Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2020 i National Geographic History

Four hundred years ago, the Mayflower landed in North America and delivered to its shores a group of English colonists known as the Pilgrims. They described the land as a “hideous, desolate wilderness full of beasts and wild men.” This description of a place devoid of progress came to be widely accepted, but it was wrong. This so-called New World was actually quite old and bursting with civilizations. Native Americans had been living in what is now the northeastern United States for centuries before Europeans arrived. They developed rich, sophisticated cultures and intense rivalries with each other, but their history prior to the 1600s remains unfamiliar ground to most, while the colonists’ perspective is still well-trod territory. Delving into the life of the Wampanoag leader Ousamequin, commonly known as Massasoit,…

In the 1960s British archaeologist Richard Atkinson sketched out a multistage process through which Stonehenge evolved from a circular earthwork to the complex construction of rings of massive standing stones. Salisbury Plain was clearly regarded as a sacred space centuries before Stonehenge was built; postholes dating to around 8000 b.c. have been found nearby. On the site of Stonehenge itself, a circular earth structure surrounded by a moat was begun just before 3000 b.c. Archaeologists used carbon-14 analyses of tools, antler picks and cow-bone shovels, found in and around the moat to determine the approximate dates. In the second stage, the structures that form the stone rings were built. The third phase, which lasted many centuries, saw new stones placed, and the building of the Avenue that linked Stonehenge and…

The 20th-century astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins once described Stonehenge as a “Neolithic computer,” with its massive stones deliberately placed to coordinate with heavenly events. The most famous solar alignment occurs on the solstices in June and December. Archaeologists believe that the Stonehenge complex was more than just a calendar and probably served several purposes over the years, including religious rites surrounding life and death. The Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP) theorizes that Stonehenge served, among other things, as a center for ancestor worship, supported by the presence of cremated individuals. The SRP also explored the symbolic links between the massive stone rings and a similar wooden structure at Durrington Walls. The stone rings stood for the domain of the dead, and the wooden for that of the living, with the Avenue…

KNOWN TO AMERICANS AS “THE PILGRIMS,” many of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower were reformed Protestants, known as Separatists, who left their homeland when they broke with the Church of England. Under the only legal form of Christianity in the country, power flowed down from the king, through the archbishops and bishops he appointed, and then to the ministers they appointed. All Englishmen and Englishwomen belonged to the church regardless of their religiosity or conduct (except for the most egregious sinners). To Separatists, the Church of England was not a true church. THE SEPARATISTS’ FUNDAMENTAL disagreement with the Church of England rested on two principles. First, they believed that every congregation should be completely self-governing and consist only of believers dedicated to participation in a religious community. The congregation…

Failure of a civil service exam led to one of the most important political events in Chinese history: the Taiping Rebellion. This social and spiritual upheaval of the mid-19th century was led by Hong Xiuquan, who was born in 1814 in the Guangdong Province of China. Hong’s academic struggles put him on the path to religious zealotry and leadership of peasants of southeastern China in a mass movement that threatened the security of the ruling Qing dynasty and led to the deaths of millions. Hong’s family belonged to a marginalized ethnic group, the Hakka, who had their origins in northern China but migrated to the southern regions in the 13th century. The Hakka retained their own separate culture and never fully blended into the local culture in southern China. Their…

Any city awaiting a visit from a Roman emperor would have thrummed with anticipation, but for Athenians in a.d. 124, the expectation was even greater. Hadrian, whose realm stretched from Britain to Babylonia, had a well-known passion for Greece, which he had cultivated since he was a child. Out of all the cities under Rome’s control, Hadrian selected Athens as his intellectual home, a city on which he would lavish funds on building monuments. Hadrian’s relationship with the city of Plato and Pericles was reciprocated by the Athenians, who came to regard the emperor as their city’s new founder and a deity in his own right. The monuments he built in Athens reflected not just its ancient glory but its modern importance too: Hadrian knew that his exaltation and improvement…

On his arrival in Florence in fall 1504, Raphael knew his future lay in other artists. By observing their techniques and folding them into his style, he could develop his own visual language. He began studying many of the past masters and the great works of his contemporaries, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. The Madonnas painted by Raphael in his Florentine period were influenced by Leonardo’s 1503 work “The Virgin and St. Anne,” which depicts a lamb held by the Christ Child as his mother Mary embraces him. The Virgin is, in turn, seated on the lap of her mother, St. Anne. The figures form a pyramid, and their complex interactions influenced several of Raphael’s Florentine Madonnas, which feature multiple figures, including “La Belle Jardinière” (“The Beautiful Gardener”). In…

Ears of dried colorful Indian corn are popular decorations during American Thanksgiving, but scholars are still debating when southern New England Indians began growing corn, or maize. Until fairly recently, many archaeologists doubted whether they raised corn at all until the 1500s and even the early 1600s. One explanation was that New England Indians took up farming so they could remain on the coast for longer periods of time and await the arrival of European trading vessels filled with coveted goods. More recent evidence of earlier maize cultivation is being found at sites dating as far back as 700 years. A discovery of the remains of a Narragansett village from 1300 to 1500 contained scores of maize kernels as well as corn hills and underground storage pits. It now appears…

North of the small city of Baza in southern Spain lies a pre-Roman necropolis known as Cerro del Santuario. In 1971 it was being excavated and one July morning, under the blaze of the Andalusian sun, a worker’s tool struck something hard. It appeared to be a colored rock, but when archaeologist Francisco José Presedo came to look he saw something intriguing. As more earth was cleared away, the face of a woman emerged, finally seeing the light after nearly 2,500 years underground. Known today as the Lady of Baza, this four-foot-high limestone sculpture depicts a bejeweled woman, richly dressed and seated on a winged throne. Once vividly painted, the work still bears traces of pigments, including a rosy blush on the cheeks and red-and-white squares along the border of…

Massive and mysterious, Stonehenge has stood for 4,500 years on Salisbury Plain. Located some 90 miles southwest of London, England, the world’s most famous prehistoric monument forms just one piece of an intricate complex of ancient sites, many of which in 1986 were designated part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. Today, traffic whizzes by on the nearby A303, but the megaliths’ presence makes it easy to step back thousands of years to a much slower time with much slower transportation. Over the last two decades, archaeologists have made huge strides in piecing together these different elements of the landscape, their relationships to each other, and what they are revealing about the Neolithic people who built them. Armed with astronomical knowledge, engineering skills, and unmovable determination, their creations succeeded in…

The first stones believed to be erected at Stonehenge also traveled the farthest to get there. Archaeologists discovered that the bluestones, each weighing around four tons, were brought to Stonehenge from the Preseli Hills of southwestern Wales—a journey of more than 140 miles by land. The theory was first proposed as early as the 1920s, and geological research undertaken in the 2000s has conclusively pinpointed the exact location of the quarries, called Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin, where the stones were excavated. Scholars are still debating how the bluestones actually got from Wales to the Salisbury Plain. One theory, now discredited, was that glaciers had borne the stones and deposited them in England; most scholars now agree that people transported them. The question of how, and whether by land or…

Of the four Vatican rooms Raphael was commissioned to paint in 1508, the most well known is the Stanza della Segnatura, Pope Julius’s library. It features four great frescoes on the walls, each representing a different theme—law, poetry, theology, and philosophy—to harmoniously connect classic education with the church’s teachings. The most famous fresco, “The School of Athens,” depicts philosophy by showing the great minds of history gathered before Plato and Aristotle. Christian Counterweight Renaissance Christians believed that the great humanist ideas of the past were completed and perfected by Christ, and the fresco Raphael painted directly across from “The School of Athens” displays that theme of theology. “The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament” acts as a mirror and counterweight to philosophy, with similar composition and palette, but different focal points.…

When the Wampanoag Ousamequin, popularly remembered as Massasoit, first visited Plymouth Colony in spring 1621, the English could plainly tell that he was the leader of his people. He marched at the head of 60 armed warriors, described by Pilgrim observers as “all strong, tall, all men in appearance.” He alone wore “a great chain of white… beads” made of drilled, polished shells. His face paint was not black like earlier Wampanoag visitors to Plymouth, but “a sad [or deep] red,” symbolizing blood, life, and war. Later, Ousamequin gave a “great speech” in which he “named at least thirty places” under his governance. The Wampanoag called their community chiefs “sachems,” meaning “he that goes in front.” Ousamequin certainly fit that description, but for the wider Wampanoag people, stretching across what…

English traders brought manufactured goods to North America that the Wampanoag desired, such as metal tools like axes, knives, kettles, awls, scissors, needles, and fishhooks. Certainly the Wampanoag already had their own versions made of wood, stone, and bone, but the metal items were sharper and more durable. They also wanted the Europeans’ translucent glass beads; brightly colored bolts of woolen cloth; shirts, pants, and stockings; mirrors that enabled people to see themselves for the first time without looking into water; and pigments of red, black, and yellow. Europeans were seeking furs, particularly beaver pelts, for manufacture into hats, muffs, and robes. The sailors also desperately wanted fresh food to relieve them from the heavily salted fare of their overseas journey. Later, colonists traded with New England Indians for wampum…

CLASH OF THE CHAMPIONS THE ILIAD CLIMAXES as the Trojan War’s greatest heroes—the Greek demigod Achilles and Trojan prince Hector—fight to the death on the battlefield. Homer’s epic poem focuses on the details of the men’s arms and armor—Hector’s “shining helmet” and the golden gear of Achilles fashioned for him by the gods. Reflected in these colorful details are the martial realities of the Bronze Age, a time when powers rose and fell against the clanging background of new weaponry. NAPOLEON IN EGYPT FRANCE’S 1798 military invasion of Egypt was a failure, ending in defeat by the British three years later, but its contribution to history is incalculable. Along with his soldiers, Napoleon brought to Egypt an army of scholars who measured, sketched, and documented everything they could about ancient…