This is my wife Rebel relaxing with a native of Antarctica while on a visit to the Palmer Science Station there. Getting up close and personal with Antarctic wildlife is so easy as they have no fear of us at all, be they seals, elephant seals, or penguins.

Better not get too close to male elephant seals in domination combat, however, as they can weigh up to 7,000 pounds. And steer clear of full grown leopard seals, which are apex predators weighing over 1,000 pounds. No worries, though, for Rebel with this young fellow. Experiencing Antarctica is always a memorable adventure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #94 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The male Magnificent Frigatebird has a flap of loose bright red skin on his neck called a “gular sac.” During mating season, they huff and puff, filling it with air to blow it up like a balloon. They then parade around showing off for the ladies, for the bigger the red balloon, the more the ladies are aroused. Size matters, even in the Galapagos.

This is only one of many courtship displays among the birds and animals of these extraordinary islands. No wonder the Galapagos are called “evolution’s laboratory.” (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #199 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Go down to the Atlantic coast beach of Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott at sunset, and you’ll see a very unusual fish market. A fishing boat laden with the day’s catch is ready to come ashore, but the crew is afraid the wind and surf may capsize the boat as they do, losing their catch in the process.

So they float just outside the surf line so buyers with boxes and baskets can wade out to buy the fish right off the boat, and wade back. Only when the boat is empty will the crew attempt to beach it. Just one of this West African country’s intriguing sights.

.(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #249 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Turfan Oasis in East Turkestan is far older than the Silk Road. Sitting in the Turfan Depression, second lowest on earth at over 500 feet below sea level) with a climate perfect for agriculture (like grapes for wine!), it was first settled by the Caucasian Tocharians some 4,000 years ago.

Over time it was absorbed into various empires ruling the Tarim Basin encircling the empty Takla Makan desert – proto-Mongols, the Tang Dynasty, the expanded Tibetan Empire at its height in the700s AD, Buddhist Uyghurs, and Genghiz’s Mongols. By the 1400s, the people of Turfan were mostly Buddhist or Nestorian Christian. By the end of the 15th century, they were ruled by the Moslem Moghuls who converted them to Islam.

Turfan was a key trading oasis on the Northern Silk Road which Marco Polo’s father and uncle, Niccolo and Maffeo traversed in 1266 to meet Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. (Marco’s route with them in 1271 took the less-traveled Southern Silk Road underneath or south of the Takla Makan). I traversed both Silk Roads in 2008. Here I am at the Emin Minaret in Turfan. It’s a fabulous place to explore. Maybe some day again? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #239 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Welcome to Transnistria, where Lenin still lives. The strangest country in Europe is a narrow sliver of landlocked land along the east side of the Dnieper River sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. When both declared independence as the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the people here decided they were still part of the USSR even though it had ceased to exist.

The half-million Transnistrians are still pretending their country is a Soviet Socialist Republic. Lenin statues abound, the hammer & sickle is on their flag, the state media broadcasts stories about “glorious Soviet history.” Meanwhile, Transnistria’s economy is doing well thanks to bountiful Kremlin subsidies and as a haven for the Russian mob. In the capital of Tiraspol I saw Beemers, Bentleys, and even a Corvette Sting Ray cruising the streets. Restaurants and bars are packed. Kids are well-dressed. That’s a gaggle of them you see above happily playing on a Russian tank in a park.

Maybe it’s all kind of a funny game to everyone here. As an American I was welcomed with smiles. You will be too if you visit – it’s a truly unique experience! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #69 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

[Joel Wade’s Keeping Your Sanity Through the Virtue of Trade and Money bears directly upon this. Money and trade are what have made us human for 90 millennia.]

On display in the National Museum of Congo in Brazzaville: “Ancient Money.” I took the picture because this is the money that made us human 90,000 years ago. They are tiny Nassarius gibbosulus estuarine snail shells too small for food, perforated with small holes to string on a necklace, used as money “before the establishment of the CFA” as the sign says, the Central Africa Franc in 1945.

These are the same species of shell that was the first jewelry in history unearthed at seashore sites in Morocco and hundreds of miles inland in Algeria some 90kya (thousand years ago) – meaning they were traded. For the first time in history, a species began to exchange things between unrelated unmarried individuals to share, swap, barter and trade, and over great distances.

Other animals do not barter. This, maintains science author Matt Ridley, is what made us distinctly human, enabling us to cooperate with other groups or tribes, to innovate, to evolve ever more complex cultures. This little shell, used as money, is the founding of human culture. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #61 photo ©Jack Wheeler)