Asian Geographic Magazines

Before Abraham and what we know as the three Abrahamic faiths, there were already those who worshipped one god: the Zoroastrians, or Parsis, as many of the modern-day adherents of the religion are known. A small community, who traditionally marry amongst themselves and have no doctrinal requirement to proselytise, their history and the tenets of their faith are poorly understood by outsiders. But the impact of their ideas over the past 3,000 years has been nothing short of revolutionary.

Petra sits at the crossroads of Arabian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures. Here in the peace of the Jordanian desert, Justin Ong explores the routes and ruins of the Nabataean city, a civilisation ahead of its time.

Kowloon Walled City – 300 interconnected high-rise buildings, built without contributions from architects or engineers, and home to nearly 40,000 people. This was the most densely-populated place on the planet until its demolition in 1993.

Famagusta, once a flourishing port has since come to pieces – schools and businesses share the space of medieval churches, some intact, others derelict. Turkish soldiers seal the coastline to intruders. The tourists have long gone and even the locals look abroad for opportunities.

The past 13 years have taken me on several journeys through many parts of India. These opportunities to experience the rich biodiversity of Nature on the subcontinent has led me to return again and again, begging for more.

Rock art dated to a minimum age of almost 40,000 years has been discovered in the Maros region of southern Sulawesi, Indonesia. This is an incredible finding, first published in Nature in 2014, because one of the biggest challenges in rock art research is dating.

If nothing else, 2016 has demonstrated the unexpected power of a popular mythology to capture people’s hearts, minds, and wallets. Among the more demonstrations of this fanaticism is Pokémon Go, a GPS-based, augmented reality smartphone game that rebooted the global pop culture phenomenon of Pokémon.

This is a story about our little branch on the tree of life. Let us journey out on a figurative limb, balancing our way along the branch we share with the primates, and then onto the smaller branch we call Homo. Thanks to advances in genetic technology, working in tandem with fragments of fossil evidence, we are starting to get a sense of where, geographically, this strand began.