National Geographic History

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FROM THE EDITOR

National Geographic History

Stone Age Seashell Makes Music From the Past • Stored in a museum for decades, a seashell was reexamined, providing new insight on the role of music in Upper Paleolithic societies.

STONE AGE SYMPHONICS

Disease Detective

Robert Koch, The Bacteria Hunter • One of the founding fathers of microbiology, Koch used scientific rigor and hands-on experiments to identify the bacterial causes of several illnesses that ravaged the 19th century.

PROFESSIONAL RIVALS

THE RIDDLE OF TYPHOID MARY

BIDING ITS TIME

VIENNA OR FRANKFURT?

The Hot Dog: American Icon • It’s hard to imagine the United States without hot dogs, perfect for baseball games and cookouts, but before the industrial revolution, they were just a taste of the old country for German immigrants in the 19th century.

The Most American Food

SAUSAGE FACTORIES

Eleanor of Toledo: Power of a Portrait • Bronzino’s 16th-century portrait won the hearts and minds of Florentines who were suspicious of a young duchess born in Spain and married to a Medici.

1844 Morse Code: Communication Goes Electric • Scientific advances gave Samuel Morse and his collaborators the opportunity to invent a faster form of long-distance communication: the telegraph and its electronic alphabet.

ELECTRONIC ALPHABET

ADORING AMUN SACRED RITUALS AT KARNAK • For millennia, the temple complex at Karnak stood at the spiritual center of Egypt, where priests performed sacred rituals to honor Amun, the powerful god on whom the pharaohs’ fortunes depended.

MAKING THEIR MARK

PHARAONIC RENOVATIONS

AMUN ACROSS THE CENTURIES

RITES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

HANNIBAL’S ALPINE ASSAULT WAR ELEPHANTS OF CARTHAGE • Carthaginian leader Hannibal marched war elephants over the Alps, a feat that earned him eternal fame, but using elephants in military campaigns has a long history that goes back to the time of Alexander the Great.

BEASTS OF WAR

Charging Against Rome

ELEPHANTINE DEBATES

THE LONG MARCH

Elephant Endgame at Zama

A TOWERING MYSTERY

THE TRUNG SISTERS • Descendants of dragons and riders of elephants, the sisters Trung Trac and Trung Nhi became national heroes by uniting ancient Vietnam to expel the powerful Han dynasty.

ENDANGERED ELEPHANTS

KINGDOMS OF THE PAST

FIGHTING TRADITIONS

RISE AND FALL OF THE AZTEC • Before their defeat in 1521, the Mexica people, known today as the Aztec, had evolved from a nomadic people to Mesoamerica’s dominant power in less than a century.

LANDS OF THE AZTEC • The Triple Alliance (popularly known as the Aztec) conquered lands so as to be able to control trade routes and raw materials. Scholars believe religion also played a large role in expansion since the Aztec required human sacrifices to maintain the cosmic order.

CONQUEST AND SACRIFICE

CODEX FOR A KING

ROYAL TRIBUTES • THE CODEX MENDOZA contains a section that details the tributes received by Moctezuma II, who ruled Tenochtitlan between 1502 and 1520. From the 400 cities under his control, he received a plethora of gifts. In the codex, pictograms correspond to city names and the images next to them show their tributes to Moctezuma. Above each object is a translation in Spanish.

THE FAIRYTALE KING • As modern Germany began to rise, King Ludwig II of Bavaria withdrew from politics. He buried himself in...