Word: herdsmen
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Around noon on Monday, Indian soldiers descend on villages just a few miles from the desert test range and order the pacifist Bishnoi herdsmen, who refuse to kill animals or cut down trees, to evacuate. At precisely 3:45 p.m., three devices explode in five seconds: a normal fission bomb, a low-yield bomb for tactical battlefield use and something like a hydrogen bomb, which U.S. officials later insist could have been only a less powerful "boosted" weapon using tritium fuses to amplify the fission chain reaction. Altogether they unleash around 80 kilotons of atomic power, six times as powerful...
Demonizing the Alps, however, was far from universal. The naturalist Conrad Gesner, who climbed Mons Pilatus in 1555 to disprove its diabolic reputation, thought of the Alps as the "work of the Sovereign Architect." To 19th century Romantics, the Swiss mountains were symbols of virtue, and the herdsmen who dwelt there paradigms of primitive democracy. Thus the Alps through history have been rather like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: you never know what meaning you'll find inside them...
...Europe was already relatively crowded. Farm villages had spread from the fertile plains and river valleys of Central Europe toward northern Germany and Denmark, and south to the foothills of the Alps. Herdsmen like the Iceman, on the lookout for new pastures, began to move to higher ground. On the rims of lakes and marshes, settlers built wooden homes, some on stilts, and cultivated barley and peas. Communities of 50 to 200 people dotted the shores of Lake Constance and a number of Swiss lakes, with central buildings for social functions. These villagers evidently traveled across the Alps; parsley...
Democratic reforms in Mongolia were actually begun two years ago. As aid and supervision from Moscow faded away, so did central economic planning, which gave way to private markets. Mongolian citizens, mainly nomadic herdsmen, tended to blame the democrats for the economic disruptions that followed: rising prices and unemployment, shortages, even of basics, and food rationing...
...matter what happens this week in Lausanne, the elephant will still be in some peril. Even if the ivory trade winds down, the elephant will face increasing encroachment from Africa's fast-growing human populations. African farmers or herdsmen trying to eke out a living covet the vast habitats set aside for animals and cannot understand why scarce financial resources go to protect elephants while people go hungry. To many Africans, the elephant is a five-ton nuisance that can trample a season's maize in seconds. As long as they feel that way, they will turn a blind...