Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2020 i National Geographic History

Think fast: Who was the first person to trek to the North Pole? Some may think it’s American Robert Peary in 1909, but more than seven decades later, a reexamination of Peary’s records by the National Geographic Society revealed he hadn’t made it as far north as he thought. For most of the 20th century the world believed the surface approach had been achieved by Peary. Others later reached the North Pole by air and by submarine, but the overland approach had been largely abandoned—until the 1960s, when a joke between friends inspired a ragtag group of Minnesotans to brave the Arctic. One night over beers, insurance man Ralph Plaisted was raving about snowmobiles, and a friend kidded that if Plaisted loved them so much, he should ride one all…

GENTILESCHI’S 1620 “Judith Beheading Holofernes” portrays an Old Testament story of the Israelite widow Judith who saved her people by assassinating the Assyrian general besieging her city. This work is Gentileschi’s second known representation of the biblical story; an earlier version of Judith’s revenge was begun in 1612, the year after the artist had been raped by an instructor. Although the Judith legend was a popular subject with male artists of the period, the decisiveness and strength of Gentileschi’s Judith, as well as the solidarity of her female accomplice, provides a unique feminine perspective of violence and revenge in the early 17th century.…

RELIGION PLAYED a crucial role in the activities of female temperance activists. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was founded in 1874 to influence states to adopt anti-alcohol legislation. Singing and praying, activists visited saloons in the hope that piety would close their doors. Some activists went further: Carry Nation, a temperance activist who also supported women’s suffrage, used rocks and even an ax to break bottles and bust up bars: “You refused me the vote, and I had to use a rock,” she said.…

With 180 men and 30 horses, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in present-day northern Peru in 1531 to claim the land—and its riches—for himself and for Spain. The Inca Empire, rulers of the region, stood in his way. In November 1532 Pizarro captured the Inca king Atahualpa, ransomed him for a room full of gold, and killed him anyway in 1533. Spanish forces swept through Cusco, the Inca capital. Pizarro installed a puppet ruler and took control of the empire. Spanish cruelty fueled Inca resistance, and open rebellion broke out in 1536. Inca guerrillas launched attacks from their secret rebel base, the jungle city of Vilcabamba, to drive the Spanish from their home. It would take decades to quash their fighting spirit, and the last Inca stronghold would be swallowed…

IN THE MID-19TH CENTURY, interest was kindled in finding the lost rebel capital of the Inca, and several sites have been candidates for the lost city over the years. The French Count of Sartiges and the Italian-born geographer Antonio Raimondi visited Choquequirao, and Raimondi put forward the hypothesis that this was the site of Vilcabamba. In 1911 the American explorer Hiram Bingham explored the same area. Bingham visited a site called Espíritu Pampa. He didn’t initially believe its ruins belonged to the lost city of Vilcabamba. After he came upon the site of Machu Picchu close by, he was convinced that this had been the rebel capital. In 1943 Luis Ángel Aragón, himself from Cusco, made a new exploration of the ruins at Espíritu Pampa. Since then, Espíritu Pampa has…

THE CREW OF George Nares’s 1875-76 polar expedition used ice saws for carving out docks for their two ships. Even so, the pack ice could quickly entrap the vessels, as an Alert crew member, Albert Hastings Markham, recorded: “A large floe-berg pressed violently against the vessel lifting the stern out of the water to a height of about five feet. The noise of the cracking of the beams and the groaning of the timbers was a sound that once heard will never be forgotten.”…

KUBLAI KHAN, LORD OF XANADU GRANDSON OF GENGHIS, Kublai, the fifth great khan, ruled the colossal Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever known, from Xanadu (Shangdu), his most famous capital city. During the 13th century, his fierce warriors completed the conquest of China, defeating the Song dynasty, and further expanded the realm until it stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea, encompassing more than nine million square miles and holding roughly 110 million people. Warriors on Wheels Rival to the rulers of Egypt, the Hittites relied on swift chariots to build an empire in what is now Turkey. Thousands of chariots would clash when the two foes met at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 b.c., one of history’s largest chariot battles. Egypt’s…

On January 16, 1920, brewing and selling alcoholic beverages became illegal in the United States as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution went into effect. This “noble experiment,” as described by its backers, was celebrated by temperance advocates across the country. Before a crowd of 10,000 people, popular evangelist Billy Sunday (a former baseball player) said: “Tonight, one minute after midnight, a new nation will be born … An era of clear ideas and good manners begins. The slums will soon be a thing of the past. Prisons and reformatories will be emptied; we will transform them into attics and factories. Again, all men will walk straight, all women will smile, all children will laugh. The gates of hell have closed forever.” Prohibition would last for more than a decade,…

When dawn broke one summer morning in 490 b.c., Greek troops stood ready for battle on the coastal plain near Marathon, northeast of Athens. They awaited the charge of their mighty enemy: the powerful hosts of Persia, led by Darius the Great. His relentless expansion was headed westward, toward the heart of the ancient Greek world, a society he aimed to subjugate. The Battle of Marathon marked a turning point in the wars between Greece and Persia. Prior to this defeat, the Persian Empire seemed unbeatable. Other leaders and other forces had fallen before its might, but the Battle of Marathon revealed that Persia, too, had weaknesses. The victory became a bright, shining moment in the history of Athens. It inspired numerous legends and tales, including one in which the…

When they clashed, Persian and Greek forces used different materials for their protection. A Greek hoplite carried 1 a large shield, called a hoplon (from which hoplites got their name), which was made of wood and coated with bronze. They also wore 2 bronze greaves to protect their legs. Most donned 3 Corinthian-style helmets, but some might have worn 4 Attic helmets. The Persian troops were highly organized. One officer, a dathapati, led a unit of 10 men, a dathaba. An officer stood before his men and protected them with 5 a straba, a large, lightweight shield made of reeds and leather. Some Persian soldiers wore 6 padded linen breastplates, whereas others preferred 7 cuirasses made of metal strips fixed to leather. Although armed with short swords and spears, bows…

224 Ardashir I defeats the last Parthian king, and becomes the first ruler of the Sassanian dynasty, reestablishing Persian might. 260 Shapur I captures the Roman emperor Valerian. His triumphs against Rome are matched in the east, where Sassanian control extends into modern-day Pakistan. 380 As Christianity becomes the state religion of the Roman Empire, the Sassanians begin Christian persecution. 531-579 Khosrow I’s reign sees major reforms in administration. Gondishapur becomes a major center of knowledge in the known world. 628 The murder of Khosrow II signals a period of Sassanian decline, as warfare against the Byzantine Empire has weakened the state. 651 Fifteen years after Arabs take the Sassanian capital of Ctesiphon, the last Sassanian king, Yazdegerd III, is killed in Merv.…

THE ANGLO-FRENCH DYNASTY of the Normans and Plantagenets attempted to ground its power in a common mythology: the Arthurian legends. Between 1135 and 1137, William of Malmesbury published them as the De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiae (On the Antiquity of Glastonbury). Another volume, Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1136 also chronicled the Arthurian legends and inspired the 1155 Roman de Brut by Wace. This work, dedicated to Eleanor of Aquitaine, describes the Round Table. A place of worship was built for Arthur: Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, where in 1191 the “graves” of Arthur and Guinevere were discovered and which was identified with the legendary land of Avalon.…

BRITISH EXPLORER EDWARD INGLEFIELD captained the Isabel in 1852 into Smith Sound, the channel separating the islands of Greenland and Ellesmere (Canada) which until then had been believed impassable. By the time the ice forced him to turn around at 78° north latitude, he had pushed farther into the strait than anyone before him and returned to report on a route that would be used by other polar explorers.…

Crash Landing In 1897 three Swedes set out for the pole in a hot-air balloon. Decades later in 1930 their frozen bodies were found next to a camera, whose photographs revealed that they survived the crash and died searching for a way home. Inching Closer In March 1900, after several false starts, and with depleted rations, Umberto Cagni set out to reach the pole by sledge. On April 24, with the temperature at minus 51°C, Cagni decided to turn back. Despite the failure, he had beaten the record of Nansen by 21 miles.…

In the 1860s peasants from the town of Bratsi, in the Greek region of Boeotia, north of Athens were plowing the soil when they unearthed an ancient grave, and then another and another. Although there were no lavish grave goods to be found, the burial sites did harbor a magnificent treasure of a different kind. As they dug, the peasants began to unearth beautifully made terracotta figurines. The fascinating little statues, mainly of female figures between three and nine inches tall, were everywhere. Eventually hundreds would be collected. The accidental archaeologists offered the pieces for sale to anyone they met and news of the extraordinary find soon spread, attracting treasure hunters. Grimadha, near the location of the ancient city-state of Tanagra, was a popular target for looters. It is estimated…

SIGNS THAT the menhirs at Veyre-Monton had, at some later stage in their history, been knocked down, remind archaeologists of similar destruction at other megalithic sites in France. Some of the menhirs discovered at Belz, on the Brittany peninsula in northwest France, are believed by archaeologists to have been deliberately toppled sometime in the late Neolithic. The practice is termed “neolithic iconoclasm” by scholars. Although sites were disturbed to repurpose stone for newer monuments, in other cases there may have been more destructive intentions. Vandalizing a monument, or making it invisible in the landscape, may have been a way of expressing a local change of beliefs. One of the most dramatic of all toppled menhirs is the Grand Menhir Brisé, also in Brittany. Some 64 feet long, it was believed…

499 B.C. Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor rise up against Persia. Athens sends ships to their aid, which will provoke King Darius I to seek revenge. 494 B.C. Following their victory at the naval Battle of Lade, the Persians destroy Miletus, the stronghold of Ionian resistance against Darius. 492 B.C. Darius sends an expeditionary force to conquer Greece, but the Persian fleet is wrecked in a storm. Summer 490 B.C. A Persian force crosses the Aegean, takes Eretria, and lands at Marathon. An Athenian-Plataean alliance forms to fight them there. September 490 B.C. After the Greeks crush the Persians at Marathon, they march back to Athens to successfully deter the Persians from attacking it.…

Messengers play a big part in the legends of Marathon, but they appear at different parts in the story. One account of a messenger first comes from Herodotus’s Histories, in which a runner, Pheidippides, is dispatched from Athens to Sparta to plead for reinforcements before the battle takes place. He successfully delivers his message in Sparta the next day—an astonishing feat, given that he would have had to run 155 miles. In the more familiar, modern version, a herald runs the more plausible 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to deliver news of victory. He arrives, exclaiming “Joy, we win!” before dying of exhaustion. This tale has its roots in the writings of later Greco-Roman authors such as Plutarch, and inspired the creation of the 26-mile race, known as a…

MANCO INCA, leader of the rebel state of Vilcabamba, offered asylum to seven Spaniards aligned with the faction who killed Francisco Pizarro in 1541 and were fleeing to avoid revenge from Pizarro’s followers. Manco welcomed them, giving them food and entertainment. One day, a mestizo (person of mixed Inca and Spanish race) arrived from Cusco with a message for Manco’s guests: an offer of Spanish clemency on condition that they murder Manco. One of the maids heard of the plot and went to warn the Inca chiefs. But the chiefs ignored her and were deceived by the mestizo into sending their soldiers away to attack Cusco, believing it undefended. Then the Spaniards stabbed Manco with weapons concealed in their boots. Manco’s 10-year-old son witnessed his father’s assassination and narrowly escaped…

The phrase “on top of the world” carries ebullience and enthusiasm, as if nothing could be better than standing at 90° north latitude. In reality, Earth’s remote North Pole is frigid and barren, an inhospitable region of ice and snow. Finding this last “undiscovered” place became an obsession for European and American explorers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Few people lived near the North Pole. A small Inuit community had settled the closest, but for the most part the region remained isolated from the rest of the world for centuries. A few intrepid explorers—John Cabot, Martin Frobisher, Henry Hudson, and James Cook—tried to navigate the region in search of the Northwest Passage, a sea route believed to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the waters above North America.…

Caught in Ice In August 1881 the 32-man crew commanded by G. W. De Long abandoned their ship Jeannette, which had been trapped in ice for nearly two years. Only 13 of them would survive the months-long journey over ice and frigid waters to Siberia. Longing for Green The Austro-Hungarian crew of the Tegetthoff was locked in ice for a year and endured 109 days without sun before landing at an archipelago they named Franz Josef Land in August 1873. Its scant vegetation seemed a “paradise.”…