Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2018 i National Geographic History

Pablo Picasso had been searching for three months for something to paint in April 1937. Living in Paris, the Spanish artist had been given a commission to produce a mural for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. Turmoil had disrupted his process, both in his private life and in the civil war raging in Spain. The horror of this war would give Picasso his inspiration to paint a bold, unflinching vision of the devastation and savagery of modern warfare on everyday people. Picasso’s work,“Guernica,”is one of the 20th century’s greatest works of art and a strong statement against war. War Crime In July 1936 the authoritarian Spanish general Francisco Franco had launched a semi-successful coup against Spain’s democratic republic; a swath of Spain fell under Franco’s control,…

APRIL 26, 1937, was a Monday, a market day in Guernica. That afternoon, German and Italian bombers dropped 550-pound explosives to crush buildings so that fire would spread more quickly. They were followed by waves of planes dropping incendiaries that burned at 2500°C. By the evening most buildings in Guernica were uninhabitable. Although the death toll, at first thought to be thousands, was later revised down to between 200 and 300, it sent a terrifying message to the world: The fascist powers were prepared to unleash the new weapon from the sky on civilians, the prelude to the devastating carpet-bombing of European cities during the Second World War.…

Overshadowed by his more famous son, Philip II of Macedon was an exceptional ruler in his own right. He remade his army into a formidable fighting machine to bring the whole Greek mainland under his control in the middle of the fourth century B.C. At the time of Philip’s accession in 359 B.C., Macedon was regarded by most Greeks as an only partially hellenized kingdom and somewhat peripheral to the Greek world. Philip came to the throne at a time of dynastic violence in Macedon, but as Athens and Thebes to the south dealt with their own political challenges, Philip was using his military and diplomatic flair to make rapid conquests in the Thrace region. By 351 Athens started to recognize the threat from its upstart northern neighbor. But by…

POMPEII WAS HOME to a number of groundbreaking, wealthy women who wielded public power. One of them was Eumachia, daughter of a brickmaker, who married into a high-ranking family. Using her wealth, she became a notable public benefactor, building many structures in Pompeii. One of the largest and best preserved is the Building of Eumachia (right) in the city’s forum. Within it is a statue of a veiled Eumachia (below) which was dedicated to her by the fullers guild, the influential tradesmen responsible for dying and cleaning clothes. Eumachia was also the public priestess of the Concordia Augusta, the cult of the deified Augustus, associated with his wife Livia. Some scholars believe the statue of Eumachia intentionally mimics Livia’s features to link her with a traditional Roman matron. In Pompeii…

MICHAEL MAIER’S 1617 Atalanta fugiens presents 50 enigmatic “emblems,” each interposed with epigrams and musical scores. Considered to be the pinnacle of printed alchemical literature, this work reflects the age’s thirst for “hidden” esoteric knowledge. Its singular combination of images, text, and music—an early example of multimedia—is explained in the treatise’s introduction, in which Maier writes: “We have joined Optics to Music and the sense to the intellect,” in order to gain “a single view and embrace these three objects of the more spiritual senses.” The picture on the left is an example of the mysterious symbolism included in the work. It shows emblem 50: a dragon and a woman, drenched in blood, destroying each other. They represent opposing forces that cancel each other out, the dragon symbolizing fire and…

THE MEXICAN defenders of Puebla had every reason to expect a crushing defeat. Among the troops under the command of General Lorencez were the feared Zouaves. Brave, disciplined, and experts in close combat, they were regarded as ideal for Napoleon III’s plan to invade Mexico. Men from the Zwawa tribe from Algeria first formed this elite group in the 1830s, but over time its ranks grew to include men of European descent. They fought successfully in the Crimean War (1853-56)—in which General Lorencez also fought. Their role in the Battle of Puebla was exemplary. They spearheaded the French attack, yet though they fought fiercely against the defenders, their commander’s errors cost them the battle.…

1890 The New York World Building opens in New York as headquarters for the newspaper New York World. Standing 309 feet high, it is the world’s tallest building. 1913 The Woolworth Building (792 feet) is completed. Inspired by European Gothic architecture, the “cathedral of commerce” becomes the world’s tallest. 1930 The art deco Chrysler Building, at 1,046 feet, is the tallest building in the world. But it will hold the title for less than one year. 1931 The Empire State Building opens. Taking its moniker from New York’s state nickname, it will reign as the world’s tallest building for 40 years.…

ON JULY 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber was flying from Boston to Newark. Flying was hazardous that day, with low cloud cover and fog. The pilot ignored the control tower’s warnings to change course and flew through New York City. He lost his bearings and crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building. The impact opened up a gaping hole around 900 feet up, between floors 78 and 80. The three crew members and 11 people inside the building died. The entire building shook, but matters could have been a great deal worse: In their book Why Buildings Fall Down, engineers Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori suggest that if the plane had directly hit one of the skyscraper’s pillars, the whole tower could have collapsed.…

1 Humanlike figure holding ritual objects. Fifth-ninth centuries. Metropolitan Museum, New York 2 Head, perhaps representing a captured warrior. Undated. Quai Branly Museum, Paris 3 Ritual, head-shaped drinking cup. Seventh-10th centuries. Quai Branly Museum, Paris 4 Funerary cup with a puma’s head. Fifth-11th centuries. Quai Branly Museum, Paris 5 Silver diadem, decorated with a Viracocha-style head. Sixth-10th centuries…

359-338 B.C. Philip II becomes king of the small kingdom of Macedon in northeast Greece. Having revitalized his army, with a new infantry formation (the phalanx) and arming them with the sarissa pike, Philip conquers mainland Greece by 338 B.C. 336 B.C. Philip is murdered at his daughter’s wedding. Historians speculate whether it was a small act of revenge or part of a wider dynastic plot. Philip’s son, Alexander III, succeeds him and will later become famous as Alexander the Great. 330 B.C. Alexander topples the mighty Achaemenid (Persian) Empire with the death of its last emperor, Darius III. His lightning sweep through Asia is facilitated by the battle readiness and tactics of his army, in part a legacy of his father, Philip. 323 B.C. Having forged an empire stretching…

Philip and his son Alexander owed their conquests to military strategy and advanced technology, so weapons and armor form a significant portion of the grave goods discovered at Aigai. Tomb II contains spectacular objects of enormous historical value. In one corner of the chamber the archaeologists found a ceremonial sword of bronze and silver and decorated with a scene depicting the murder of the queen of the Amazons by Achilles. Also found were a pair of bronze greaves, worn to protect the shins. The breastplate (left), made of iron and ornamented with gold leaf appears more ceremonial than practical. Covered with leather and cloth, it is embellished with small, gold lion heads. The breastplate’s heft would have been far too unwieldy to have been worn by a soldier on the…

450 B.C. Rome’s legal code, the Law of the Twelve Tables, is compiled. Tablet V places women under the control of male heads of the household, setting the tone for many centuries to come. 146 B.C. The Punic Wars with Carthage result in Rome’s mastery of the Mediterranean. Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus the Elder and mother to the Gracchus brothers, is held up as an example of an ideal modest Roman matron. 42 B.C. Hortensia, the daughter of a famous orator, delivers a fiery speech in the Forum, becoming one of the first Roman woman to speak out in public against a law she considers unjust. 27 B.C. Rome becomes an empire, in which Augustus’ then wife, Livia Drusilla, will define the role of empress. Through patronage and private…

GAIUS MUSONIUS RUFUS In his Dissertations, first-century A.D. philosopher and jurist Gaius Musonius Rufus said that women should receive the same education as men: “Trainers of horses and of dogs make no distinction between male and female in their training.” When asked whether women should study philosophy he said, “Women have received from the gods the same ability to reason as men . . . It is not men alone who possess eagerness and a natural inclination towards virtue, but women also . . . Women are pleased no less than men by noble and just deeds, and reject the opposite of such actions.” JULIUS PAULUS Regarded as one of the most important Roman jurists in the second and third centuries A.D., Paulus believed that custom, not inferiority, was the…

1583 Elizabethan alchemists John Dee and Edward Kelley begin a tour of central Europe, and they are welcomed at the court of Rudolf II in Prague. 1600-1620 Many alchemical treatises, including Atalanta fugiens, are published in this period. In 1620 Francis Bacon expounds the scientific method in his Novum organum. 1648 Emperor Ferdinand III is said to witness the transmutation of mercury into gold in Prague. Similar claims will follow in the next decades. 1654 Writing as Eirenaeus Philalethes, Harvard scholar George Starkey publishes The Marrow of Alchemy, an influential volume of the time. 1687 Isaac Newton publishes his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, known as the Principia. His work lays the foundation for modern scientific practice, yet Newton still pursues alchemy with great interest.…

ALONG WITH scholars who experimented with optics or magnets, alchemists fell under suspicion for presuming to understand the secrets of God’s creation. Antipathy toward alchemists was also bound up with their knowledge of metallurgy: In the third century A.D. Emperor Diocletian ordered the alchemical texts of the Egyptians to be destroyed, fearing that the gold they might produce could undermine the empire’s economy. Although some early Christian authors criticized alchemy, large numbers of alchemical texts were being copied by monks by the 1300s. Even so, anxiety over the compatibility of faith and science persisted, expressed in the story of Doctor Faustus (shown here in his study in Rembrandt’s 1652 engraving). Wearied by the slow pace of virtuous experimentation, Faustus turns to the dark arts to make a deal with the…

The process pieced together by Principe starts with forming an alloy of two metals: silver and antimony, the latter of which is derived from the sulfite mineral stibnite. This alloy is treated with mercury until it forms an amalgam. The amalgam is then distilled to separate off the mercury again. The process of forming an amalgam and then separating off the mercury is carried out several times. The result is a variant of mercury that contains properties not found in common mercury. One such new property is that when this new form of mercury is placed in a flask with gold and heated gently, the gold dissolves easily, giving off heat. Also, after a while the gold in this mixture of special mercury and gold begins to adopt tree-like shapes…

DIRECTED BY FRITZ LANG and released in 1927, Metropolis is considered the first feature-length sci-fi movie ever made. It takes place in a future megalopolis filled with gigantic skyscrapers and elevated railways. It was modeled on New York, whose towers and frenetic activity made European cities—still recovering from World War I—seem shabby and quaint by comparison. Lang visited New York in 1924. His boat docked in the port, where, owing to passport problems, he and his companions had to spend the night on-board. Manhattan’s nighttime skyline gave him the idea for the film, he later said. During the following days, he was able to walk around the city and gaze upon its buildings, neon signs, and streets, taking many rolls of photographs.…

Slaves in the Time of Socrates Ancient Athens may have been the birthplace of democracy, but its prosperity came from a dark place: slavery. Ancient Greece had a large enslaved population who labored in homes, fields, and mines to build up the prosperity of their masters. The Striking Faces of the Faiyum Near Egypt’s Faiyum Oasis in the late 1800s archaeologists stumbled on hundreds of ancient funerary portraits. Wrapped in the bandages of the mummies, these startlingly lifelike and colorful portraits offer vivid insights into the everyday Egyptians who lived during Roman rule. China’s Greatest Admiral, Zheng He Few expected a young Muslim captive enslaved by Chinese forces in the late 1300s to rise and become one of the greatest explorers of all time. In 1405 Zheng He led the…

WITH HIS puffed-out chest like a hawk and voice of a jackal, Qin [Shi Huang Di] is a man of scant mercy,” wrote historian Sima Qian in the second century B.C. Other accounts tell how Qin Shi Huang Di left his mark on captured warriors by castrating them and keeping them as eunuch slaves. The emperor’s brutality extended into every area of life, including his obsessive quest to find the potion for eternal life. According to Sima Qian’s account, 460 Confucian scholars—whose criticism of the emperor included his impious interest in the elixir—were brought before him and buried alive. Elsewhere, he recounts that the emperor ordered the burning of philosophical books. Modern historians believe that although the burial incident is probably myth, it does reflect Qin Shi Huang Di’s hatred…

RABBI LOEW’S association with the golem was a 19th-century invention. In life, the chief rabbi of Prague was a revered scholar, and was on friendly terms with Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. In 1594 the rabbi met Rudolf to discuss alchemy. Below, his tomb in Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery.…

ON MAY 1, 1937, just days after the attack, Picasso made the first sketch of what would become his anti-war masterpiece. The bull and the horse were present in the earliest drafts, along with the fallen warrior beneath the horse and the woman with a lamp. Picasso had, in fact, used several of these elements in a previous work, a 1935 engraving depicting a minotaur. Although the central figures remained constant, Picasso made many revisions to the overall work. Its austere palette of black, white, and gray is said to have been inspired by the grainy quality of newsprint, reflecting that the Spanish Civil War was one of the first conflicts intensively covered by the media. After just five weeks, the vast, mural-size canvas was complete. There is a story…

Who wanted Philip II killed? For centuries, authors have speculated that there may have been more behind the murder of the Macedon king than the personal grudge of a bodyguard. Did Alexander himself have a hand in it? Nevertheless, in 1977, when the casket in Tomb II was opened, archaeologist Manolis Andronikos found a clue that could indicate a degree of tenderness on the part of the son. Under a heavy crown made of gold oak leaves and tiny acorns lay partially incinerated bones wrapped in a cloth of deep purple, a color reserved for royalty. Many scholars believe they are the bones of Philip. This arrangement of human remains reminded Andronikos of Homer’s description of the burial of the Trojan hero Hector: “They gathered the white bones, covered them with…

Part of being an ideal Roman wife was being a good mother and providing a husband with offspring. If a couple were infertile, then another woman might serve as a surrogate, despite the risk that this woman might displace the original wife altogether. A first-century B.C. inscription, the Laudatio Turiae, details a loving husband’s praise for his dead wife. He reveals the lengths to which a couple might go for an heir: “When you despaired of your ability to bear children and grieved over my childlessness . . . you proposed a divorce outright and offered to yield our house free to another woman’s fertility.” Despite the husband’s refusal and the evident mutual affection of the pair, the extreme solution reveals the precarious position of any infertile woman. Maternalism was…

THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT of alchemical operations was believed to be invisible. Referred to by the treatises as the “universal spirit,” it was a vital element that impregnated the cosmos from the dawn of creation and was the impetus for all transformations that occurred on Earth. The alchemists desired to capture this spirit to harness its power. It was believed that this force manifested itself most strongly in springtime, when life returns after winter, and the world trades frost for dewdrops. Dew was believed to be rich in this mystical substance, and people would collect it by stretching out pieces of cloth at night to collect the condensation. This 1677 engraving from the Mutus liber shows a man and woman wringing out the dew into a vessel. The artist signals it…

THE SPRING OF 1862 marked a low point in the fortunes of the Mexican republic, following the disembarkation of European forces at Veracruz in January. Despite the diplomatic triumph at La Soledad, after which Spanish and British troops decided to withdraw, it was becoming clear that French forces were poised to march on Mexico City. On March 6, with Mexican commander Ignacio Zaragoza already facing a vastly superior foe, disaster struck. To prevent munitions falling into the hands of the French, a huge arms dump had been created on the outskirts of San Andrés Chalchicomula. Careless lighting of cooking fires by Mexican troops detonated the entire store, leaving hundreds of soldiers and civilians dead, and hugely depleting Zaragoza’s reserves of munitions. Meanwhile, General Lorencez, the French commander, was studying how…

VISITORS TO NEW YORK swoon at the sunburst motif of the spire of the Chrysler Building, and its lustrous chrome-nickel steel finish. Walter Chrysler’s masterpiece is prized not only for the engineering prowess involved in building it but also for the elegance and beauty of both its exterior and interior decoration. The lobby is an outstanding example of art deco with a mural on the ceiling depicting human progress. Dedicating his great building to world commerce and industry, Chrysler set out to impress his visitors and his competitors with the international scope of the many beautiful materials he assembled to adorn it: Among its surfaces can be found Moroccan marble, Siena travertine, and the new German stainless steel.…

On the shores of Lake Titicaca and surrounded by three mountain ranges, the site of Tiwanaku in Bolivia pulses with mystery. The capital of this enigmatic pre-Columbian civilization contains structures that have puzzled people for years. Among them are a sunken temple studded with stone heads, and the magnificent Puerta del Sol, the Gateway of the Sun, carved out of a single 10-foot-wide block of stone. Thanks to careful conservation, the ruins of Tiwanaku, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2000, have been preserved from destruction. Painstaking efforts by a succession of archaeologists have unlocked some, if not all, of the secrets of its strange monuments, shedding light on a culture that thrived on the Bolivian high plains from the sixth to the 10th centuries A.D. A Slow Reveal Tiwanaku,…