BBC Earth Magazine - December 2018

In this issue

INSIDE MARS | The Red Planet has been an object of intrigue for centuries, and an armada of orbiters and rovers have explored Mars up close. Yet for all our exploration efforts there remains a perplexing mystery: just what is going on deep within Mars?

Incan Surgeons Were Surprisingly Skilled At Drilling Holes In People's Skulls

Thankfully, trepanation – the act of scraping, cutting, or drilling an opening into a person’s cranium to treat everything from headaches, to seizures, or even supposed demonic possession – is a practice largely confined to the past. But if you were ever in need of such an operation, you could do a lot worse than seeking out an Incan surgeon.

1 min

Dolphins Are Phenomenally Good At Using Echolocation, Much Better Than Man-made Devices

Dolphins echolocate with two-part acoustic beams. Dr Josefin Starkhammar of Lund University explains how this could help us improve ultrasound technology.

2 mins

What Is Going On Deep Within Mars?

The Red Planet has been an object of intrigue for centuries, and an armada of orbiters and rovers have explored Mars up close. Yet for all our exploration efforts there remains a perplexing mystery: just what is going on deep within Mars?

8 mins

The Social Shark

Lemon sharks have personalities, make friends, use body language and learn tricks. They’re forcing us to rethink how we see big sharks.

8 mins

The Trials Of Writing Modern History

Fallible memories and a surplus of sources mean that the most challenging era for historians to tackle is the one in which we now live.

10 mins

What We'll Eat In 2028

We’ve all heard that the future menu may involve less meat and dairy. But don’t worry, we could have customised diets, outlandish vegetables, robot chefs and guilt-free gorging to look forward to instead. And we reckon that makes up for missing out on the odd sausage.

10 mins

All Summer, I Live And Breathe Swifts

Across the UK, people from all walks of life are coming together to save the swifts. It’s one of the most inspiring stories in conservation today.

7 mins

Cairo Battleground Of Empires

The city of Cairo is an architectural masterpiece 5,000 years in the making, created by some of humanity’s greatest empire-builders. From the pharaohs to Napoleon, Michael Scott reveals how five civilisations left their mark on Egypt’s teeming capital.

7 mins

Should DNA Really Be Used To Crack Cold Cases?

Law enforcement agencies have started investigating unsolved crimes by combining DNA databases and family trees. But should ‘genetic genealogy’ really be used to crack cold cases?

6 mins

Invent Everything

In his latest book How To Invent Everything, Canadian computer scientist and comic writer RYAN NORTH takes a look at the 200,000 years of inventions and discoveries that have helped to shape our society and humanity itself. He talks to HELEN GLENNY

3 mins

Read all stories from BBC Earth

BBC Earth Magazine Description:

A bi-monthly publication containing a feast of information for the curious mind. Every issue is packed with fascinating images, thought-provoking and entertaining articles about the world around us, the natural life that populates it, the history that has shaped our existence upon it, and the science that has driven it and continues to propel us into the future.