Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2022 i National Geographic History

For late 19th-century North Americans and Europeans, a fork—and the ability to use it with ease—was a reflection of good taste. A display of such tableware could reveal much about someone’s social status, as the wealthy took great care to procure different types of forks for everything from salad to pastry. A special fork was even invented with which to eat ice cream: a spork-like instrument in the form of a spoon with three or four tines. The centrality of the fork in Victorianera dining etiquette would, however, have surprised earlier generations. It was, in fact, a newcomer to the utensil drawer, having only won widespread use in Europe by the close of the 18th century, and in America as late as the mid-1800s. Until then, people of all classes…

AT THERMOPYLAE, King Leonidas authorized two Spartan soldiers to withdraw from combat because of illness. Eurytus, decided to stay, and was killed in battle. The other, Aristodemus, went home, but when he reached Sparta, he was shunned, marginalized, and deprived of his civic rights. According to Herodotus, “no Spartan would give him fire, nor speak with him; and they called him for disgrace, Aristodemus the coward.” XENOPHON writing in the early fourth century B.C., described how perceived cowards in Sparta were not allowed to share a table, were excluded from games at the gym, and were ignored during choric dances. A coward would have to give up his seat even to a younger man, and no woman would marry him. “[I] am not surprised if in Sparta they deem death…

When exquisite bronze figures began flooding the antiquities market in the late 1920s, nobody knew much about them. Artworks of people and animals, embossed bronze cups, and delicate pins thrilled dealers, who were awed by their beauty. Inquiries were made about their origins, but answers were somewhat vague. Rather than name a specific settlement or civilization, dealers would only indicate a region in the Zagros Mountains: Luristan (located in western Iran and known today as Lorestan). The deluge of Luristan bronzes began in fall 1928 in the sleepy town of Harsin, some 20 miles east of Kermanshah. A local farmer uncovered several beautiful bronze objects in his fields and sold them. Word of his finds spread, and soon the town filled with dealers who bought these works of art and…

ROMAN ERA Two-pronged forks are used in kitchens to carve or lift meats from a cauldron or fire but are not used in dining. 1000s A Byzantine princess travels to Venice to wed and brings her own set of forks, which causes a scandal. 1533 After Italians embrace the fork, Catherine de Médicis tries (and fails) to promote it in France after marrying future King Henry II. 1611 English travel writer Thomas Coryate adopts the fork after a visit to Italy, but back home the practice is seen as pretentious. 1633 John Winthrop of Massachusetts becomes one of the first American colonists to use a fork, then largely confined to the wealthy. 1850 Inspired by Queen Victoria, who regards using forks as more refined, the utensil becomes popular with the…

THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC began some 40,000 years ago, soon after the arrival of modern humans in Europe. They left behind traces of their culture through cave paintings and portable art in the form of small figurines, including the Venus statuettes. The oldest Venus figurine yet found, the Hohle Fels Venus is around 35,000 years old, predating by around 3,000 years the oldest cave paintings made by modern humans in Europe at Chauvet. The practice of sculpting female statuettes endured during the last ice age, whose extreme cold marked the Gravettian and Solutrean cultures. As the climate slowly warmed during the Magdalenian period, fine figurine carvings were created in parallel with cave art at Lascaux (France) and Altamira (Spain). Archaeologists suspect that much Paleolithic art still lies hidden in asyet-unknown sites,…

More than a thousand years ago in what is now Peru, the site of El Castillo de Huarmey was among the land’s most sacred places; University of Warsaw archaeologist Miłosz Giersz was sure of it. Plenty of people had warned Giersz that excavating there would be difficult and almost certainly a waste of time and money. Looters had already been tunneling into the massive hill, searching for ancient tombs and treasure. Located on the coast, a fourhour drive north of Lima, what was once a holy place was pitted with holes, looking more like a moonscape littered with ancient human bones, and strewn with modern trash. Looking past the debris, Giersz was entranced by the bits of textiles and broken pottery he saw dotting the slopes. They came from Peru’s…

The Taj Mahal is not only the most iconic symbol of India’s Mughal emperors but one of the best-known works of art and architecture in the world. It is a lavish mausoleum commissioned by Emperor Shah Jahan, the fifth ruler of the great Mughal dynasty, to house the body of his beloved Mumtaz Mahal, who died while giving birth to their 14th child. The Mughals were a Muslim dynasty of Mongol origin whose founder, Babur, descended from Genghis Khan. “Mughal” is derived from the Persian for Mongol and the source of the English word“mogul.” From 1526 to 1857, the Mughals ruled an empire that, at its peak in the late 1600s, was the largest and wealthiest on Earth. Mughal lands once extended from present-day Iran and Afghanistan to Pakistan and…

Cobras, cats, and vultures are among the most popular animals depicted in Egyptian art, but the humble catfish once reigned supreme in the iconography of the civilization by the Nile. Common to every continent except Antarctica, catfish are the most diverse group of fish on earth. The 2,000 to 3,000 species have some remarkable characteristics, so it is little wonder they attracted the attention of the Egyptians, one of the most animal-conscious ancient cultures. Named for its feline-like whiskers, called barbels, a catfish has finely honed senses that allow it to survive and find food in murky, muddy waters. One family of catfish has a respiratory system that allows it to use atmospheric oxygen. This is most spectacularly employed by the walking catfish (Clarias batrachus), familiar today as an invasive…

The leading woman of all the nobles, great in the palace, perfect of appearance, beautiful in the double plume, the mistress of joy who is united with favour, whose voice people rejoice to hear, great wife of the king, his beloved, the great mistress of the two lands—Neferneferuaten, Nefertiti, granted life for ever, and for eternity!” Engraved on a stela found at Amarna, Egypt, this glowing passage describes Nefertiti, the great royal wife of Amenhotep IV—better known by the name he adopted later in life—Akhenaten. Her husband radically changed Egypt, transforming its polytheistic state religion to the worship of one deity, the solar disk Aten. He also moved the Egyptian capital to a new city he built named Akhetaten, meaning“horizon of the god Aten.” Akhenaten’s revolution was short-lived: Egypt would…

In early June of 480 B.C., a mighty Persian army crossed the Dardanelles strait on two pontoon bridges to continue a brutal advance into Greece. Led by the great king Xerxes, the troops were bound for Thermopylae, a narrow mountain pass named for the area’s hot sulfur springs (Thermopylae means“hot gates”). Seated on the east coast of Greece, between the Malian Gulf and the Kallidromo massif, some 85 miles (136 km) northwest of Athens, it is a rugged, craggy landscape of thick brush, thorny shrubs, and steep hillsides, where severe weather—torrential downpours and scorching heat—is the norm. The dramatically inhospitable four-milelong pass—the quickest and easiest way to advance from the plains of Thessaly into central Greece—would soon be the site of a legendary battle, an epic, three-day episode that has…

According to legend, the emperor Shah Jahan promised his wife that he would build a tomb for her to match her beauty. The resulting mausoleum, created in white marble, is a marvel of grace and balance, in which all the elements contribute to the symmetry of the whole.…