Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2025 i National Geographic History

Thousands of years may separate us from Roman emperor Tiberius, but the appeal of his impressive villa on the Italian coast can instantly connect us. Unearthed in 1957 in the town of Sperlonga, this getaway and the treasures it housed continue to fascinate us (above, a museum worker stands beside part of a statue found at the site). The discovery of Tiberius’s villa is just one of the captivating stories detailed in this issue. We examine the iconic Neolithic site of Stonehenge with its enduring sarsen stones, the realm of the Cathars in southern France, and an attack in the streets of Sarajevo that altered world history. As we continue our celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we explore another notable moment in U.S. history in…

His reckless and romantic bravery is the subject of countless poems,” wrote journalist John Reed about the man who became, for many Americans, the face of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). In one such poem about Pancho Villa, recounted by Reed in 1913, the outlaw-revolutionary saunters into a town to take revenge on a man who had betrayed him—but before doing so, he unhurriedly eats ice cream in the town square. Villa’s significance in Mexican history is indisputable, but his legacy is contested. To some he was a violent opportunist who exploited the revolution for his own advancement. To many others he was a hero. “He fed whole districts,” Reed wrote. “Everywhere he was known as The Friend of the Poor. He was the Mexican Robin Hood.” Peasant Rebel Doroteo Arango…

The sun and its movements marked the rhythm of daily life and ritual for early farming communities. This is evidenced in Great Britian and Ireland by two of their most emblematic monuments: the Stonehenge sanctuary in southern England and the Newgrange burial mound in Ireland. Both constructions are designed to align with the sun during significant cosmic events. Predating the earliest megaliths erected at Stonehenge, Newgrange is a large passage tomb built around 3200 b.c. A 62-foot passageway runs from its entrance to the burial chamber, aligned so that the sun’s rays stream down it to illuminate the main chamber at dawn on the winter solstice. This appears to symbolize rebirth and regeneration, and it reminded local communities of the cyclical nature of time, the movement of celestial bodies across…

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH believed that Jesus was God in the flesh, died on the cross, and rose again. The Cathars held a different doctrine: God had become incarnate in appearance only, and that He had never actually taken on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, nor did he suffer on the cross. Cathars believed Jesus spent time on earth, where he preached, but he did not eat or drink or suffer cold or heat. A certain misogyny informs the Cathar abhorrence of the human body. The early 14th-century Cathar leader Pierre Authier explained why he saw the incarnation of Christ as a false doctrine: It was impossible, he said, “to believe that the Son of God was born of a woman, or that [He] adumbrated himself in something…

Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was founded by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. When it fell under Austro-Hungarian control in 1878, Bosnia had a significant Muslim population and large communities of Christian Croats and Serbs. The Austrians wanted to make Sarajevo a multinational blend of old and new. The bazaar and the mosques remained, but a new city sprang up, boasting courts, schools, a city hall, and an electric tram. The Miljacka River was channeled, and the Appel Quay was created on its north bank. This is where the attack occurred.…

The archduke’s planned route ran along the Appel Quay, the avenue where Princip and his companions were waiting. The visit began with a brief stop at the 1 city’s military barracks, then continued along the Appel Quay to the 2 city hall. On the way, the archduke and Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, faced the 3 first attempt on their lives, next to Ćumurija Bridge. After leaving the city hall, they were killed near 4 Latin Bridge, victims of Princip’s bullets.…

PRINCIP’S SUCCESS is usually credited to luck. The plotters had minimal experience handling weapons. Princip, Čabrinović, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, and Trifko Grabež had received only basic training in the use of pistols. While it isn’t clear who trained Cvjetko Popović and Vaso Čubrilović, Ciganovic specifically taught Princip and Grabez how to shoot in the woods near a rifle range with a Browning pistol.…

Surrounded by enemy battleships, the American destroyer U.S.S. Edsall put up a heroic fight against the Imperial Japanese Navy on March 1, 1942. Under heavy shelling, it sank below the waves of the Indian Ocean. Grieving families kept memories of the 200-strong Edsall crew alive, but the ship seemed lost to oblivion, lying in deep waters off Christmas Island, over 1,000 miles northwest of Australia. In 2023, however, the crew of a Royal Australian Navy merchant vessel made a stunning discovery: Using advanced robotics to carry out a survey off Christmas Island, they glimpsed the Edsall at a depth of more than 18,000 feet. The announcement of the find was withheld to coincide with U.S. Veterans Day and Australia’s Remembrance Day in 2024, renewing interest in this remarkable vessel’s many…

Stonehenge is one of the world’s great prehistoric monuments, built over 4,500 years ago on Salisbury Plain. Although not the largest of 1,300 prehistoric stone circles across Great Britain and Ireland, Stonehenge is the most elaborate and truly exceptional. Unlike all the others, its megalithic stones were not sourced from the immediate vicinity but from far away. The shaping and raising of four-ton lintels on top of uprights are also unique features when compared to other sites. Why it was built has long been a mystery: In 1130, Henry of Huntingdon wrote that nobody knew who had built it or what it was for. Now new archaeological excavations and scientific methods, such as isotopic and genetic analyses, are revealing answers to our questions. Stonehenge’s five stages of construction span the…

PIERRE DE CASTELNAU was a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Fontfroide, near Narbonne, today in southern France. In 1203, he was appointed papal legate by Pope Innocent III and sent out to preach against the Cathar heresy. Together with Diego de Acebes and Dominic de Guzmán (the future Saint Dominic), he participated in public colloquies aimed at converting heretics. Support from the feudal lords was essential to the inquisitors in order to track down heretics, but winning the nobles’ backing proved difficult as many were disillusioned by the Catholic Church. On January 15, 1208, a squire of Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, had Pierre de Castelnau assassinated on the Rhône River near the Abbey of Saint-Gilles. The murder sparked the Albigensian Crusade launched in 1209.…

In the second or third century a.d., an anonymous author in Alexandria, Egypt, composed a text entitled Physiologus, or The Naturalist. The work was soon widely copied and comprised of 48 or 49 chapters. Each was dedicated to a specific animal and included an illustration, a description of its characteristics, and a story—part natural observation, part imaginative anecdote—about its behavior. One such story, for example, features the lion. It was said that lion cubs were born lifeless and watched over by their mother until the father, king of the beasts, arrived and breathed life into them. This image gave rise to an allegorical reading steeped in Christian symbolism: the cub revived by the lion became a figure of Christ resurrected on the third day. While the lion embodied noble virtues,…

Ruled by Franz Josef I, Austria-Hungary comprised two governments, one in Vienna and the other in Budapest. The compromise was an attempt to accommodate the nationalist demands of Hungary within the empire. Franz Josef’s heir, Franz Ferdinand, resented the power the dual monarchy gave Hungary. He envisioned incorporating the Slavs of Bosnia as equals with the Austrians and Hungarians. He hoped this would encourage the Bosnian Slavs to drop the separatism promoted by other Slavs in Serbia and, in turn, act as a counterweight against Hungarians.…

PRINCIP DIED of tuberculosis in prison in 1918. His remains were transferred to Sarajevo, where they were interred in a common grave. In 1939 the Chapel of the Holy Archangel was built. It received the remains of Princip and others—including Grabež and Čabrinović—involved in the 1914 assassination plot. An inscription reads: “Blessed are those who live forever, they were not born in vain.”…

IN NOVEMBER 1945, having located no Edsall personnel in Japanese prisoner of war camps, the U.S. Navy declared that the crew was “presumed dead,” as of March 1, 1942. Later, it was established that a small number of the passengers and crew had been rescued from drowning by the Japanese, only to be killed by their captors on March 24, 1942. After the war, Allied investigators were led to two mass graves on Japanese execution grounds. Six sets of remains were identified by dog tags as belonging to the Edsall crew. Two of the photos shown here were found in an album in a second-hand store by navy veteran Richard Lillie, and sent to Edsall historian, Don M. Kehn, Jr. Together with the other photos here, they stand as a…

4500 B.C. The stone burial cairn at Barnenez (Brittany, France) starts to take shape with six burial chambers. Numerous megalithic tombs are also being built in northwestern Spain and Portugal. 3700-3100 B.C. The burial mounds of West Kennet (England), Altendorf (Germany), and Newgrange (Ireland) are raised. Multiple standing stone alignments in Brittany, such as Carnac, also date to this period. 2900 B.C. Stonehenge starts out as a cemetery with wooden posts and bluestones. Weighing up to four tons each, the bluestones are transported from quarries in Wales, 175 miles to the west. 2500 B.C. Stonehenge’s 20-to-40-ton sarsen stones are erected, giving the monument its distinctive form. The settlement of Durrington Walls and other circles nearby add to the complex cultural landscape. 2200 B.C. Stonehenge’s original bluestones are rearranged. Metalworking Beaker…

Early13th-century Europe saw a rise in dissident Christian communities, including the Cathars and the Waldenses, in several regions of Europe. The dissident movements questioned central elements of Catholic doctrine: the validity of the sacraments and the Church’s message on salvation of the soul. They believed the Church and its members had moved away from the Christian ideal and they demanded a return to evangelical poverty. Before the Inquisition, the Catholic Church addressed doctrinal dissent by organizing public debates with the dissenters in an attempt to bring them back to the “true faith.” Diego de Acebes, bishop of the Castilian diocese of Burgo de Osma, who saw firsthand how Catharism was taking hold, warned the Catholic prelates of southern France about the need to change their lifestyle. He knew that when…

“ALL THINGS were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). Cathars interepreted this line from the Gospel of John to mean that God—the good God of truth and goodness—made everything that was good; and by good, the Cathars meant the spiritual world. The bad things of the material world, the “non-things,” were created by an evil God. This dualism led the Cathars to aspire to the eschewing of such things as wealth, status, sexual relations, and the eating of meat. Theologically, this represented heresy in the eyes of the Church. Since the Church was criticized for being too wealthy, Catharism was also attractive to the poor, and represented a significant threat—in the eyes of the Church—to the social order.…

On the sunny morning of Sunday, June 28, 1914, the fates of two men collided with world-changing consequences in the city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nothing could have suggested their paths would ever cross. One of the two was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a member of the monarchy and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The other, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, came from a humble family. But despite his apparent powerlessness, Princip had one all-consuming mission: to strike a blow against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina six years prior. The young firebrand dreamed of shaking the monarchy to its core and stirring up Bosnian Slavs—whether Serbs, Croats, or Muslims—to rebel against their Austrian occupiers. Princip’s plan to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand was extremely audacious. The…

AFTER AN UNSUCCESSFUL attempt to assassinate Governor Marijan Varešanin in 1910, Bogdan Žerajić, a member of Young Bosnia, took his own life and was buried in an unmarked grave in Sarajevo. But the burial place was soon located, and it became a pilgrimage site for young Bosnian rebels. Both Gavrilo Princip and Nedeljko Čabrinović visited the grave the night before their attack.…

The archduke’s drivers were Czech speakers who apparently failed to understand the orders to change the route, issued in German. The vehicle stopped right in front of Princip. Hemmed in by the crowd, he decided against detonating the bomb and fired his pistol twice at close range. The first bullet entered the duchess’s abdomen, severing a gastric artery. The second tore one of the archduke’s jugular veins. Before dying, Franz Ferdinand reportedly whispered to his wife: “Sophie, don’t die. Stay alive for our children!”…

Was the Serbian state behind Princip’s plot? If it was, Austria could justify its aggression against Serbia, an act that led to the outbreak of war. The Austrians probed links between conspirators and the Black Hand and then links with the Black Hand and the Serbian army. It seems that Serbia’s prime minister, Nikola Pašić, knew something was afoot and tried to warn Vienna via Leon Von Bilinski, Austria’s finance minister. Von Bilinski was told that the archduke might want to avoid visiting Sarajevo, given the inflamed passions in Bosnia and Serbia. Biliński replied: “Let’s hope nothing does happen.”…