Heritage
Lighting the Way of Faith
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.
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Travel and Adventure
Into the Wild
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.
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Culture
Early Human Imprints
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.
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Culture
From Spirits to Superfans
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.
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Environment
The Tree of Life
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.
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Culture, Heritage
The Art of Eight Limbs
Muay Thaai, otherwise known as ‘The Art of Eight Limbs’, is Thailand’s form of boxing that makes lethal use of eight contact points of the body, including the hands, shins, forearms, knees and feet. It has become one of the primary reasons for martial arts devotees to visit the country – from the serious practitioner training for the next fight, to the casual tourist looking for a little physical conditioning between days on the beach.
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Heritage
The Ancestor of All Fights
Indian kushti is considered the predecessor of all wrestling. It is undergoing a revival despite the tug-of-war between tradition and modernity.
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Heritage
The Way of the Gods
Shinto is ‘the way of the gods’ and, just as it is for many mortals, sumo wrestling is a favourite pasttime. For nearly 2,000 years, sumo wrestlers have performed their martial art, first in intimate shrines, and then in stadiums before thousands of spectators. At least as early as the 3rd century AD, the wrestlers would perform complex rituals to purify both their body and their spirit, and then fight for the entertainment of the gods during the matsuri (religious festivals). It was a sacred act of ritual, not a sport.
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