Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2024 i National Geographic History

The holiday season is my favorite time of year. My childhood sense of wonder is reignited, and I lean heavily into tradition. It’s made even better now that I get to pass those traditions on to my children. After all, that’s how the magic is preserved. In this issue, we examine two holiday traditions that have surprising origins. While The Nutcracker ballet and the poem “A Visit From St. Nich-olas” took root in America, they, like America itself, were imbued with cultures found an ocean away, and they helped spawn new ways to com-memorate Christmas. In fact, the image of St. Nicholas documented by Clement Clarke Moore persists, as evidenced by the illustration above. Commissioned for the hundredth birthday of Alexander Graham Bell in 1947, the drawing leans heavily on…

The American obsession with Santa Claus and the tradition of gift-giving merriment have a more complicated background than one might think. A peek at the December 23, 1823, issue of the Troy Sentinel offers a clue. On that day, readers could peruse ads for buffalo robes and local honey or learn about the latest events in Congress. But those feeling the holiday spirit may have been drawn to the words “’Twas the night before Christmas” on page 3. The poem was brief—just a few stanzas—and, at the time, anonymously authored. Originally titled “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas,” the poem told the tale of a father’s encounter with a lively Santa Claus and his reindeer. Modern readers, who know the poem better by its first line, may see its…

A heartless tyrant and narcissist who ordered the murder of his own relatives to cling to power: This is the profile most usually associated with Nero, the fifth and last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. It’s not surprising that this image prevails. Classical sources presented Nero as a depraved, oversexed tyrant with an erratic personality, who lived and ruled under the thumb of his ambitious mother, Agrippina the Younger. But curiously, while the ancient authors focused on his ruthless egotism, the political propaganda of Nero’s time also highlighted the emperor’s clemency. Despite the fact that Nero’s government, especially in its final years, systematically persecuted Christians and wiped out dissidents, the Roman Empire under Nero also experienced some of its greatest moments of economic and cultural dynamism. An Unworthy Emperor? When Emperor…

“WHAT AN ARTIST dies in me.” According to Suetonius’s account of the emperor’s dying moments, these were Nero’s last words. This 1888 painting by Vasily Smirnov, now in the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg, shows Nero lying dead. Having realized that soldiers had come to haul him to execution, Nero committed suicide with the help of his attendant, Epaphroditus, who stabbed him in the neck. Epaphroditus looks on, alongside Nero’s enslaved lover Sporus, a young man Nero treated as his “empress” after Poppaea’s death.…

The human instinct to seek protection behind walls or trenches or on top of natural elevations goes back millennia. But it was during the Middle Ages, and in response to the evolution of weaponry and war-fare, that this drive led to the building of fortified castles. In this golden era of their construction, castles reached a degree of perfection and complexity unparalleled in history. The first medieval fortifications were very different from the imposing castles that appeared later. In the ninth and 10th centuries, the castles being constructed across Christian Europe were generally wooden structures built on top of artificial mounds that, after the Norman conquest, were called mottes. Typically, the motte would be surrounded by a defensive moat. The earth excavated to form the moat was then used to…

TO CONSOLIDATE his conquest of England in 1066, William the Conqueror built a series of fortresses and installed garrisons in them. The keep-plus-enclosed-courtyard design came to be known as a motte and bailey fortress.. Nothing is left of the original wooden castle at Pickering, in northeastern England, but the remains of a 13th-century stone fortress on the site give an idea of what the first Norman castle looked like, as shown in this illustration. The 1 wooden keep stands on a 65-foot-high motte surrounded by a palisade. In the 2 inner courtyard, or bailey, also protected by a palisade, are huts for soldiers, servants, and artisans. On a lower level is a 3 fortified outer courtyard that serves as a defensive barrier or barbican. Workers are finishing construction of the…

THIS ENGRAVING shows the undermining, in 1216, of Dover Castle, which remained loyal to King John of England during a revolt of the nobles. The miners, posing a huge risk to themselves, have dug under one of the castle’s towers, loaded the cavity with timber soaked in hog fat, then set that on fire. Once the tower’s wooden supports burn, it will come tumbling down. The practice of undermining continued for another century, until gunpowder was introduced to Europe.…

THE BORGIA APARTMENT at the Vatican was created during the papacy of Alexander VI (r. 1492–1503). Its rooms were painted by Pinturicchio (“The little painter”), né Bernardino di Betto. The Room of the Sibyls and the Room of the Creed are in the Borgia Tower. Adjoining these are the Room of Liberal Arts; the Room of Mysteries, depicting Pope Alexander VI kneeling at the feet of the resurrected Christ; and the Room of the Saints, shown here. Likely used as the pope’s private study, the room is dedicated to seven saints, with numerous visual references to Pope Alexander VI and the Borgias. The scene here depicts the Disputation of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Refusing to make sacrifices to pagan gods, Catherine, a young Christian woman (center), defeats 50 scholars in a…

ACCORDING TO ROMAN historian Suetonius, the young Nero was prone to acts of “wantonness, lust, extravagance, and cruelty.” With age, he wrote, the emperor’s vices only grew stronger: He prolonged his revels from midday to midnight … Sometimes too he closed the inlets and banqueted in public in the great tank, in the Campus Martius, or in the Circus Maximus, waited on by harlots and dancing girls from all over the city.…

ACCORDING TO THE ACCOUNT by Tacitus in the second century, Poppaea Sabina, Nero’s lover, drove the murder of his wife Octavia, convincing Nero that divorcing his wife to marry her would not be enough. As the daughter of Emperor Claudius, Octavia was popular with the masses, which made her a threat to both Nero and his new wife. Octavia, therefore, also needed to be discredited and eliminated. To achieve this, Nero falsely accused Octavia of committing adultery with the prefect Anicetus, whom he persuaded to “confess” to the affair. She was also accused of aborting a child she had conceived with Anicetus, a practice that was not illegal but was disapproved of. As punishment, Tacitus writes, Nero confined her to the island of Pandataria (modern-day Ventotene), off the west coast…

10th century Spain’s Muslim-Christian wars prompt fort-building in Castile, “land of castles.” 11th century Following the Norman invasion, motte and bailey castles are built across England. 12th century The tensions between Normans and French lead to castle building in Normandy. 13th century Religious wars between French Catholics and Cathars drive castle building in France.…

FOLLOWING THE FALL of Muslim Toledo to Christian forces in the 11th century, a Muslim fort on this site was replaced by the castle of San Martín de Montalbán and controlled by the Knights Templar. They left their stamp on the structure with its pentagon-shaped floor plan, a typical feature of the order. It was later passed to the Castilian crown. In 1420, 14-year-old John II of Castile escaped a palace coup with the help of nobleman Álvaro de Luna, who brought him to the castle for safety.…

THE FOUNDER of the dynasty that produced two popes (Calixtus III and Alexander VI) was Domènec de Borja, a minor nobleman from Valencia in eastern Spain. Valencia was a key port under the Crown of Aragon, which controlled a Mediter-ranean empire that included the kingdom of Naples. Domènec’s grandson Rodrigo became pope in 1492, the year Aragon, Castile, and other kingdoms united to create a Spanish monarchy. Through his children’s marriages, Pope Alexander VI forged alliances that spanned Italy, France, and resurgent Spain. But after his death in 1503, Borgia influence waned.…

EDITORS OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ARRIVAL IN AMERICA Looking toward Manhattan, this 1930s photograph of Ellis Island shows the copper-domed towers of the main building, built in 1900 after the previous structure burned down. The ferry slip can be seen cutting into the island from the right. On the near side of the ferry slip is the hospital, and in the foreground are the administration blocks. Ellis Island was converted into an immigrant-processing center in 1892, following an 1891 law that gave the federal government control of immigration, previously in the hands of individual states. Although other cities also received immigrants, New York was the nation’s principal port of entry. During the 62 years it operated, the Ellis Island center hosted millions of immigrants on their journey to a new life.…

NUMEROUS PAINTINGS, mainly depicting sacred Buddhist subjects, have been found at Dandan-Oilik. They date to between the sixth and eighth centuries a.d. Hedin praised the mastery of their execution and the elegance of the figures. He was struck by how similar the costumes were to those he had seen during his own 19th-century expeditions in Persia and along the banks of the Indus River. Some of the paintings depict everyday subjects, such as animals or lotus flowers. The image to the right, painted on a wooden panel, is believed to depict Ganesh, a Hindu deity also associated with Buddhism. It was painted sometime between the seventh and eighth centuries.…

THE TOMB AT WUWANGDUN in eastern China lies a few miles from the ruins of the state of Chu’s last capital, Shouchun. The capital had previously been at Ying, but in 277 b.c.—during the reign of Kaolie’s father—it had fallen to the brilliant and merciless Qin general, Bai Qi, and was destroyed. In moving his seat of power to Shouchun, Kaolie was able to mount a brief Chu comeback, holding the Qin at bay. However, the attack on Ying had weakened the Chu, whose extravagant artistic taste could not compen-sate for their military weakness. The Qin, who had eliminated most other warring states, turned their forces on the Chu, who were finally defeated in 224 b.c. and absorbed into a huge, new Qin-ruled state.…

“IT TAKES A LIFETIME to learn how to die,” wrote the Stoic philosopher Seneca, whose wisdom led to his appointment as mentor to the young Nero in a.d. 54. At first, Seneca guided Nero toward measured policies but later lost influence over him. In a.d. 65 Nero ordered Seneca to kill himself by opening his veins. Officially, Seneca was accused of involvement in a conspiracy, but it is more likely that Nero resented the aged philosopher for having witnessed his crimes.…

According to church history, the apostles Peter and Paul arrived in Rome at the time of Nero (r. a.d. 54–68). There they found a small but committed group of Christians established among the Jewish communities of the city. On Saturdays, Peter and Paul would visit the synagogues, and on Sundays they preached in various homes around the city that doubled as churches. But this way of life was interrupted by the infamous Great Fire of Rome in a.d. 64, which Nero accused the Christians of starting. The emperor had many Christians condemned to death for the blaze. They were executed by crucifixion, burning, or being devoured by wild animals in front of an audience. It’s likely that Peter and Paul were among those who died in these gory spectacles. According…

1 The Trophy of Gaius (named for a Roman Christian theologian) was constructed in the second century a.d., and is believed to mark Peter’s burial near the circus where he died a martyr. It was located in the center of the Vatican necropolis in an open space bounded on the eastern side by a stuccoed wall about eight feet high. The monument is formed by two niches, one above the other. The niche at ground level was demarcated by two small columns, nearly five feet high, supporting a corbel made of marble. Below was a subterranean space around three feet deep. This space has been identified with the oldest and simplest tomb of the apostle. 2 In the fourth century, the Vatican necropolis was buried under the first basilica of…

IN 1283 EDWARD I, the English king, ordered a series of 18 castles built to pacify the newly conquered region of Wales. James of Saint George, a master castle builder from the Duchy of Savoy on the Italy-France border, built most of Edward’s Welsh castles, including Harlech Castle, shown here. Its layout incorporated drum towers, still intact, as well as defensive features the architect had noted on Muslim fortifications he had seen in the Holy Land. Some 2,500 craftsmen toiled on Harlech’s construction between 1283 and 1290.…

EL CASTILLO DE LA ESTRELLA (“the castle of the star”) in Ciudad Real in central-southern Spain reflects the transition from Islamic to Christian rule on the Iberian Peninsula. Built during the Islamic period in the ninth century, the original castle included a fortified enclosure (alcazaba) at the top of a hill and houses on the hillside. The Christian Order of Santiago captured the castle in 1228 after a long siege, then rebuilt it, populating a settlement that included the church of Our Lady of the Star, which was used into the 15th century before falling into ruin. The illustration shows the complex in the middle of the 14th century. At the top is 1 the keep, 2 the main fortress, and 3 the large wall that incorporates the original Islamic…

In the searing heat of Rome, August 1492, a large and lavish ceremony took place to crown a new pope who had bribed his way into office: the Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia of Valencia, Spain, known from then on as Alexander VI. At 60 years old, the new pope was an imposing man with exquisite manners and an affable charm. He had served as dean of the College of Cardinals and vice-chancellor of the Church for five papacies, surpassing all other prelates in authority, knowledge, experience, and influence. But Rodrigo was a man of the secular world too. He had already fathered a boy and two girls by the time he met Vannozza Cattanei, his lover for more than three decades. With Cattanei, he had four more children—Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia, and…