Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2022 i National Geographic History

Book recommendations are often in high demand during the summer months, so it is with great pleasure that I’m making my first one for History magazine: the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Written in the waning months of his life, the book was a publishing sensation in 1885; the first printing quickly sold out—all 300,000 copies—and the work has never been out of print since then. Financial hardship thrust Grant’s writing career upon him when the “rascality of a business partner” swindled him out of his savings in 1884. Broke and needing money, Grant began writing short essays on major Civil War battles for The Century. He developed a taste for writing through these assignments and honed his writing style: direct, honest, earnest, and humble. I had the privilege to…

Mooring at the southern Spanish port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, the Victoria’s hull was so rotten that it could only stay afloat by continually operating the pumps. Three years before, the ship had set out from port as part of a proud, five-ship flotilla under the command of captain-general Ferdinand Magellan. Since then, of the four other ships, three were lost and one had deserted. Of the 250 men that had formed the flotilla’s original crew, only 18 returned that September day. The man who had captained these survivors on their long journey home, however, was not Magellan—killed in the Philippines more than a year before—but a Basque seaman named Juan Sebastián Elcano. By steering the frail Victoria across the Indian Ocean and around Africa’s Cape…

Masks have been used by many of the world’s cultures, from Asia to Africa, for many purposes, from the holy to the medical to the mundane. At times, mask wearing has been embraced as fashionable, much like in 16th-century Europe when wealthy women covered their faces and shielded their complexions from prying eyes and the hot sun. At this time in history, pale skin was a sign of high status; sun-kissed skin suggested not health and vitality as it does now, but rather the necessity and drudgery of working outside. In order to achieve the lightest complexion, untouched by freckles and sunburn, upper-class women started wearing facial coverings to shield their faces from sun, wind, and dust. The appearance of smooth, pale skin was often further exaggerated with heavy white…

The Combat Agate is an engraved gem sealstone found among the grave goods of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos. A masterpiece in miniature, it depicts a climactic moment in a battle between two men as a third lies fallen at their feet. The level of detail achieved by the artist, believed to be a Minoan-era craftsman in Crete, would be remarkable in any era, but it is exquisite for the Late Bronze Age. The poses of the figures resemble similar objects found at Mycenae and may have represented a prototype of an ideal hero. When the agate was first uncovered, it attracted little notice as it was encrusted with lime. Only after cleaning and careful examination was a work of art revealed that would dazzle archaeologists.…

THE FIRST EXCAVATIONS of Port Royal were reported by National Geographic magazine in February 1960 with Kodachromes taken by senior photographer Luis Marden. Staff cartographers created a street map of the sunken town as part of the magazine’s coverage, showing which parts of it had sunk beneath the waters after the 1692 earthquake. The map also shows how time had further shaped the coastline itself, as the shoreline in 1960 had changed since the late 17th century. It was easy to envision the once bustling pirate haven whose streets were lined with markets, taverns, and other businesses all catering to privateers and their crews. The map also highlights the locations where artifacts were found on the seafloor: The pocket watches, pipes, and wine bottles all revealed different aspects of life…

To deepen the shipping channel of Georgia’s Savannah River, contractors for the Army Corps of Engineers have been hauling up not only 24 million cubic yards of sand and clay but also something even more impressive: artifacts from the Revolutionary War. To date, as many as 19 cannons have been recovered. The weapons appear to have come from British Navy ships involved in the war. The redcoats captured the port of Savannah in 1778. A year later, the British Navy scuttled the H.M.S. Savannah and H.M.S. Venus to create a blockage and prevent French ships from aiding the colonists. Their tactic succeeded, and the British were able to hold Savannah until July 1782. The cannons were not the only recovered objects. Parts of a ship’s bell, ammunition (including cannonballs and…

1 April 27, 1521 Having crossed the Pacific, Ferdinand Magellan is killed by residents of Mactan. The expedition reaches the Moluccas in November. J.S. Elcano and the crew of the Victoria will begin the return to Spain in the last days of 1521. 2 Feb. 11, 1522 Elcano passes Timor. From here, he and his crew set out to become the first Europeans to cross the Indian Ocean at its widest extent. 3 March & April 1522 “The ship leaked [and] we suffered cold. We had nothing but rice and water to consume, all the meat having putrified.”—Antonio Pigafetta 4 May 1522 Rejecting calls from his crew to surrender to the Portuguese in Mozambique, Elcano captains his starving, sick crew through fierce storms around the Cape of Good Hope. 5 Sept.…

rom inscriptions on palace walls and incisions in cuneiform tablets, he was styled“Great King, the Mighty King, King of Assyria, King of Sumer and Akkad, the King of the World.” Those titles might seem exaggerated today, but for his time, they just might have been warranted. For almost 40 years, Ashurbanipal reigned over the Assyrian Empire and ruled over the largest kingdom of its time—and perhaps the greatest up to the seventh century b.c. When trying to discuss Ashurbanipal’s greatness as a world leader, understanding what his contemporaries, the Assyrians, meant by “world” is vital. Their world was Mesopotamia, but Assyria’s holdings extended farther than that—from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and from Egypt to the mountains of southeastern Turkey. The Assyrians were certainly aware that beyond lay other…

On June 30, 1236, King Ferdinand III of Castile entered the city of Córdoba, putting an end to the fivemonth siege that his troops had staged around the square. The Spanish Reconquista of Islamic Andalusia was advancing, and Córdoba, capital of the Umayyad caliphate in the 10th century, was the latest to fall. It had once been the brightest and most populous city in Al Andalus. It was also home to one of the world’s marvels of architecture: the Aljama Mosque. A day before the king entered Córdoba, after the Muslims had already abandoned it, a group of Castilians left the place where they were encamped, entered the walled city through the Algeciras Gate, and went to the Great Mosque. They placed a cross and a flag of Castile atop…

Pirates did not always find a safe haven in Port Royal, especially in the early 18th century. In 1718 Jamaica’s new governor Nicholas Lawes brought in the English Navy to hunt down pirates operating in Port Royal. Local support for piracy began to wane after the capture and execution of several notorious pirates and their crews, including Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Charles Vane. Rackham, Bonny, and Read were captured in 1720. Rackham and male members of his crew were executed at Gallows Point, but the women’s lives were spared because both were pregnant. Read died in prison (some say during childbirth), but Bonny’s ultimate fate is unknown. After his conviction, Vane was hanged in 1721. To deter pirates, both the corpses of Rackham and Vane were…

WHENTHE FIRST cannons were dredged from the Savannah River in February 2021, archaeologists initially suspected they came from the H.M.S. Rose, a British warship that had been scuttled in the river in 1779. Before it sank, the Rose had been a scourge against the colonists, prompting the formation of the Continental Navy, the forerunner to the U.S. Navy. Further research, however, revealed that the Rose’s wreckage was located too far from where the cannon haul was found. Records indicate, too, that the Rose’s 20 guns were removed before it sank. The Rose’s fame lived on after its watery burial: Based on British Admiralty drawings, a replica of the Rose was built in 1970, and later converted to star as the H.M.S. Surprise in Master and Commander: The Far Side of…

In the late 1400s mapmaking in Europe was flourishing. Many maps were practical, produced for navigating expanding trade routes, but a few notable creations contained more than just geography. These reflected cultural, social, and political concerns of the time. One of the most notable maps was produced in the 1530s by the Austrian scholar and courtier Johannes Putsch, whose most famous work personified Europe as a crowned and gowned queen holding an orb and scepter. Putsch’s original map, a somewhat crude woodcut, became known by a variety of titles, including“Europa regina” (“Queen Europe”). The progression from the queen’s head to foot moves from west to east, Putsch labeling each region with a Latin name: Hispania, the Iberian Peninsula in the west, is the figure’s head, and eastern regions of Bulgaria…

An olive grove in southern Greece was the scene of a spectacular discovery in May 2015 when archaeologists discovered the tomb of a man they dubbed the “Griffin Warrior.” Crammed with artifacts, the grave offers up new insights into the origins of the Mycenaean culture whose mythical heroes starred in the Trojan War. The Griffin Warrior’s tomb is located near Pylos in the Peloponnesian peninsula in southern Greece. The area had been well excavated in the 20th century, leading many to believe there was little left to discover. When the intact warrior’s tomb was uncovered in 2015, experts were surprised and delighted with the discovery. It surely promised to deliver new insights into ancient Greece. Facts and Fictions A land of mountains and rugged coasts, the Peloponnese is a place…

Flying a reconnaissance mission in 1935 over the Khuzestan region in southwestern Iran, oil prospectors noted an odd looking hill on the landscape. The Iranian Archaeological Service was notified of the sighting. They in turn contacted the French archaeological delegation to Iran, which was excavating at nearby Susa, the ancient capital of the Elamite kingdom. When French archaeologists led by Roland de Mecquenem inspected the mound, they found it contained the ruins of a city. Later studies would reveal a ziggurat at its heart, the largest outside of Mesopotamia. City of Elam Local people knew the hill as Chogha Zanbil, meaning “basket-shaped mound.” It became the official name for the site whose excavation began in 1936, under the direction of Mecquenem. The French team identified the mound as ancient Dur…