Ligabue Magazine 41

For example, on the subject of penguins, did you know that there were some colonies of them living near the equator? This is one of the surprises found in Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s article about the Galapagos Islands on page 48. This scientific article stirs a desire to learn more and provides fascinating information about the islands celebrated worldwide principally because of the many documentaries on giant turtles, called galapagos in Spanish. But the islands also boast marine iguanas and sea lions, and are the setting for Darwin’s marvellous story about the evolution of finches, written after he had visited the archipelago in 1835. Then, of course, there are penguins, cormorants and the struggles between land iguanas in the mating season. From the article we learn about the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Charles Darwin Station, set up to protect and preserve the threatened flora and fauna as tourists arrive from all over the world. But what do we know about the author of this concentrate of knowledge? Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt is in fact an extraordinary figure. Born in Vienna in 1928, he studied biology, ethology, comparative morphology, ecology, and philosophy under illustrious masters such as Konrad Lorenz. He was such a brilliant student he not only won a first-class honours but at the tender age of twenty-one became an associate in Lorenz’s research programme,

setting him up for further adventures. Lorenz then invited him to the Max Plank Institute, where he became a member of the teaching staff. Next it was off to the University of Munich to further sharpen the brain with a degree in zoology and become a professar in the process. This was in 1970. By now he had such a solid reputation that he began to move in very different fields: from animal behaviour to human behaviour, exploring the roots of love and hate. He wrote books encouraging peace and was invited to hold a series of conferences in America, Australia, Namibia. There then ensued honorary degrees, prizes, medals, appointments, emeritus directorships of scientific organisations and academies.

All this is enough to make me feel rather petty, especially since our other authors also deserve special attention, like the Parisian Luc-Henri Fage winner of the Rolex Price 2001. At the age of forty-five he is already a renowned journalist, photographer, graphics artist, writer, explorer and director of many documentaries. Giancarlo Ligabue asked the founder and editor of the review Spéléo, if he was willing to contribute an article to Ligabue Magazine about the discovery of the ancient forms of rock art in the caves of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo.

Fage, also a graduate in journalism and political science, replied: “Dear Dr Ligabue I would naturally be delighted to write an article for your magazine. Last year, thanks to Rebecca Irwin of Rolex, I received your marvellous book Ecce Homo. I was genuinely surprised to see some photographs of my old friend from Langda, the Papuan pygmy, Dimane Balio. I spent two weeks in the Una valley on my way across Irian Jaya in 1990-91, and after that expedition I wrote a book entitled The memory of mists. Dimane Balio and other Una natives told us that an Italian researcher accompanied by many collaborators had come a few months earlier to study the last makers of flint axes. When I received the book I realised it was you! Could I have the pleasure of meeting you in Venice in April?”

On reading the article by Fage on page 166 with descriptions of the many “negative handprints”, symbolic signs, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures, you will realise what a thrilling experience first Ligabue and then Fage had in the those previously unexplored lands. In addition to being a fine scholar, the ethnologist José G. Tubayan, former Regional Director of the Panamin Presidential Agency on National Minorities for the area of Nueva Vizcaya (the Philippines), must be very courageous. He faced many hazards when penetrating the most inaccessible areas of the island of Luzon in the Caraballo region and the forests of the Sierra Madre to seek out the Ilongot, a people of paleo-Malaysian origin. You’d be advised not to joke with this people since their favourite sport is cutting off the heads of enemies or even kith and kin.

Tubayan observes that this custom has still not completely died out, and especially during marriage ceremonies, the heads of Christians or natives may roll: “A bride’s parents could demand that the would-be groom accomplish the supreme trial and offer a head as a dowry to prove his prowess and skill in courting.”

It’s no easy matter, but at times to read some texts you have to imagine you are a geologist measuring time in millions of years. If you go back 220 million years, when Africa, the Antarctic and India were a still single continent you will be able to appreciate the article by Carlo Francou on page 132 He takes us to explore a little-known country, Ladakh, a mountainous desert between Karakorum and the Himalayas. Francou is a geologist, director of the “G. Cortesi” Geological Museum of Castell’Arquato and co-ordinator of the Piacenza Civic Museum of Natural History.

Of our next article, the Italian writer Zavattini might say “we are talking a lot about me”! Although ideally reporters should only be witnesses to events that do not concern them personally, we are pleased to publish Massimo Cappon’s sober description on page 104 of the passion, risks and – why not? – heroics of war photographers. Some of the photos accompanying this article were taken by Ascanio Raffaele Ciriello, who at the age of forty-two was the umpteenth freelance photographer to fall on the field of battle. On 13 March 2002, he was mowed down by a burst of machine-gun fire on a Ramallah road, while documenting the latest dramatic developments in the Palestinian Intifada for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Cappon was for years a special reporter for Epoca, and had to Iive dangerously among the burning oil wells of Kuwait, in Sudan, the Antarctic and Afghanistan. We can only express our admiration and perhaps add: watch out!