Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2024 i National Geographic History

When a group of European colonists encountered 13 Indigenous people in northern Mexico in 1536, they expected them to flee. Instead, the people walked toward them. Among the Indigenous group were people who looked European, one of them speaking perfect Spanish. This man—Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca—and three others accompanying him had spent nearly a decade living among Indigenous peoples in the southwestern part of North America. They were survivors of a 600-strong colonial fleet. During their eight-year odyssey, Cabeza de Vaca turned the traditional conquest of the Americas upside down, from one of domination to one of cooperation and exchange. Colonial Expeditions Cabeza de Vaca (“cow’s head” in English) is a startling and unusual surname in Spanish, yet it is entirely fitting for the life and travels of Spaniard…

The San Salvatore Theater, now the Goldoni Theater, was inaugurated in 1622 in Venice. Thirty years after its debut, the owners converted it into an opera house. One of the most spectacular productions staged there was the opera Germanico sul Reno (Germanicus on the Rhine). Opening in 1676, it featured music by Giovanni Legrenzi. Sketches for the opera’s opening scene (opposite) reveal the planned spectacle. If the engraving is true to life, there would have been almost a hundred people involved, many of them extras who appeared to be floating above the stage. Complex infrastructure was built to support them, and special machinery (below) moved all the pieces into the proper places. For the horses drawing the chariot, a special entrance had to be built.…

A top Mount Nemrut lies what some call the eighth wonder of the world: a religious sanctuary of 10 colossal statues surrounding a mound believed to hold the tomb of an ancient king. These spectacular stone structures represent some of the most significant depictions of the religious and funerary practices of an ancient society that drew on both its Greek and Persian heritage. Located in a mountainous region of southeastern Turkey, Commagene was a province of the Hellenistic kingdom of Syria. When Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., the Macedonian army general Seleucus I Nicator took control of the region. About 160 years later, a satrap (governor) called Ptolemaeus proclaimed himself king of Commagene, and the province broke away from the then crumbling Seleucid Empire. A new dynasty of…

One of the best preserved reliefs at Nemrut Dağ is a male lion, whose adornments may contain a hidden message. Nineteen celestial bodies arranged around it match those of the Leo constellation. The lion’s breastplate may represent the crescent moon. Immediately above it is the star Regulus, associated with kingship. The bright, 16-point “stars” above the lion’s back are the planets Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter. These configurations suggest commemoration of a specific event. Some scholars believe it’s a planetary conjunction that took place on July 14, 109 B.C., when Mithridates I was crowned. Others suggest different dates, such as the crowning of Mithridates’s son, Antiochus I, or marking a point in construction of the site.…

Lost cities sunken beneath the waves are not just myths. Many coastal communities were swallowed up by the sea in the ancient world—their streets, homes, and temples all submerged under relentless tides. For millennia legends swirled about these places, but their submarine statues made them impossible to explore in the field. Starting in the 20th century, breakthroughs in oceanography and marine science opened the door to underwater archaeology, allowing scholars to map sites, collect artifacts, and resurface the stories of these drowned cites. Some of humanity’s earliest coastal settlements met their fate because of climate change. Using geomorphological, sedimentological, and paleontological data from the seabed, scientists have established that between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum, sea level was some 425 feet lower than it is…

KNOWN WORLDWIDE for its magnificent theater, the Greek city of Epidaurus was one of the most important trading ports on the Argolid peninsula. In Roman times, various maritime villas were built along the coast here, taking advantage of the fertile land and easy access to the sea. Located outside the cities, these estates were dedicated to agriculture and the production of wine, oil, and garum, the fish sauce so highly prized by the Romans. The residents were hardworking, but their estates had a comfortable, even luxurious, domestic area that included baths and places for entertaining and recreation. In the fifth century A.D., a little more than a century after its construction, one of these villas was flooded by waters from the bay of Agios Vlasios after greater than normal seismic…

ROMAN HISTORIAN TACITUS described the scene when Agrippina, “wild with grief,” arrived at the port of Brindisi with the ashes of her husband and accompanied by her six children—Nero, Drusus, Gaius (the future emperor Caligula), Agrippina the Younger, Julia Drusilla, and the little Julia Livilla. “Not only the harbour and the adjacent shores, but the city walls too and the roofs and every place which commanded the most distant prospect were filled with crowds of mourners, who incessantly asked one another, whether, when she landed, they were to receive her in silence or with some utterance of emotion … When Agrippina descended from the vessel with her two children, clasping the funeral urn, with eyes riveted to the earth, there was one universal groan. You could not distinguish kinsfolk from…

After the debacle of the Battle of Mohi on April 11, 1241, Hungarian king Béla IV fled from the Mongols to seek refuge in Zagreb, a city in modern-day Croatia. There he sent a bishop to Rome with a letter addressed to Pope Gregory IX. In the letter, after Béla recalled how faithful the Hungarians had been to the church, he explained to the pontiff: The sad events that the kingdom of Hungary has suffered from the army of the Tartars and their bestial cruelty. Not long ago, on the feast of the Resurrection, they entered Hungary with a great multitude and, taking no account of age or sex, they put to the sword all those they found, desecrated the churches and holy places with fire, slaughtering, and other atrocities,…

Dominated by the 11th-century White Tower, the Tower of London was originally a Norman fortress built to defend London. It was later expanded into a palace by Henry III and his son Edward I. Before his planned coronation, Prince Edward traveled to the Tower palace in May 1483. New monarchs would reside there until the ceremony. His younger brother joined him in mid-June, but after the princes were declared illegitimate, their uncle became king and they remained in the Tower. According to the contemporary Great Chronicle of London, both boys stayed “within the king’s lodging” to the south of the complex and were seen playing together in the grounds before they vanished. The Tower gained its reputation as a prison during the Tudor dynasty, founded by Richard III’s deposer, Henry…

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” wrote William Shakespeare. For three young women in the early 1300s, being the daughters-in-law of a king could be just as burdensome, especially when the sovereign was the ruthless Philip IV of France. Like many kings before him, Philip IV was focused on the question of his succession. His dynasty, the Capets, had ruled France since the 900s, and to ensure its survival, Philip made strategic marriages for his children to secure alliances and heirs. His three sons married French noblewomen, and his daughter, Isabella, wed King Edward II of England. But all his plans would come undone in 1314, when his children and their spouses were engulfed by the Nesle Tower affair. The scandal not only led to torture, imprisonment, and…

323 B.C. After the death of Alexander the Great, Seleucus takes over Commagene as a region of the Hellenistic kingdom of Syria. 163 B.C. Samos, governor of the province of Commagene, proclaims himself king under the name Ptolemaeus and founds a new dynasty. circa 70 B.C. Antiochus I ascends to the throne of Commagene with the approval of the Roman general Pompey after conquering Asia Minor. 62 B.C. Work begins on Antiochus I’s monumental tomb complex on the top of Nemrut Dağ. circa 36 B.C. Mithridates II, son of Antiochus, becomes the new king of Commagene after the death of his father. A.D. 17 Commagene becomes a province of the Roman Empire. It will regain its independence before finally being reabsorbed in A.D. 72.…

AT THE COMMAGENE COURT, Persians and Greeks lived side by side. The Persians traced their lineages back to the Achaemenid conquerors in the sixth century B.C. The Greeks descended from the community around Alexander the Great and his heirs, the Seleucid kings. Nemrut Dağ’s sculptural design reflects the influence of both cultural heritages. Although most of the gods represented are Greek, they are dressed in Persian style. The inscriptionsare written in Greek, but the rites they describe are closely related to Persian religious tradition. For example, one says that the soul of the deceased will be presented before the throne of Zeus-Oromasdes (Ahura Mazda), a Persian concept that appears in the Avesta, the sacred writing of Zoroastrianism (the religion of Ahura Mazda).…

LOCATED IN THE SOUTHERN Peloponnesian peninsula, Pavlopetri (the modern name of the site) emerged as a Neolithic settlement around 3500 B.C. and became an important trading center for Mycenaean Greece (1650-1180 B.C.). This area of the Aegean Sea is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, which caused the city to gradually sink. The buildings closest to the coast were battered by sea storms and tsunamis, and the slow sea level rise in the Mediterranean submerged the city more than 3,000 years ago. FOR MILLENNIA, THE CITY’S REMAINS lay unseen below some 13 feet of water. They were covered by a thick layer of sand off the island of Laconia. In recent decades, shifting currents and climate change have eroded a natural barrier that protected Pavlopetri. In 1967 a scientific survey of…

TWO OF ANCIENT EGYPT’S most important ports were drowned by the waters of Aboukir Bay some 1,200 years ago. Scholars believe that both Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, located in the Nile Delta, fell victim to a combination of rising sea levels and chronic seismic activity that led to the liquefaction of the ground beneath them. THONIS-HERACLEION was one of Egypt’s most important port cities. It was a trading hub and a gateway for goods from all over the Mediterranean. Documented since the eighth century B.C., Thonis-Heracleion went into decline as Alexandria rose to importance in 331 B.C. In 2000 underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology located its ruins, including the famous temple of Amun-Gereb, with its outer walls and three colossal statues standing over 16 feet…

THE SENTENCE The title of the bronze reads: “Decree of the Senate Concerning the Elder Cn. Piso, put up for view when N. Vibius Serenus was proconsul.” Vibius Serenus was governor of Baetica (a Roman province in Hispania) and published the Senate’s ruling in Córdoba. The bronze is one of the many copies of Piso’s condemnation distributed in Rome. SAVING THE STATE “The Roman Senate and people gave thanks, above all, to the immortal gods, because they did not allow the tranquility of the current state of the Republic to be disturbed by the criminal designs of [Gnaeus Piso], when it could not be better desired and whose enjoyment it happens for the benefit of our prince.” BETRAYAL “The singular moderation and tolerance of Germanicus Caesar had been defeated by…

History remembers Genghis Khan in two distinct ways: a ruthless conqueror and founder of the largest contiguous empire to ever exist. In 1206 Genghis Khan achieved what many other conquerors could not by bringing all the Turco-Altaic peoples of the Mongolian Plateau under his authority. Subduing these people, known as “those who live in felt tents,” was only the beginning. The first great khan of the Mongol Empire was a military genius who drove his armies to expand territory, adapt rapidly, and fight with endurance. Genghis Khan’s empire continued to spread across Asia, sweeping away preexisting states. In the east, the Mongols destroyed the kingdoms of the Jurchen and the Tangut in modern-day China, while to the west they crushed the Khitan and the Khorāsānians of Transoxania in Central Asia.…

ONE OF THE effects of the Mongol conquests was an increase in the Eurasian slave trade. When cities were defeated, the Mongols either massacred the inhabitants or sold them into slavery. Like livestock or foodstuffs, people were seen as a valuable commodity in the Golden Horde, the Mongol state created by Batu Khan that became a major provider of enslaved labor. People enslaved by the Mongols were sold in major slave markets that supplied Mediterranean ports with people destined for domestic service, sex work, or military service. Some were valued as elite for their jobs, military knowledge, or status prior to captivity.…

It’s long been suspected that Princes Edward and Richard of England were killed by their uncle, Richard III, to seize control of the throne. New evidence provides an alternate possibility; the two princes may have been taken from the Tower of London and sent into exile, followed by years of moving around and attempts to reclaim the throne.…

LA VENERE GELOSA, an opera with a libretto by Niccolò Enea Bartolini and music by Francesco Sacrati, was performed to great acclaim at the Teatro Novissimo in Venice in 1643. The image above is from the second act of the play. Venus (at left) and her friend Clio (at right) have descended into hell to ask Proserpina, the goddess of the underworld (at center) to kill a hated rival. The opera’s score was lost, but the libretto survived. Ballet was an important part of this opera, harkening back to its classical origins. The opera itself comes from Bacchanalia, ancient ceremonies in which participants would dance in honor of the god Bacchus (Dionysus). The Greeks incorporated dance and music on stage, and Venetian composers and producers drew on that tradition in…

IN ORDERING the living bodies of the adulterous knights to be skinned, Philip IV concluded a reign marked by cruelty. He would have seen such brutality as justifiable. Under feudal law, adultery committed with the lord’s wife could be interpreted as high treason, punishable by death. Since the women involved belonged to the royal family, the d’Aunay brothers were also guilty of lèse-majesté (an offense against the dignity of a monarch).…

THIS ILLUSTRATION shows what the east terrace of Antiochus I’s sanctuary at Nemrut Dağ first looked like. Colossal statues stood in a row on a platform at the foot of the artificial mound. Inside the mound there was likely a funerary chamber for the body of the Commagene king. In front of the statues was a terrace surrounded by reliefs representing the king’s ancestors. In the center of the terrace stood a large fire altar, probably related to the worship of Zoroastrian deity Oromasdes (Ahura Mazda). Some parts of the sanctuary were never finished.…

This re-creation of Pavlopetri in the Bronze Age is based on archaeological remains. PAVLOPETRI LIES UNDER SOME 13 feet of water, complicating excavations. Limited visibility and variable conditions caused archaeologists to turn to technology in 2009, when they returned to the site. A prototype autonomous robot equipped with GPS and two separate cameras was used to observe the ruins. Structures could be photographed from two different angles. Taking three snapshots per second, it generated thousands of high-resolution stereoscopic photographs. When they were digitally assembled, an accurate picture of the whole location was revealed. With guidance from the archaeologists, visual effects technicians used the images to re-create what Pavlopetri may have looked like during its heyday as a trading hub in the Mediterranean.…

SUNKEN TREASURE is typically found in fiction, but gold was found in abundance at both Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus. Its presence points to the religious significance of the cities. Gold was often employed as votive offerings to the gods. In Thonis-Heracleion, many of these were found near the Amun-Gereb temple, where every year the god Osiris was brought to his sanctuary in Canopus. This annual rite spiritually linked the two cities. THESE GOLDEN ARTIFACTS also provide valuable information to help archaeologists date sites. A golden plaque from Thonis-Heracleion was found with an ancient Greek inscription that says: “King Ptolemy, [son] of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, the sibling gods, gives this gymnasterium to Heracles.” This plaque commemorated a gymnasium dedicated to the god Heracles that was built during the reign of Ptolemy III (r.…

1236 The great khan Ögödei musters an army of 100,000 men to subdue the Cuman people and their allies in Kyivan Rus. 1240 The Mongols, led by Batu Khan and Subutai, take Kyivan Rus. The Cuman leader escapes and enlists the help of Béla IV of Hungary. 1241 Mongol troops win two decisive victories in two days at Liegnitz, in modern-day Poland, and Mohi, Hungary, annihilating the Hungarian coalition. 1242 After leading their forces to Vienna, the Mongol generals suddenly halt and retreat, bringing the Mongol conquest of Europe to an abrupt end.…

Richard III was buried in Leicester’s Greyfriars Priory in 1485, but his tomb’s location was later lost. Spearheaded by Philippa Langley, the Looking For Richard Project zeroed in on the northern end of a Leicester parking lot, where his body was found in 2012. To confirm its identity, historian John Ashdown-Hill established matrilineal descendants of one of Richard III’s sisters. Their DNA matched those of the bones. Richard III was again laid to rest after a funeral at Leicester Cathedral in March 2015.…

This little-known treasure was found discarded in ancient trash dumps and sat among the obscurities of an antiquities market. Overlooked by many but essential to understanding daily life in ancient Egypt, the Abinnaeus papers, as they came to be known, are a valuable firsthand look at the fascinating details of the past. The elements of ordinary lives that form the backdrop to huge events are usually lost to history, but the life of Flavius Abinnaeus is one notable exception. He was an obscure commander of a Roman garrison in Egypt and kept a cache of correspondence from his long career. Thanks to the conditions the documents were buried in, they were preserved for centuries. Abinnaeus served in A.D. 337, when Constantius II succeeded his father, Constantine the Great. Constantius’s reign…