National Geographic Tales of the Weird

by David Braun

  The new discoveries will not only help refine de Soto’s expedition route, but could also provide valuable insight into how American Indian groups were organized in particular areas. “As we identify specific Native American towns or villages described in the narratives, we can then look at what the Spanish narratives tell us about the political situation in those specific areas,” Mitchem said.

  (Photo Credit 8.17)

  The team has also explored another Georgia Indian site, called Deer Run, but the case for a de Soto encounter there is less conclusive, Blanton said. While a visit by de Soto’s party is the most likely explanation for the artifacts found at the Glass Site, Blanton says there may be another explanation: that the items were left by deserters of the lost Spanish colony of Ayllon. The settlement is known only from writings, and some scholars have proposed it was located on the Georgia coast. Though it’s unlikely that the bead site harbored lost colonists, Blanton said, “if that proves to be true, then the Glass Site record is arguably even more spectacular.”

  “For an Indian in the South 500 years ago, things like glass beads and iron tools might as well have been iPhones.”

  Dennis Blanton

  archaeologist

  CHAPTER 9

  Natural Phenomena

  (Photo Credit 9.1)

  Ah, the wonders of nature. So peaceful. So majestic. So … weird? Just take a look around, and you’ll see that we are surrounded by bizarre natural phenomena: giant mucuslike sea blobs in the Mediterranean Sea, enormous sinkholes that swallow three-story buildings in Guatemala, a supervolcano lurking beneath Yellowstone National Park, and a Mexican cave filled with giant crystals measuring 36 feet (11 meters) long. It looks like nature might be trying to freak us out.

  ICE AGE SURVIVOR

  Oldest Living Tree Found in Sweden

  The world’s oldest known living tree, a conifer that first took root at the end of the last Ice Age, has been discovered in Sweden, researchers say.

  Discovered in 2004, a lone Norway spruce—of the species traditionally used to decorate European homes during Christmas—growing at an altitude of 2,985 feet (910 meters) in Dalarna Province was deemed to be the world’s oldest living plant.

  How Old Is It?

  The visible portion of the 13-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) “Christmas tree” isn’t ancient, but its root system has been growing for 9,550 years, according to a team led by Leif Kullman, professor at Umeå University’s Department of Ecology and Environmental Science in Sweden.

  The tree’s incredible longevity is largely due to its ability to clone itself Kullman said. The spruce’s stems or trunks have a lifespan of around 600 years, “but as soon as a stem dies, a new one emerges from the same root stock,” Kullman explained. “So the tree has a very long life expectancy.”

  The roots of this tree date back 9,550 years. (Photo Credit 9.2)

  Radiocarbon Dating

  Bristlecone pines in the western United States are generally recognized as the world’s oldest continuously standing trees. The most ancient recorded, from California’s White Mountains, is dated to around 5,000 years ago. Bristlecone pines are aged by counting tree rings, which form annually within their trunks.

  But in the case of the Norway spruce, ancient remnants of its roots were radiocarbon dated. The study team also identified other ancient spruces in Sweden that were between 5,000 and 6,000 years old.

  Trees much older than 9,550 years would be impossible in Sweden, because ice sheets covered the country until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 years ago, Kullman noted.

  Ten of the Oldest Trees in the World

  1. Methuselah, Inyo National Forest, California—4,765 years old

  2. Zoroastrian Sarv, Abarkooh, Iran—between 4,000 and 4,500 years old

  3. Llangernyw Yew, Llangernyw, Wales—between 3,000 and 4,000 years old

  4. Alerce Tree, Andes Mountains, Chile—3,620 years old

  5. The Senator, Big Tree Park, Florida—3,500 years old

  6. General Sherman, Sequoia National Park, California—2,300 years old

  7. Jömon Sugi, Yakushima Island, Japan—2,000 years old

  8. Te Matua Ngahere, Waipoua Forest, New Zealand—2,000 years old

  9. Kongeegen, Jægerspris North Forest, Denmark—between 1,500 and 2,000 years old

  10. Jardine Juniper, Cache National Forest, Utah—1,500 years old

  March of the Trees

  The research forms part of an ongoing study into how and when trees colonized Scandinavia after it had thawed. “Prior to our studies the general conception was that spruce migrated to this area about 2,000 years ago, so now you will have to rewrite the textbooks,” Kullman said.

  “Deglaciation seems to have occurred much earlier than generally thought,” he added. “Perhaps the ice sheet during the Ice Age was much thinner than previously believed.” The tree study may also help shed light on how plants will respond to current climate change, Kullman said. “We can see trees have an ability to migrate much faster than people had believed,” he said.

  In fact, global warming made the ancient mountain conifers easier for the study team to find. “For many millennia they survived in the mountain tundra as low-growing shrubs perhaps less than a meter high,” Kullman said. “Now they are growing up like mushrooms—you can see them quite readily.”

  Rising Timberline

  But climate change could also swamp these living Ice Age relics, he warned. The tree line has climbed up to 655 feet (200 meters) in altitude during the past century in the central Sweden study area, the team found.

  “A great change in the landscape is going on,” Kullman said. “Some lower mountains, which were bare tundra less than a hundred years ago, are totally covered by forest today.”

  Mountains tend to provide a refuge for the planet’s most venerable trees because of reduced competition from neighbors and other plants and because the sparser vegetation around the timberline is less vulnerable to forest fires, Kullman said.

  Another factor is reduced human impacts such as logging, said Tom Harlan of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. “Human activity lower down has demolished all sorts of things that could have been extremely old,” he said.

  Harlan says the newly dated Swedish spruce trees have “quite an extraordinary age.” “I have no great problems with them having a tree which has been growing there for more than 8,000 years,” he said. “The date seems a little early but not out of line with other things we have seen.”

  For instance, Harlan noted, dead remains of Californian bristlecone pines dating to about 7,500 years ago have been found up to 500 feet (150 meters) higher in altitude than any living bristlecones. “So there was a time period then when trees were pushing aggressively into areas they had not been in before,” he said.

  (Photo Credit 9.3)

  Other tree clones may have an even more ancient lineage than the Swedish spruces, he added. Research suggests that stands of Huon pines on the Australian island of Tasmania possibly date back more than 10,000 years.

  TRUTH:

  THE WORLD’S TALLEST TREE IS 379.1 FEET TALL, ABOUT AS HIGH AS 188 SCHOOL DESKS STACKED UP.

  FALL BACK, SPRING AHEAD

  The Truth About Daylight Saving Time

  Every spring and fall, clock confusion reigns supreme: When exactly does daylight saving time end, and why do we do it?

  For most Americans, daylight saving time ends in early November, when most states fall back an hour. Time springs forward to daylight saving time in March, when daylight saving time begins again.

  Where it is observed, daylight saving time has been known to cause some problems. National surveys by Rasmussen Reports, for example, show that 83 percent of respondents knew when to move their clocks ahead in spring 2010. Twenty-seven percent, though, admitted they’d been an hour early or late at least once in their lives because they hadn’t changed their clocks correctly.

  It’s enough to make you wonder—why do we u
se daylight saving time in the first place?

  No Thanks

  The federal government doesn’t require U.S. states or territories to observe daylight saving time, which is why residents of Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands don’t need to change their clocks.

  Whose Idea Was This?

  Ben Franklin—of “early to bed and early to rise” fame—was apparently the first person to suggest the concept of daylight savings, according to computer scientist David Prerau, author of the book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.

  TRUTH:

  GEORGE VERNON HUDSON, A NEW ZEALAND ENTOMOLOGIST, FIRST SUGGESTED MODERN DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME IN 1895.

  While serving as U.S. ambassador to France in Paris, Franklin wrote of being awakened at 6 a.m. and realizing, to his surprise, that the sun would rise far earlier than he usually did. Imagine the resources that might be saved if he and others rose before noon and burned less midnight oil, Franklin, tongue half in cheek, wrote to a newspaper. “Franklin seriously realized it would be beneficial to make better use of daylight but he didn’t really know how to implement it,” Prerau said.

  It wasn’t until World War I that daylight savings were realized on a grand scale. Germany was the first state to adopt the time changes, to reduce artificial lighting and thereby save coal for the war effort. Friends and foes soon followed suit. In the United States, a federal law standardized the yearly start and end of daylight saving time in 1918—for the states that chose to observe it.

  During World War II, the United States made daylight saving time mandatory for the whole country, as a way to save wartime resources. Between February 9, 1942, and September 30, 1945, the government took it a step further. During this period daylight saving time was observed year-round, essentially making it the new standard time, if only for a few years.

  It’s hard to remember if it’s “fall back” or “spring ahead.” (Photo Credit 9.4)

  Since the end of World War II, though, daylight saving time has always been optional for U.S. states. But its beginning and end have shifted—and occasionally disappeared. During the 1973 to 1974 Arab oil embargo, the United States once again extended daylight saving time through the winter, resulting in a 1 percent decrease in the country’s electrical load, according to federal studies cited by Prerau. Thirty years later the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was enacted, mandating a controversial month-long extension of daylight saving time, starting in 2007.

  But does daylight saving time really save any energy?

  “Light doesn’t do the same things to the body in the morning and the evening. More light in the morning would advance the body clock, and that would be good. But more light in the evening would even further delay the body clock.”

  Till Roenneberg

  chronobiologist, Ludwig-Maximillians University, Munich, Germany

  Energy Saver or Waster?

  In recent years several studies have suggested that daylight saving time doesn’t actually save energy—and might even result in a net loss. Environmental economist Hendrik Wolff, of the University of Washington, co-authored a paper that studied Australian power-use data when parts of the country extended daylight saving time for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and others did not. The researchers found that the practice reduced lighting and electricity consumption in the evening but increased energy use in the now dark mornings—wiping out the evening gains.

  Likewise, Matthew Kotchen, an economist at the University of California, saw in Indiana a situation ripe for study. Prior to 2006, only 15 of the state’s 92 counties observed daylight saving time. So when the whole state adopted daylight saving time, it became possible to compare before-and-after energy use. While use of artificial lights dropped, increased air-conditioning use more than offset any energy gains, according to the daylight saving time research Kotchen led for the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2008.

  That’s because the extra hour that daylight saving time adds in the evening is a hotter hour. “So if people get home an hour earlier in a warmer house, they turn on their air conditioning,” the University of Washington’s Wolff said. In fact, Hoosier consumers paid more on their electric bills than before they made the annual switch to daylight saving time, the study found.

  But other studies do show energy gains. In an October 2008 daylight saving time report to Congress, mandated by the same 2005 energy act that extended daylight saving time, the U.S. Department of Energy asserted that springing forward does save energy. Extended daylight saving time saved 1.3 terawatt hours of electricity. That figure suggests that daylight saving time reduces annual U.S. electricity consumption by 0.03 percent and overall energy consumption by 0.02 percent. While those percentages seem small, they could represent significant savings because of the nation’s enormous total energy use.

  Winners and Losers

  What’s more, savings in some regions are apparently greater than in others. California, for instance, appears to benefit most from daylight saving time—perhaps because its relatively mild weather encourages people to stay outdoors later. The Energy Department report found that daylight saving time resulted in an energy savings of 1 percent daily in the state.

  But Wolff, one of many scholars who contributed to the federal report, suggested that the numbers were subject to statistical variability and shouldn’t be taken as hard facts.

  And daylight savings’ energy gains in the United States largely depend on your location in relation to the Mason-Dixon Line, Wolff said. “The North might be a slight winner, because the North doesn’t have as much air conditioning,” he said. “But the South is a definite loser in terms of energy consumption. The South has more energy consumption under daylight saving.”

  Healthy or Harmful

  For decades, advocates of daylight savings have argued that, energy savings or no, daylight saving time boosts health by encouraging active lifestyles—a claim Wolff and colleagues are currently putting to the test.

  “In a nationwide American time-use study, we’re clearly seeing that, at the time of daylight saving time extension in the spring, television watching is substantially reduced and outdoor behaviors like jogging, walking, or going to the park are substantially increased,” Wolff said.

  But others warn of ill effects. Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, said his studies show that our bodies never adjust to gaining an “extra” hour of sunlight.

  “The consequence of that is that the majority of the population has drastically decreased productivity, decreased quality of life, increasing susceptibility to illness, and is just plain tired,” Roenneberg said. One reason so many people in the developed world are chronically overtired, he said, is that their optimal circadian sleep periods are out of whack with their actual sleep schedules.

  Shifting daylight from morning to evening only increases this lag, he said. “Light doesn’t do the same things to the body in the morning and the evening. More light in the morning would advance the body clock, and that would be good. But more light in the evening would even further delay the body clock.”

  TRUTH:

  EVERY DAY IS ABOUT 55 BILLIONTHS OF A SECOND LONGER THAN THE DAY BEFORE IT.

  Pros and Cons

  With verdicts on the benefits, or costs, of daylight savings so split, it may be no surprise that the yearly time changes inspire polarized reactions. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the Lighter Later movement—part of 10:10, a group advocating cutting carbon emissions—argues for a sort of extreme daylight savings. First, they say, move standard time forward an hour, then keep observing daylight saving time as usual—adding two hours of evening daylight to what we currently consider standard time.

  The folks behind standardtime.com, on the other hand, want to abolish daylight saving time altogether. Calling energy-efficiency claims “unproven,” they write: “If we are saving energy let’s go year ro
und with Daylight Saving Time. If we are not saving energy let’s drop Daylight Saving Time!”

  But don’t most people enjoy that extra evening sun every summer? Even that remains in doubt. National telephone surveys by Rasmussen Reports from fall 2009 and spring 2010 deliver the same answer: Most people just “don’t think the time change is worth the hassle.” Forty-seven percent agreed with that statement, while only 40 percent disagreed.

  But Seize the Daylight author David Prerau said his research on daylight saving time suggests most people are fond of it. “I think the first day of daylight saving time is really like the first day of spring for a lot of people,” Prerau said. “It’s the first time that they have some time after work to make use of the springtime weather. I think if you ask most people if they enjoy having an extra hour of daylight in the evening eight months a year, the response would be pretty positive.”

  STRANGE WEATHER

  UFO-Like Clouds

  Linked to Military Maneuvers?

  Three weird clouds appeared in the sky over South Carolina in January 2011, and a local photographer snapped a picture. After he posted it on the Internet, it seems everyone had a theory about them. But what’s the real story?