined with 12 other systems just like it, it can make a serious difference in reducing the carbon footprint of the building.
ALSO CHECK OUT: This Wind Turbine Panel Lets You Harness Enough Energy to Power Your Home
“Dallas Love Field has always been a hub of progress, and the introduction of JetWind’s Energy Capturing Pods reinforces its position as a testing ground for innovative technologies,” said former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert.
“By converting man-made wind into energy, we are highlighting Dallas as a leader in sustainable solutions and proving that cities can take significant steps toward tackling global energy challenges.”
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The debut of the JetWind pods at Love Field has attracted attention from around the globe, including companies and governments from Switzerland, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, the UK, France, and Australia.
SHARE This Innovative Idea To Create Energy Where Once Was Only Waste…
Cleaning a Millennium of Sand and Soot Egyptologists Reveal Ancient Creation Myth in Exquisite Artwork
From the Magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America comes the jaw-dropping chronicle of an Egyptian temple, once covered in dirt and soot, that’s now revealing an ancient creation myth and the cult that worshiped it.
Located far in the south, confusingly called “Upper Egypt” on the west bank of the Nile, the Temple of Khnum has survived since the time of Cleopatra. Recently undergoing extensive restoration work, colors, painted inscriptions, and beautiful carvings cover every inch of the structure.
Even while Egypt was ruled by Macedonian Greek kings playing pharaoh, the locals continued to worship ancient, but also local deities. In the modern city of Esna, these were Khnum, a ram-headed god of creation, and his wife Neith.
They were honored to preside over a temple that is now in ruins 30 feet below the level of the street. However, in the year 30 BCE when the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, took control of the country, work began on an impressive red sandstone ‘pronaos,’ or entrance hall, the remains of which are extremely well intact and measure 120 feet long, 65 feet wide, and 50 feet high.
It’s believed the pronaos would have dwarfed the temple itself—built 300 years before. 200 years passed before the columns, walls, and ceilings were finished being decorated. The scenes thereupon occasionally depict some of the Roman emperors who came and went during this long exercise in inter-generational artistry.
For 1,500 years, the pronaos existed merely as a shelter from weather while the temple behind it was dismantled to build canals. In the 19th century it became a storehouse for cotton and gunpowder.
Over those long years, the soot from fires lit in the interior gradually covered the ceilings, while bacteria glommed together dust and sand which obscured the inscriptions and drawings.
Some of these were cleaned and documented in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until a major cleaning was undertaken, beginning in 2018, that the wealth of iconography and artistry could truly be comprehended.
Center of creation
A joint Egyptian-German team, led by Egyptologist Christian Leitz of the University of Tübingen and Hisham El-Leithy and Ahmed Emam from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, have now cleaned virtually the entire pronaos, and what they uncovered is nearly unique in Egyptian religious architecture.
“Now this vivid decoration can be studied in combination with the temple’s architectural layout, something that could not have been attempted until recently,” El-Leithy told Benjamin Leonard, senior editor of Archaeology Magazine, which published an incredible feature story on the deciphering of the various images and inscriptions.
The pronaos welcomed worshipers into the temple of Khnum, a god of creation whose worship first appears in the hieroglyphic record around 4,000 BCE. By the time of the New Kingdom, (1550–1070 BCE), his appearance and profile had expanded to involve fertility and the Nile, and was depicted occasionally with a crocodile head as well as that of a ram’s.
ALSO CHECK OUT: Archaeologists May Have Discovered the Oldest And Most Complete Egyptian Mummy
He is written to have created all things in the world on a potter’s wheel—a tenant captured in a striking mural wherein the Roman Emperor Trajan is depicted as presenting incense sticks whilst a priest in leopard skin below him offers the god a potter’s wheel.
Also at Esna, he is referred to as Khnum-Ra, showing how regional worship involved co-opting other deities, in this case by appropriating the name and perhaps the duties of the greater understood sun god Ra. Exquisite columns at the entrance of the pronaos, and much of the interior besides, are colored in red and yellow along the theme of sunlight.
But Khnum doesn’t reign alone in Esna. Hieroglyphic inscriptions record him having a spouse—Neith. Together they’re referred to as the “Lord and Lady of Esna.” Neith is referred to as the “mother of mothers,” in a nod to her perhaps co-equal role as creator.
“Both these deities are responsible for the creation of a whole universe,” Tübingen’s Egyptologist Daniel von Recklinghausen, told Leonard. “You find this idea of creation everywhere in the temple.”
MORE CLASSICAL EGYPT: Archaeologists Uncover Gateway to Ancient Greek Temple Alongside the Nile in Egypt
All over the walls of the building, aspects of classical Egyptian life are highlighted with gorgeous colors, inscriptions, and paintings. In one area, images and hieroglyphics combine to explain how rituals were carried out at the temple. Around 90 days of the year there were feasts and rites to honor the gods.
In one stunning image, a procession carries the shrine of Khnum aboard a mythical sun boat out from the mouth of the pronaos.
Another collection of images on the ceilings bears witness to the Egyptians’ adoption of the twelve zodiac symbols first used in ancient Babylon. All twelve are depicted, separated in groups of six, along with all of the 7 planets known in antiquity.
Leitz and von Recklinghausen suspect there are many more connections between the positioning of texts and images that have yet to be discovered.
MORE ANCIENT EGYPT: 4,100-year-old ‘Stunning’ Tomb of a Conjurer-Dentist Who Treated Pharaohs Discovered in Egypt
“I’ve been quite astonished at the numerous cases of these interactions,” Leitz tells Archaeology Magazine. “I didn’t expect it, and, at the moment, we don’t know whether this might have been repeated in any other temple in Egypt.”
It has taken six years for the team led by Leitz and El-Leithy to clean the temple of Khnum’s extraordinary entrance hall. Only 6 pillars and two interior walls remain unclean, a job to which Leitz ascribes about 18 months of necessary work—suggesting that even more marvels may emerge from the sands and soot of time.
Read the story on Archaeology Magazine and see the beautiful pictures of the interior artwork.
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“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Quote of the Day: “There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Photo by: MARK ADRIANE (cropped, Unsplash)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Good News in History, February 20
13 years ago today, a team of Russian botanists successfully regenerated 36 specimens of Silene stenophylla from frozen samples of the plant’s fruit buried in the Russian permafrost between 40 and 60,000 years ago by squirrels. Surpassing the previous record for regeneration by more than 10 times, placental cells extracted from the frozen fruit were radiocarbon dated to 29,800 years BCE. READ what the plant looked like after it was grown… (2012)
Under Duress from Bird Flu, California Farm Donates 300,000 Eggs to Victims of Palisades Fires
What do you get when you cross some good eggs with a fire? In Los Angeles County, you get much-needed relief.
In the wake of the Palisades and Altadena fires, and amid continual rising prices for eggs at the supermarket, a California farm has donated 324,000 eggs to victims of the recent wildfires.
54,000 will be given specifically to a charity of chefs and nonprofiteers called Gather For Good which cooks meals for first responders and others directly involved with combating the fires.
Another separate donation will be made to Winter Fate Bakes, a Los Angeles bakery that has offered to bake and donate a birthday cake to any child whose family lost a house in the fire.
The idea for the donation didn’t come out of times of plenty, but times of want. The 100-year-old family-owned Rosemary Farm in Santa Maria has had its flock of hens devastated by bird flu, but has decided to leverage its “sister farm” in South Dakota, which has remained unaffected, to make the donation.
“It’s been a struggle not only for us as farmers but for the entire industry,” Linda Sanpei, who handles marketing for the farm, told USA Today. “This flu has taken out so many producers nationwide.”
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“With all that’s happened in Los Angeles, we believe in community and in giving back. There’s no greater time of need than right now for Southern California residents.”
The more than 300,000 eggs will be transported aboard refrigerated trucks and sent to the Los Angeles Food Bank, which will oversee their distribution among the fire victims.
GNN has reported on several companies and individuals stepping up to help the fire victims. National instrument retailer Guitar Center has set up a multi-million dollar fund to replace any instrument or equipment lost in the fires up to $1,600.
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Australia’s ‘Bee Man’ is Saving Native Species, One ‘Hotel’ at a Time
A young Australian ecologist travels from town to town building bee “hotels” and educating children and adults alike about the importance of making room for native insects.
Australia has a high prevalence of solitary bee species: that is, bees that don’t live in colonies or hives and potentially don’t even make honey. Nicknamed the “Bee Man,” his dream is to ensure no more go extinct.
23-year-old Clancy Lester’s interest in entomology was first ignited when he embedded himself with the Yolŋu (that’s pronounced YOL-gn-oo) Aboriginal people in Australia’s Northern Territory, and saw first-hand how their livelihoods were affected by declines in native bee species.
Annual harvests of honey from native bee species not only represent a joyous and nutritious part of their traditional diets but also a feature in traditional songs and fables.
Declines in the populations of honey-making bees, which Lester says is due to a combination of habitat loss and over-application of pesticides in agriculture, is slowly robbing this and future generations of Yolŋu people of their birthright.
Seeing empty hives, he told ABC News AU, lit a “fire in his belly”.
These days, Lester conducts school workshops and community-based conservation projects teaching how people can make simple changes to make room for bees, either planting native species and converting median strips and road verges into native floral beds—or building bee “hotels.”
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“It’s one of the simplest ways of simulating, as best as we can, the natural environment where native bees and other insects will nest in,” Lester said.
Lester has put together a variety of resources that anyone can access on the internet about how to build one of these little structures, 800 of which he has overseen across Australia.
“Then, when it goes into someone’s garden, they might start to see little bits of leaf from a leaf cutter bee or some tree sap from a resin bee, and that gets them to engage and stay connected with native pollinators.”
MORE FIGURES LIKE THIS: The Steve Irwin of Mushrooms: Paul Stamets Works to Save Rare Ancient Fungus to Protect Us From Pandemics
Lester says his conservation hero is the dearly departed countryman Steve Irwin, and has no problem bringing a similar level of enthusiasm when presenting to school kids, community groups, or town councils.
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Teen with Rare Tumor Gets Marathon Facial Surgery Delivering Results in 7 Hours Instead of Several Years
“I’m really excited to eat Korean fried chicken again,” said Bruce Yamate, a California teen who, after undergoing a marathon surgery, has a whole new reason to smile again.
At 16 years old, Yamate would probably be focused on hanging out with his friends, finishing up high school, maybe chasing a girl or two—even thinking about college, but it was something else entirely that captured his attention last year.
A bump in his mouth that had shifted one of his teeth quickly revealed itself as ameloblastoma, a rare and aggressive tumor of the oral cavity that threatened to erode away his jawbone, and with it, his ability to chew food, smile, and kiss the girls he might have been chasing.
“We found that Bryce’s tumor had begun to cause significant damage to his jaw,” said the renowned maxillofacial surgeon Dr. Chi Viet, who would become part of Yamate’s treatment team. “Surgery was needed to completely remove the tumor so that it does not continue to disfigure not just his bite, but also his facial profile.”
It was determined the Yamate would undergo a remarkable marathon surgery known as the “Jaw in a Day” procedure, for which Dr. Viet is one of the only physicians in the country able to perform.
The procedure involves two lead surgeons: one to remove the tumor, and another to harvest bone from the patient’s fibula—the smaller of the two bones in the lower leg—which is used to reconstruct the jaw and dental configuration once the tumor is removed. Dental implants would be used as necessary to replace the lost teeth.
Typically these varied procedures would be spread out over a year, but thanks to advances in surgical precision and 3D printing, it can be condensed into a single day.
ALSO CHECK OUT: Man Gets Free Life-Changing Surgery to Remove Baseball-sized Tumor from his Jaw
Dr. Viet removed the tumor while colleague Dr. Paul Walker at Loma Linda University Health (LLHU) worked on the leg.
“We don’t just transplant the bone,” Walker said. “We also connect the blood vessels from the fibula to those in the neck. It’s a self-transplant.”
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The surgery was a complete success and has left Yamate excited to eat solid, crunchy food again, but also with a different perspective on things.
“It taught me to live every moment to the fullest,” he told LLHU news. “You never know when things can change, and you have to enjoy life, even when it’s hard.”
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Woman in Her 90s Reunites with Toddler She Saved from Drowning 64 Years Ago, ‘Goose Bumps’ (Watch)
A woman who rescued a drowning toddler from a pool has met him again for just the second time—64 years later.
CBS 8 San Diego was live at the reunion organized by siblings of Ben Colwell, now 66, with his savior Barabara Ribeiro—now 94.
She was Barbara Urban back then—in 1961 when she made the front page of the San Diego Sentinel. In her thirties, she was attending a party when word spread through the guests that a baby had vanished. Fanning out to search the neighborhood, she says she doesn’t know why she picked the house she did, but it was the right one.
21-month-old Colwell had wandered about a block away from the party and fell into the pool. Ribeiro described the scene—of Colwell’s body down at the bottom of the pool—as “scary frightening.” She jumped in, pulled him out, and performed both mouth-to-mouth and CPR on the instructions of a neighbor who knew how.
Though the families kept in touch, it wasn’t long before Colwell’s family moved out of the San Diego area. Meeting each other for the first time in 64 years, Ribeiro, who warned the TV crews she was liable to cry, welcomed Colwell, saying “hello, hello young man!”
Now a business owner and father of two, Colwell said it was so nice to see her.
SAVING BABIES: Toddler Is Reunited with Brother Who Revived Her After Drowning in Family Pool (Watch)
“Yeah the only thing that I had ever heard someone say, I think it was my mom, telling me that when you guys found me there wasn’t any bubbles coming up no, so no one knew how long I had been down there,” said Colwell at the reunion.
“When I really think of it, I think ‘hand of God,'” said Ben. “He made sure that I made it for some reason.”
WATCH the video below from CBS-8…
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“Love is the revolution in which we dismantle the prisons of our fear.” – Audre Lorde
Quote of the Day: “Love is the revolution in which we dismantle the prisons of our fear.” – Audre Lorde
Photo by: Tyler Lagalo
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Good News in History, February 19
40 years ago today, William J. Schroeder became the first artificial heart recipient to be discharged from a hospital. He was a hero to medical science for his willingness to be the second patient to get the Jarvik-7, after the first one died. Today, the modern version of the device has been implanted in more than 1,350 people as a bridge to transplantation. READ more from on this day… (1985)
Antarctica Yields Intact Skull — An Ancestor of Today’s Waterfowl That Survived Dinosaur Extinction
A modern-looking diving bird was living somewhere in Antarctica when a massive asteroid struck the Earth and caused the dinosaurs to go extinct.
But unlike the dinosaurs, this early ancestor of today’s waterfowl survived that mass extinction event, and a nearly complete skull has now been recovered by a special paleontological project on the southern continent.
The animal is called Vegavis iaai—a Late Cretaceous diving bird which lived at the same time that Tyrannosaurus rex was dominating North America.
The skull exhibits a long, pointed beak and a brain shape unique among all known birds previously discovered from the Mesozoic Era—the epoch stretching from 252 to 66 million years ago, and comprising the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods.
Researchers say the features place Vegavis in the group that includes all modern birds, representing the earliest evidence of a now widespread and successful evolutionary radiation across the planet.
Assistant Professor of Biology Chris Torres from the University of the Pacific acquired the fragments of the animal’s skull from a geology sample obtained during a 2011 expedition by the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project.
Meticulously extracted and scanned into a 3D rendering, Torres said it was like trying to complete a 3D jigsaw puzzle without having a box to use as a reference.
“The pieces that are left, some of them are torn in half, some of those are missing pieces. Even then—you don’t know the picture on the box, right?” he told the Univ. of the Pacific press. “You know what other pictures on other boxes look like, and you’re using those to predict what this one looked like. I think it scratches the same itch a jigsaw puzzle does, but the stakes are much higher.”
The professor, who recently published an analytical study on the skull, added that the scale of the discovery is likely to trigger sizeable debates about where it fits in the story of modern birds.
“Few birds are as likely to start as many arguments among paleontologists as Vegavis,” he said. “Chief among them: where is Vegavis perched in the bird tree of life?”
Vegavis was first reported 20 years ago by study co-author Dr. Julia Clarke, of the University of Texas, Austin, and several colleagues. At that time, it was proposed as an early member of modern birds that was evolutionarily nested within waterfowl.
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But modern birds are exceptionally rare before the Cretaceous extinction, and more recent studies have cast doubt on the evolutionary position of Vegavis. Several traits—including the shape of the brain and beak bones—are consistent with modern birds, specifically waterfowl.
Unlike most of today’s waterfowl, the research team says the skull preserves traces of powerful jaw muscles useful for overcoming water resistance while diving to snap up fish. It also leans more towards the feeding patterns of today’s grebes and loons rather than that of ducks or geese, as the features of its feet are more consistent with underwater propulsion.
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Antarctica may have served as a refuge, protected by its distance from the turmoil taking place elsewhere on the planet and enriched by a temperate climate with lush vegetation.
“This fossil underscores that Antarctica has much to tell us about the earliest stages of modern bird evolution,” said professor at Ohio University and co-author Patrick O’Connor.
He says birds known from elsewhere on the planet at around the same time are “barely recognizable” by modern bird standards.
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“And those few places with any substantial fossil record of Late Cretaceous birds, like Madagascar and Argentina, reveal an aviary of bizarre, now-extinct species with teeth and long bony tails, only distantly related to modern birds.”
“Something very different seems to have been happening in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere, specifically in Antarctica.”
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