Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2023 i National Geographic History

Intelligence, love, and beauty seemed to be the happy lot of the princess of Belgium. She had managed to avoid the loveless marriages that were often the fate of royalty: Her betrothal at age 17 to Maximilian, brother of the Austrian emperor, was as much for love as for political alliances. The young bride was wed to a man with whom she was physically and intellectually compatible. The two would travel to North America, where they became Emperor and Empress of Mexico. Born Marie-Charlotte, the new empress became better known as Carlota. Personal happiness, however, could not reckon with the turbulent geopolitics of the mid-19th century. In 1864, spurred by a lifelong quest to find a meaningful role, Carlota and her husband embarked on a catastrophic adventure to rule Mexico.…

Ancient Egyptians worshipped many gods and goddesses that took on animal forms, including cats, birds—even crocodiles. The falcon-headed god Horus depicted the divine pharaoh and the sun. Bast (or Bastet) was a cat goddess that protected homes from evil spirits. Sekhmet was the leonine goddess of war. The list goes on. But one was different. Apis the bull was not considered a god on Earth in the same manner as other gods and goddesses. Instead of providing a mere link to the deity, the Apis bull hosted the god himself. He was the divine incarnation, or herald, of Ptah. The creator-god of Memphis, ancient Egypt’s capital city, Ptah conceived the world and brought it into being. (He eventually was fused with Sokar and Osiris to form a composite funerary deity,…

ONE SUMMER NIGHT IN 1936, the Johansson children went to harvest peat in Bocksten Bog in Varberg, Sweden. The brother and sister were shocked to discover bones in the ground and summoned their father. He notified the police, who then summoned local experts, including Albert Sandklef, the director of Varberg Museum. Together they determined the body was not a recent victim of foul play; it had been there for centuries. They could see that much of the bones still lay below the earth, but pieces of cloth and wooden stakes were visible aboveground. The body and clothing were carefully excavated from the site, preserved, and studied. Now known as the Bocksten Man, his death in the mid-14th century has revealed much about life then. Bocksten Man was most likely murdered:…

The achievements of Leonardo da Vinci elevate him to the realm of genius. Gazing upon his creations, such as “The Last Supper” or the “Mona Lisa,” it is difficult to imagine the mortal man who created these eternal masterpieces. Reading about his lifelong devotion to medicine, science, and engineering can make him feel even more remote. Connecting to the man behind the genius can feel impossible. Leafing through Leonardo’s journals helps bridge the gap. He left behind thousands of loose manuscript pages, a rich trove of writings and sketches. These works reveal not only his brilliance—his scientific thoughts and sublime sketches—but also his ordinary quirks, like his doodles in the margins or his unusual way of writing. The words are mirror-written, with the letters back to front and crossing the…

Pompeo Leoni, the Spanish collector who acquired Leonardo’s manuscripts from Francesco Melzi, compiled a vast number of drawings by the Florentine artist. Known as the Codex Atlanticus, it is preserved today in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan. The codex is enormous and contains more than a thousand folios. The pages, arranged on an aesthetic rather than thematic basis, reflect Leonardo’s many different interests at all stages of his career. They contain geometry and algebra, musical instruments, machines, flying devices, civic engineering projects (such as diverting the course of the Arno River), mechanical plans, urban planning, and anatomical drawings. Of great interest are cryptic notes by Leonardo about his own life. On one folio there is the famous reference to Leonardo’s childhood memory of a red bird that flew above his…

In the high mountain desert of the San Juan Basin, ancestral Puebloans built marvels: the great houses of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Built between A.D. 850 and 1200, these sandstone and mud megastructures reached as high as five stories and contained as many as 700 rooms. They were the largest apartment buildings in North America until the 19th century. But historians have puzzled over how the ancient peoples acquired more than 200,000 timbers to build these houses in a treeless desert. The beams come from pine, spruce, and fir trees that grew in forested zones more than 50 miles from Chaco Canyon. The heaviest load-bearing beams are ponderosa pine and measure some eight to 10 inches across and 15 feet long. Each one weighs several hundred pounds. So, how did…

When a poor person’s body was laid to rest in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a good chance it had no rest at all. Rather than settling into an eternal sleep beneath the earth, their bodies were dug up and carried away to the operating theaters of medical schools and colleges. There they were dissected by surgical students learning anatomy and practicing operations they would later perform on living patients. Digging up the dead could ruin a reputation, but there were tradespeople who specialized in providing cadavers for doctors in training. They went by many names: body snatchers, grave robbers, resurrectionists. Although their efforts may have advanced the understanding of the human body, their work largely targeted the indigent, whose mortal remains were violated when the…

Wise old men with magical powers and sometimes long, hoary beards are the archetypal wizards. These mystical men possess magical powers that can be used for good—or evil. And literature is full of them: Prospero, the central character in Shakespeare’s Tempest, is the exiled duke of Milan who obtains magical powers when marooned on an island. The central character of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and the 1939 film based upon it), reigns as the Emerald City’s mysterious, magical ruler. The pipe-smoking Gandalf the Grey is a benevolent and powerful adviser in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. And, of course, there’s the benevolent Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of the wizarding school, Hogwarts, in the Harry Potter books, who uses his powers for the greater good.…

Few examples of Leonardo’s earliest sketches and notes still exist, but the ones that survive reveal the thoughts and observations of the time. These loose sheets are from his first decade in Florence, starting in 1472. Sketched when he was 21, Leonardo’s first drawing (above) is a view of the Arno, the river that runs through Florence. Dated August 5, 1473, the landscape demonstrates his full mastery of perspective. In the upper left corner, Leonardo’s notes flow across the page from right to left; this “backward” writing habit would continue throughout his life. Another drawing (left) captures a current event from this time in Florence: a criminal’s execution. On a tiny piece of paper is the hanging of Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, who participated in a 1478 assassination attempt on Lorenzo…

The Codex Windsor is a collection of 600 folios, originally bound by Pompeo Leoni but today unbound. Acquired by King Charles I in 1630, it is held in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle in England. The codex contains the most complete series of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings, compiled by Leoni from several notebooks. The drawings include studies of human joints—how the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones fit and move together (right). One folio shows a human fetus curled up inside the womb (left), one of history’s first such detailed depictions. The Codex Windsor is also notable for containing a large part of the studies of horse anatomy that Leonardo carried out in preparation for the equestrian monument commissioned by Ludovico Sforza. In keeping with his multifaceted interests, Leonardo did not…

OWING TO THE HIGH PRICE OF PAPER in the 15th century, Leonardo took advantage of every sheet of paper that came his way, filling each one with annotations on a wide variety of subjects. A good example is a sheet from the Codex Windsor, dated around 1490, when the artist was living in Milan. Leonardo used it for doodling, reflecting whatever occupied his mind at each moment. Many of the studies are exercises in art and drawing: (a) A portrait of an old man, as well as two sketches of sculptures: (b) an equestrian—the subject is probably Duke Ludovico Sforza—and (c) a warrior. A minuscule drawing of (d) a bell tower illustrates Leonardo’s interest in architecture. Other drawings refer to the natural world. Several depict plants: (e) a lily, (f)…

AFTER READING about Chaco Canyon, University of Colorado physiologist Rodger Kram thought tumplines might be the answer to the mystery of the canyon’s timbers. After running his experiments with teammate James Wilson, Kram concluded it would take roughly four days to transport one timber to Chaco from the Chuska Mountains, a source of lumber to the west. Wilson said the two plan to repeat the challenge in the future, transporting the heavy log for the full distance. Critical to the success of the attempt will be walking in step with a partner. “Moving as a unit and utilizing effective communication was critical to a successful trek,” Wilson said.…

Marshes, mires, and swamps are murky, mysterious places found across northern Europe. A space between two worlds, a bog occurs where dry land and a body of water intersect, creating a soft, spongy terrain that is neither wholly liquid nor solid. This liminal quality may have led the early peoples of northern Europe to associate bogs with the supernatural. They were portals to other worlds, where gods and restless spirits dwelled. In more recent times, peat bogs are seen as valuable natural resources, yet they’ve retained their mystical qualities thanks to the thousands of human bodies that have emerged from their depths. Europe’s bog bodies have fascinated people since one was first documented in 1640 in Holstein, Germany. Since then, some 2,000 more bodies have emerged in the wetlands of…

WORKERS SUDDENLY HALTED harvesting peat in Windeby, a small town in northern Germany, when a human body emerged in 1952. They alerted local archaeologists, who identified the body as a young girl because of its slight stature and delicate features. The head appeared to be shorn, a woven band covered the eyes, and a fur cloak lay around the shoulders. To help explain the body’s presence in the bog, scholars looked to the writings of first-century A.D. Roman historian Tacitus and his descriptions of how Germanic peoples executed transgressors and disposed of them in bogs. A theory formed that Windeby Girl, as she came to be called, was an adulteress. To punish her, her people shaved her head, blindfolded her, and drowned her. A male body was later discovered nearby…

1. MAGICAL CONCEPTION Demonic forces conspire to make Merlin their agent on Earth. An incubus mates with Merlin’s mother, but she thwarts their plans by having the newborn baptized. The Christian rite protects Merlin from the forces of evil, but he retains his supernatural legacy, including the ability to speak as a baby, the gift of prophecy, and the power to shape-shift. 2. DEATH OF A TYRANT The usurper King Vortigern tries to build a tower, but it will not stand. A seven-year-old Merlin tells the king that underneath the tower, there are two fighting dragons, each signifying a side in a coming conflict between Vortigern and the rightful heirs, the brothers Pendragon and Uther. Vortigern finishes the tower, only to perish there after the brothers set it on fire.…

In Milan, Leonardo created what is now known as the Paris B Codex. This volume is the oldest of the 12 volumes taken by Napoleon Bonaparte in the late 1700s and deposited in the Library of the Institute of France in Paris. Leonardo had a lifelong fascination with flight, inspired by observations of birds. In 1505 he wrote an entire Codex on the Flight of Birds. Scholars estimate that he made 500 sketches and wrote as many as 35,000 words on the subject across his whole career. The Paris B Codex contains two of Leonardo’s most celebrated designs for flying machines (above and opposite). Many of his famous designs were ornithopters, air-craft that fly by flapping their wings like birds and bats. Another early inspiration was likely a sketch by…

Stretching some 300 miles along the Peruvian coast, the Chimú Empire may be the greatest empire that few people have heard of. The empire dominated this South American region for about 500 years. At its heart was the great city of Chan Chan. A UNESCO World Heritage site today, Chan Chan was once one of the largest cities in the Americas. It spanned an area of nearly 5,000 acres and held nine palaces, each one built for a different ruler. The massive royal complexes had residential areas, audience halls, kitchens, plazas for feasts and ceremonies, warehouses for storage, pools, and workshops, almost as if they were each a small city. There were twisting corridors connecting every area, often decorated with artwork of birds, fish, and the gods. When a ruler…