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There is really only one rule when it comes to the exclamation mark: don’t use it. This is an exaggeration of course! In fact, rare usage is the point: the Chicago Manual of Style says the exclamation mark ‘should be used sparingly to be effective.’
The 45th President of the United States does not use the exclamation mark sparingly. In the Oval Office, exclamation points (the US term) are being issued more frequently than executive orders. According to the Trump Twitter Archive, in 2016 alone the @realDonaldTrump posted 2,251 tweets using exclamation marks. The ‘alternative facts’ are there for all to see: of 100 tweets I not-very-randomly picked, he used exclamation marks in all but 32 of them. That’s a 68% likelihood of signing off a tweet with a shriek!

Morning
Head straight for the Zona Sul, home to many of Rio’s upscale neighbourhoods and the bulk of its famous beaches, including Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon. First order of business: caffeine! Do as Brazilians do and pair a cafezinho (little espresso) with a pão de queijo (cheese bread). There is an excellent café in Leblon called Cafeína to do just that.
Amped and refreshed, it is time to stake your spot on Rio’s postcard-perfect sands, but do so carefully. Rio’s Zona Sul beaches are lined with lifeguard posts, each known for the specific microclimate it attracts. The best beaches are Ipanema and Leblon. Here posto (post) nine is where you will find Rio’s mauricinhos and patricinhas (the rich, bronzed and beautiful), with a section in front of Rua Farme de Amoedo that draws the LGBT crowd; posto 11 is for families. Choose accordingly and let the beach caipirinhas (Brazil’s national drink, with cachaça, limes and sugar) commence. Until lunch, it is all sizzle, sun and samba.

When doctor Rebekah Bernard sees a patient, she doesn’t always find it easy to empathise with them about their medical complaints — particularly if the symptoms are due to a lifestyle disease, such as obesity-related heart disease, the progression of which is within their control.
But regardless of her true feelings, the Florida-based GP always puts the patient first and hides her ambivalence behind a professional and kind demeanour. And she always does her best to help them.
In short, she’s faking it. But it’s to the betterment of her job, her colleagues and her patients, she says. She’s not alone. Many of us say what needs to be said to get the job done. But does that make us inauthentic, or worse, liars?
Well, no. In the workplace, many of us have glossed over tricky topics to keep from embarrassing others, or pretended to care about something when we didn’t. In fact, mastering this behaviour can be a valuable skill – if used sparingly. Whether it’s indulging a long-winded complaint or volunteering for cause you don’t really believe in, there are times when it pays to come across as caring and compassionate, even if you don’t feel genuine about it.

For travellers, Sudan’s secret treasures are captivating. From discovering what it’s like to sleep outside in the desert to observing how Sudanese youth are evoking national pride through poetry, BBC reporter and documentary filmmaker Benjamin Zand uncovers a side of Sudan that’s seldom seen, in this three-part series.

The fragrance of thousands of incense sticks wafted through the narrow shopfront of the Wing Lee Joss Sticks & Sandalwood Company, a traditional family business in the Hong Kong neighbourhood of Yau Ma Tei. The walls were lined with bright gold-and-scarlet incense packs, but tucked away in glass cabinets was the most prized incense of all: agarwood.
The pungent, earthy scent of this wood gave Hong Kong its name, which, in Cantonese, translates as Fragrant Harbour. The scent is a poignant reminder of how this former colonial trading port, now a world financial hub, once played a pivotal role in the ancient incense trade to the Middle East and beyond.

The vast majority are single-storey crofts or huts for shepherds which have long since been abandoned.
The secluded hideaways became popular with ramblers and hillwalkers but many were falling into ruin before a group of climbers and walkers formed the MBA to take on their upkeep, with the permission of the owners of the vast estates on which they sit.
The bothy network has never been advertised to tourists and information was always spread by word of mouth between those in the know.
But long-time bothy enthusiast Geoff Allan decided five years ago that the time was right to produce the definitive guide to Scotland's bothies.

缓步动物，俗称水熊虫，是一种极小的、几乎无坚不摧的生物，它有八条短而粗的腿和鼻子。全球各地都有它们的身影，它们会游弋在潮湿的苔藓间或是砂粒间的毛细管水中。水干掉后，它们会回归到一种半死半活状态，这种生存机制连科学家也感到吃惊。
Tardigrades, better known as water bears, are tiny, nearly indestructible creatures with eight pudgy legs and snouts. They’re found around the globe, swimming in pockets of wet moss or in the capillary water between grains of sand. When the water dries up, they retreat into a semi-animate state – a survival mechanism that amazes scientists.

生物学家、夏威夷土著文化从业者萨姆·哥恩三世（Sam Gon III）在 1980 年代就开始寻找这种不足一毫米大的奇珍异宝。他的搜索范围包括海勒卡拉国家公园（Haleakalā National Park）长满苔藓和地衣的熔岩平原。海勒卡拉国家公园位于夏威夷茂宜岛（Maui）高达 10,023 英尺的火山顶上，白天日光暴晒，夜间温度却能降到冰点。 在这个风刮日晒的山顶上，几乎没有食物和遮盖，也没有什么生命形态可以生长，但是，哥恩发现，这里却是缓步动物的完美栖息地。他在 50 平方英里范围内就发现了 31 个不同的物种。
Sam Gon III, a biologist and Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, began hunting these smaller than 1mm curiosities in the 1980s. His search plot included the moss and lichen-covered lava plains ofHaleakalā National Park. Sitting atop a 10,023ft volcano on the island of Maui, the park is subject to intense solar radiation during the day and freezing temperatures at night. Few life forms thrive on this windblown summit, which offers little in the way of food or shelter. But, as Gon discovered, it’s a perfect habitat for tardigrades. He found 31 distinct species in just 50 sq miles.

哥恩说，“海勒卡拉是地球上缓步动物最为丰富的地方。它是体现缓步动物生物多样性的核心地带。”
“Haleakalā is the single richest place on Earth for tardigrades,” said Gon. “It’s the heart of tardigrade biodiversity.”

也只有这位夏威夷科学家才能发现这种依赖水的、隐匿的微小动物了。哥恩的中间名是‘Ohukani‘ōhi‘a ，意思是“解除名为‘ōhi’的树木的干渴的雾”。夏威夷人有成百上千的名称形容各种雾和雨，哥恩中间名中的这种雾可在海勒卡拉国家公园见到，他对这片荒野了如指掌。
It’s only fitting that the Hawaiian scientist found this cache of wee, water-dependent animals. His middle name, ‘Ohukani‘ōhi‘a, means “the mist that quenches the thirst of the ‘ōhi‘a tree”. Hawaiians have hundreds of names for individual mists and rains, and the particular mist that Gon is named for can be found within Haleakalā National Park, a wilderness he knows well.

哥恩说，“在这里研究昆虫学，就必须趴在地上花费大量时间。”
“To do entomology in this place, you have to spend a long time lying on the ground,” Gon said.

1970 年代后期，这位生物学家开始频繁去山顶，目的是研究海勒卡拉另一种迷人的物种——夏威夷笑脸蜘蛛。在研究这种嫩黄色蜘蛛的间隙，他也观察稀有植物，剔除入侵物种。为庆祝自己最终获得博士学位，他进行了一次为期三天的背包旅行庆祝。在此期间，他穿越了海勒卡拉风景如画的火山口。就是在这次旅行中，他采集到了缓步动物。
The biologist began frequenting the mountaintop in the late 1970s, when he was researching another of Haleakalā’s fascinating inhabitants – the Hawaiian happy face spider. Between surveys of the bright yellow arachnids, he helped park staff build fences, monitor rare plants and remove invasive species. And when he finally earned his PhD, he celebrated with a three-day backpacking trip through Haleakalā’s picturesque crater. It was on that trip that he collected the tardigrades.

虽然人们对于很多国家的刻板印象都是错误的，但是瑞士却确实符合人们对她的某些刻板印象。Although many countries are saddled with stereotypes, in Switzerland’s case they’re dead on.

这个阿尔卑斯山下的民族真的非常高效。此外，他们还异常守时。而且，非常干净。对于像我自己这样经常迟到，效率低下（而且懒散马虎）的人，去一趟瑞士的感受五味杂陈，就像灌下一杯情绪鸡尾酒：振奋、畅快，而且还有一点受刺激。
The alpine nation really is highly efficient. And meticulously punctual. Clean, too. For chronically tardy, resolutely inefficient (not to mention slovenly) people like myself, a visit to Switzerland yields a cocktail of emotions: awe, relief and a dash of irritation.

对于瑞士，守时不仅仅是一种礼貌或生活里微不足道的小事，而是一种内心满足感的来源。瑞士人似乎遵循德国哲学家叔本华对于幸福的定义，幸福就是“没有痛苦”（an absence of misery）。他们将追求守时、高效的生活视为真正的幸福。
For the Swiss, punctuality is not merely a nicety, a bonbon in the buffet of life. It is a source of deep contentment. The Swiss, it seems, subscribe to the German philosopher Schopenhauer’s definition of happiness as “an absence of misery”. They derive genuine joy from the fact that life unfolds on time and in a highly efficient manner.

每次我游览瑞士时，我对守时的态度都会经历几个阶段。一开始，它让我很开心，尤其是如果我从邻国意大利或法国过来，那里的人对于守时持有着一种更加灵活的态度。相比之下，瑞士的生活更加严谨可靠，就像一只圣伯纳犬。如果有人和我约定下午 2 点见面，他们就会在 2 点到，而不会是 2:05 或 1:55。我喜欢这样。不过这种喜欢并没有持续太长时间。

Whenever I visit Switzerland, I go through several stages of punctuality reaction. At first it delights me, especially if I’m coming from neighbouring Italy or France with their rather more flexible approach to timekeeping. By contrast, life in Switzerland is sturdy and dependable, like a Saint Bernard dog. If someone says they will meet me at 2 pm, they arrive at 2 pm not 2:05 (or 1:55, for that matter). I like this. For a while.

然后，就开始让我恼火了。这种极度的守时让我感觉很吝啬小气，而且我发现自己同意英国作家伊夫林·沃 (Evelyn Waugh) 的说法：“守时是无聊人的美德。”
Then it annoys me. The extreme punctuality strikes me as a kind of stinginess, and I find myself agreeing with the English writer Evelyn Waugh who said that “punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”

不过，这种说法有欠公允。最后，毫无疑问我又开始欣赏起瑞士人的守时观念，因为那是对别人发自内心的一种尊重。守时的人懂得体贴理解别人。瑞士人做每件事都很守时，从而对别人表示出“我尊重您的时间，而且进一步来说，我尊重您。”
That is unfair though, and finally, invariably, I come to appreciate Swiss punctuality for what it is: a deep expression of respect for other people. A punctual person is a considerate one. By showing up on time – for everything – a Swiss person is saying, in effect, “I value your time and, by extension, I value you.”

nglish speakers love to learn this sort of thing for two reasons. First, it astonishes us that there are rules that we didn’t know that we knew. That’s rather peculiar, and rather exciting. We’re all quite a lot cleverer than we think we are. And there’s the shock of realising that there’s a reason there may be little green men on Mars, but there certainly aren’t green little men. Second, you can spend the next hour of your life trying to think of exceptions, which is useful as it keeps you from doing something foolish like working.
Actually, there are a couple of small exceptions. Little Red Riding Hood may be perfectly ordered, but the Big Bad Wolf seems to be breaking all the laws of linguistics. Why does Bad Big Wolf sound so very, very wrong? What happened to the rules?

从4月首次出现裂缝，到1995年6月29日，韩国首尔最繁华百货公司三丰百货五层的天花板上已经遍布网状裂缝。数小时后，从屋顶传来巨大的碎裂声。裂缝在变大。
The cracks first emerged in April. By 29 June 1995, a vast network of fissures spanned the entire fifth floor ceiling of one of Seoul’s busiest department stores. Hours later, loud bangs could be heard coming from the roof. The cracks widened.

百货公司召开了紧急董事会，但是董事长断然拒绝撤出大楼的方案，反对原因是会带来商业损失。然后，他自己逃离了大楼。
An emergency board meeting was called but the chairman flatly refused to evacuate, citing lost profits. Then he fled the building.

下午五点时，五楼的天花板开始下沉。商场照常运转，直到近一小时后警报响起。但为时已晚。紧接着是屋顶下沉，然后大楼的主梁垮塌，整个南楼从楼顶一直崩塌到地下室。1500人被困——包括董事长的继女——502人因此罹难。
At 5pm the fifth floor ceiling began to sink. Shopping continued as usual, until the alarms were finally sounded nearly an hour later. But it was too late. The roof went next, followed by the building’s main support columns, sending the entire south wing crashing into the basement. 1,500 people were trapped – including the chairman’s own stepdaughter – and 502 never made it out of the building.

三丰百货公司的倒塌只是脆弱的现代工程技术的一个例子。在具备材料、设备和对物理学的深度掌握的前提下，这座大楼未能挺过五年，更不用说5000年了。
The Sampooning collapse is an example of how fragile modern engineering can be. Even with materials, equipment and an advanced understanding of physics, the building didn’t last five years, let alone 5,000.

与此同时，埃及的金字塔数千年来一直吸引大批参观人潮。地震、风蚀、涂鸦都没能撼动它。建立起金字塔的文明消失了，但金字塔仍留在那里。它也见证了撒哈拉从丰饶的草地变成今日的广漠。
Meanwhile the Egyptian Pyramids have been drawing crowds for millennia. Unfazed by earthquakes, erosion or vandalism, they’ve endured the collapse of the civilisation that built them and the transformation of the Sahara from lush grassland into today’s vast desert.

金字塔中无可匹敌的要数古夫金字塔（Giza），它于公元前2540年完工，不论是材料、工程还是设计的水平都前无古人，后无来者。古希腊的游客穿越千里来到高耸的石灰石台阶下。他们惊呆了，台阶光滑到闪闪发亮。这些希腊人把名字刻在墙上，时至今日还清晰可见。
Of these, the Great Pyramid of Giza – completed in 2540 BC – is unrivalled, with superior materials, engineering and design to any built before or since. Ancient Greek tourists would travel thousands of miles to gawk at its towering limestone steps, which were so highly polished they were said to glow; their names can be found carved into its walls to this day.

著名的克娄巴特拉七世（BurjKhalifa）所生活的地方靠近现在的世界第一高楼——哈利法塔，远离这座里程碑一般的墓穴。当猛犸象灭绝时，这座金字塔已经有1000年的历史。
Remarkably, Cleopatra lived closer in history to today’s tallest building – the Burj Khalifa – than she did to this monumental tomb. When the last mammoths died out, it was already 1,000 years old.

它是那个时代的哈利法塔，是最高的建筑。直到700年前林肯大教堂建成。“我不想这样说，但是古埃及人当时为逝者建造了发射台，这样逝者就可以飞升，与太阳、星星为伴。”唐纳德·雷德福（Donald Redford）说。他研究金字塔已有四十年之久。
It was the Burj of its day, towering above every other building until the spire of Lincoln Cathedral was completed around 700 years ago. “The ancient Egyptians were creating a – I hate to say it – launching pad for the deceased, so they could get up there with the Sun and the stars,” says Donald Redford, who has been studying the pyramids for over four decades.

转眼到了2016年，我们建起的高楼升入云端。从高耸的钟楼到20层的机器人大楼，直到有可能建造世界第一个一英里高的大楼——不过最后这个大楼能否建起还存疑。随着人们走出乡村，涌向拥挤的城市，人类正在进入摩天大楼的时代。
Fast-forward to 2016 and we’re piercing the heavens with ever-taller buildings, from looming clock towers to 20-storey robots, to the possibility of the first mile-high building – though it’s not yet clear if the latter is even possible. We’re entering the age of the skyscraper, as people move out of the countryside and pour into ever-crowded cities.

“With Moonlight, when I first read the screenplay… it just felt like a piece of poetry,” says the composer of the film’s score. Nicholas Britell was nominated for an Academy Award for his work: in this video, he describes how he collaborated with its director Barry Jenkins. “We said ‘what if we chopped and screwed the score?’” What seems to be warped moments of sound are actually the chords from an earlier theme.
Britell – who also scored The Big Short and composed much of the music in 12 Years a Slave – reveals what he considers to be the most important musical movement of the past 50 years, and how a score enhances action in film.
“The most interesting film music is when it’s saying something that isn’t on the picture – sometimes when music enters a scene, it just opens a scene in a certain way,” says Britell. “Every composer has their internal emotional canvas – you’re taking emotions, and you’re translating them into these frequencies in the air that somehow affect us.”

London Attack
So far, only the police officer has been named. He was PC Keith Palmer, 48, of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command. He had 15 years' service and was a husband and a father.
One woman was killed after being hit by the attacker's car before it reached Parliament. She was confirmed dead by a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital.
The injured included three police officers who were walking across the bridge on their way back from a commendation ceremony. Two are described as being in a serious condition.
A woman was given urgent medical treatment after falling into the River Thames as the attacker's car drove onto the pavement.
Police said a "range of nationalities" were among the injured.
A group of French schoolchildren were on the bridge and three were injured in the incident.
Four university students from Edge Hill University, in Lancashire, were also hurt. Two were sent to hospital as "walking wounded", whilst two others had minor injuries.
Five South Korean tourists were injured - one of them seriously - in a stampede as people fled the area after the attack.
London Ambulance Service said it had treated 12 people with serious injuries, who were all taken to hospital. They also treated eight people with less serious injuries at the scene.

Candles were laid on the ground and on the steps leading to the National Gallery, then lit in memory of those who died.
German-born Michaela Thomas, who has lived in Poplar for decades, came to take part in the vigil, but her husband did not feel safe enough to join her.
She said she was there because she did not want terrorism to stop her living her life.
Her view was echoed by almost everyone I spoke to around the square.
Sister Petronia, a nun from Hackney, put on her London 2012 Gamesmaker jacket to attend.
"I feel everybody in London is the heart of London beating," she said.
"When something like this happens, those of us who live here feel the pain.
"People want to come together and express solidarity, and express their desire for peace."

Fighters from the Kamwina Nsapu group attacked a police convoy.
Six policemen who spoke the local Tshiluba were freed, but the rest were killed, Kasai Assembly President Francois Kalamba said.
The unrest in Kasai began last August, when security forces killed the Kamwina Nsapu leader.
Friday's attack targeted a police convoy travelling between Tshikapa and Kananga.
The state Governor Alexis Nkande Myopompa said an investigation had been launched into the killings.
The UN says 400 people have been killed and 200,000 displaced in the Kasai region since Jean-Pierre Pandi, the Kamwina Nsapu leader, was killed.
This came two months after Kamwina Nsapu launched a bid, in June 2016, for him to be officially recognised as a local chief and for state bodies to withdraw from the region.
The UN says it has identified 10 mass graves where those killed in the unrest have been buried, as well as another seven suspected mass burial sites.
Two UN experts, an American and a Swede, were kidnapped in the area two weeks ago with four Congolese colleagues and are still missing.
DR Congo is in a state of increasing political uncertainty as President Joseph Kabila remains in power beyond the end of his mandate ,which expired last December.
Elections are now due to be held before the end of this year, but no firm date has been set.

On Tuesday the House of Representatives voted to repeal an Obama-era law that demanded ISPs have permission to share personal information - including location data.
Supporters of the move said it would increase competition, but critics said it would have a “chilling effect” on online privacy.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign the order soon.
The repeal was strongly backed by major providers such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, who argued that ISPs were being subject to stricter privacy laws than companies like Google or Facebook.
The law, passed last October days before President Trump was elected, and due to take effect by the end of this year, would have forced ISPs to get clear permission from users to share personal data such as "precise geo-location, financial information, health information, children’s information, social security numbers, web browsing history, app usage history and the content of communications”.
Furthermore, ISPs would have been ordered to allow their customers the ability to opt out of the sharing of less sensitive information, like an email address.

There are numerous types of probiotics and each has different characteristics. They may be combined with others or appear on their own in powder, tablet or liquid dietary supplements. At the moment, foods that naturally contain probiotics are not eaten regularly in the UK and supplements are becoming more popular. The most common probiotics include lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidobacterium. These differ as they are made up of different types or strains of bacteria and are recommended for different clinical conditions. Lactobacillus acidophilus have been clinically shown to lower the incidence of antibiotic associated diarrhoea and can also result in a shorter length of stay in hospital for some. In order to experience this benefit, a vast quantity of food containing probiotics would need to be consumed. It is therefore easier and more effective to take a recommended probiotic supplement.

he clouds passing over the island of Papa Westray graciously withheld their rain as I piled together dry wood, grass and seaweed. Setting a small pocket of dry thistle into the centre, I got to work with a handmade kit made up of two sticks, a reed bow and a bivalve shell – trying to convert muscle power into friction and friction into fire. If I could make enough heat to generate an ember, I’d have to transport it quickly into the thistle floss, where it could smoulder. I just had been trained in how to make fire as prehistoric people would have.
But so far, it wasn’t going well.
It is humbling to a 21st-Century denizen to realise he lacks the dexterity of a human born some 5,000 years ago. But a journey like mine quickly teaches that those we might call “primitive” today were in fact impressively skilled, inventive and cultured.
I was on a lonely wilderness mission through the Orkney Islands, an archipelago located off the northern coast of Scotland, to explore how people lived in a time before even the Egyptian pyramids or Stonehenge were built. But the first surprise is that – as shown in Orkney, where recent discoveries literally are rewriting our books on prehistory – these ancient Britons were far from “cavemen.”
“We’re discovering these people had a sophisticated society,” said Nick Card, senior project manager at the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology. “They had religion. They appreciated art. They built and decorated their homes. And they formed communities with complex class structures.
“In an age before metals, these people managed to quarry stone, dig ditches, manage farms and erect stone circles like those around the Ness of Brodgar. Once you begin to understand the achievements of these people, nothing they did will surprise you.”
While prehistoric Britons learned these skills in order to survive, the pressure on me to master some of the same tasks was self-induced. My life was in no danger. The quiet, lush and green landscape of Papa Westray only covers about 3.5 miles, and as it has a population of around 75 people, I never was more than a manageable walk away from help if I made a genuine mess of it.As I had learned that morning from Malcolm Handoll – Papa Westray resident, environmentalist and bushcraft instructor at Five Senses Eco-Tours – I also had time on my side. He had told me about the survival ‘Rules of Three’: if facing threatening conditions, a human being has three minutes to find breathable air, three hours to find warmth and shelter, three days to find water and three weeks to find food. My test was only for the day.
Still, I wanted to do this right and avoid shortcuts. That meant losing my shoes for the day and abounding all technology. After a couple of hours of training that morning with Handoll, I was on my own. Fortunately, the spot I had chosen along the shoreline helped. The rock shelves facing the sea offered natural shelter and ideal angles to protect my fire from the wind. I was only a minute’s walk from streams and edible plants inland, while tidal pools in the other direction promised a foraging bonanza.Now, Back on Papa Westray, I was surprised by my first accomplishment: the early stages of a successful fire. Generating hot ash from my seemingly endless grinding of wood against wood, I gently placed a tiny, surging glow into the thistle-down cocoon that would swaddle the ember until it matured enough for its move into the kindling. Gentle puffs of breath sent wisps of smoke back to my nostrils, signalling the immediate need to lower the minuscule conflagration into the kindling.
“They were masters of fire,” Handoll said. “They could create it, preserve it, transport it and share it. They had a constant source of warmth and a steady food supply thanks to farming, hunting, fishing and foraging. It was the mastery of their environment that allowed them the concept of organised, communal, surplus time – time to erect standing stones, time to create, time to be social.”
Handoll and Five Senses allow travellers to experience life under similar conditions as people would have in Neolithic Orkney: without electricity, modern technology or even shoes.
“Standing out in the wild, without shoes, their phones taken away from them – it scares the hell out of them at first,” Handoll told me of his clients. “But as they learn new skills and work together, they become more genuinely social again and begin to understand that learning how people lived in the past can help them make sense of how we’re living today.”My experience of Neolithic life so far seemed less than sensible or social, but I had my fire slowly building. Now adequate for providing warmth, it was time to put the blaze to work cooking.
While Neolithic humans farmed and hunted, I only had time for a bit of foraging. The tide was heading out along the edges of Papa Westray, revealing fresh pickings in the rich sea water pools. Limpets – essentially sea snails tucked into a shell about the size of a 50p coin – studded every rock. While their protein seemed like easy pickings, they adhered to the stones with a ferocity evolved through the ages.
To harvest a limpet, the gatherer must choose a flat, thick rock to knock the limpet free of its anchoring and into the waiting water. But the harvester gets only one chance. Misfire and leave the limpet in place, and the creature chemically welds itself to its perch. It will not be moved until the tide returns.According to Julie Gibson, head archaeologist for the Orkney Islands Council, communities developed here 5,000 years ago precisely so they would not have to worry about finding food.
“Neolithic Orkney had a unique position,” Gibson said. “The North Atlantic drift created a more mild climate. The soil was very fertile. And the isolated region protected the people from invasion.”
That protection gave the Neolithic population time to build sites like Skara Brae – a well-preserved village which was unearthed over the last 160 years. The Unesco World Heritage site revealed homes, workshops and other structures that yielded endless insights into how the village inhabitants lived.
“Geophysics suggest Skara Brae was probably two or three times the size of what we see today,” Gibson said. But, she added, “Significant finds of Orkney archaeology are eroding into the sea constantly due to natural processes – making our ongoing archaeological work all the more urgent.”Leaving quite a few irritated, but stationary limpets waiting for the sea’s return, I eventually gained enough dexterity to harvest a handful. They waited in a pouch while I gathered fresh well water, a few root vegetables and whatever herbs I could identify. That recipe collection begged a simple question: Could I prepare a simple, hot Neolithic meal?
With the sun setting and the temperature dropping, I made sure my fire was healthy and secure. I stockpiled dry fuel so the flames would burn into the night. While I still had enough fading sun to see what I was doing, I placed a period-proper, fired earthenware pot Handoll had provided atop my fire and filled it with water and my foraged ingredients.
After an hour of boiling shelled limpets, vegetables and fresh herbs, I ended up with a bland mixture of rubbery snails and half-cooked turnips. Neither chefs of today or from 5,000 years ago would be impressed.I didn’t care. I was cold. I was hungry. So, I ate it – with burgeoning respect for the men and women who no doubt took everything I had to work with that day on Papa Westray and managed a better meal, and a better life, with all of it.

Despite its diverse ethnic origins, the tall pointed hat is likely, today, to elicit revulsion from those in the West who associate its distinctive shape with the sharp end of racial bigotry and the intimidating garb of the Ku Klux Klan. But photos circulating in the media this week from Seville, Spain, serve as a reminder of the multifarious meanings of even the most seemingly singular and inimitable of cultural symbols.
Captured during a parade celebrating Holy Week (which precedes Easter Sunday in the Christian calendar), the photos chronicle the procession of la Borriquita brotherhood, whose members (or ‘penitents’) hide their identities with pointy hooded hats (or ‘capirotes’) in a ritual that dates back at least as far as the Inquisition. Historically, the capirote was intended as a mark of humiliation and was worn by those publicly punished by Church officials for doctrinal violations. In time, the cap was adopted by Catholic brotherhoods as a voluntary guise for their flagellants (those flogging themselves as penance for their sins).
Between 1812 and 1819, the Spanish Romantic painter Francisco Goya vividly documented a more brutal rehearsal of such a procession - one in which excruciating physical penance was publicly observed by the pious participants, whose backs were whipped until bloody. Though such harrowing displays of abuse had been banned in Spain since 1777, Goya’s A Procession of Flagellants suggests how undiminished the ritual urge remained, well into the 19th Century.
But for many who encountered the photos captured in Seville this week, Goya’s portrayal may not have been the most resonant or immediate art historical echo. Removed from their religious context, penitents wearing the capirote might easily have been mistaken instead for members of the US white-supremacist organization, the KKK, which adopted an unsettlingly similar disguise for use in its terrorising campaigns throughout the 20th Century.
Rather than recalling Goya’s gruelling canvas (which the painter hoped would call attention to aspects of society that required reform), observers of this week’s photo may have been reminded instead of an iconic image from modern Americana. Philip Guston’s clutch of crude and cartoonish late works undertaken in the 1960s, featuring gangs of hooded Klansmen, was instrumental in helping nudge the pointy hat in the direction of farce in popular consciousness. Placed alongside the photo of penitents from la Borriquita brotherhood, Guston’s 1969 painting City Limits with its crowded clown car of hooded cowards, offers a memorable metaphor for the endless identities with which any cultural symbol can be crammed.