National Geographic History

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FROM THE EDITOR

National Geographic History

Cannons in the Savannah: A Blast From Georgia’s Past • Dredging operations on Georgia’s Savannah River have turned up 19 cannons likely to be linked to the American War for Independence.

WRECK OF THE ROSE

Juan Sebastián Elcano, His Forgotten First • Five centuries ago, Juan Sebastián Elcano completed the first known journey around the world, captaining the remains of Magellan’s expedition back to Spain after Magellan’s death.

Homeward Bound • Finishing what Magellan began, Elcano steered the Victoria through storms, sickness and Portuguese hostility, to complete the first circumnavigation of the world in fall 1522.

Europa Regina, a Continent Personified • Johannes Putsch’s 1530s map depicts the continent as a queen pleading for peace and unity, a personification that sparked a 16th-century cartographic craze.

Masking Up: European Fashion’s Strange Cover Story • Starting in the 16th century, a custom for wellborn women to keep their skin fashionably pale and shield their virtue became a game of anonymity that threw highly stratified societies into flux.

KING OF THE WORLD • The conqueror prided himself on his exceptional intellect, and in the city of Nineveh he created the largest library the world had yet seen.

TOMB OF THE GRIFFIN WARRIOR • Near the Palace of Nestor in Pylos, archaeologists located an intact tomb holding the remains of a soldier whose remains evoke the heroic dawn of ancient Greece.

DUEL TO THE DEATH

GLORY OF CÓRDOBA From Mosque to Cathedral • From the late eighth century, new stewards added to the mosque-cathedral of Córdoba. The glorious monument embodied the artistic legacy of Muslim Spain as it blended with successive styles of Christian art.

MOSQUE-CATHEDRAL OF CÓRDOBA • Viewed from the south, the complex’s interconnected warren of small chapels, sacred doors, and fragrant gardens surrounds the breathtaking hypostyle hall and central cathedral.

PIRATE HAVEN OF PORT ROYAL

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

PRISONERS OF PORT ROYAL

GRANT ASCENDANT • In the early years of the Civil War, Union forces were struggling in the East but thriving in the West, where Ulysses S. Grant was scoring victory after victory and rising through the ranks.

Chogha Zanbil, the Ziggurat of Elam • Excavations in southern Iran revealed the remains of a towering ancient temple in the 1950s. One of the few ziggurats outside of Mesopotamia, it was built by a culture that scholars named after the biblical kingdom of Elam.