National Geographic History

Golden treasures play a leading role in one of my favorite cartoons. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are traveling underground together to Pismo Beach, but they miss the left turn at Albuquerque and end up in a treasure cave out of One Thousand and One Nights. Bugs is indifferent to the spectacle, but Daffy is immediately obsessed with having it. He forces Bugs into the rabbit hole, shouting, “It’s mine, you understand? Mine! All mine! Get back in there! Down, down, down! Go, go, go! Mine, mine, mine! Mwahahaha!” By cartoon’s end, Daffy has been punished for his greed. (Although he remains unrepentant: “I can’t help it. I’m a greedy slob. It’s my hobby.”) Many fictional characters—from King Midas to Ebenezer Scrooge—are undone by this lust for gold, and history abounds…

Archaeologists have found the remains of a young hunter-gatherer in Indonesian Borneo whose left foot was successfully amputated at least 31,000 years ago, making it the oldest known example of such a procedure, according to a team of Indonesian and Australian investigators who published their research in Nature. The skeleton’s sex is as yet unconfirmed. When they died at around 19 or 20, roughly six to nine years after the operation, their lower leg bones showed signs of healing. The find predates history’s next oldest amputation—a forearm removal in Neolithic France—by 24,000 years. Until now, most experts thought innovations in prehistoric medical practices began with settled agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago. “This suggests that some modern human foraging groups in tropical Asia had developed advanced medical knowledge and skills long…

LUCK OR SKILL? For Melandri Vlok, a bio-archaeologist at the University of Sydney, the cut through the tibia and fibula to remove TB1’s left foot was clean, well healed, and bore no evidence of infection. Moreover, the two bones had fused at the bottom—a clear sign of healing. “The only conclusion: This was Stone Age surgery,” she told History. She believes the surgeon involved knew how to restrict blood flow and very likely used local or even general anesthetic, perhaps making use of medicinal plants from the surrounding forest. In her view, the successful outcome was a result of “sophisticated knowledge shared within the community and between generations,” not an isolated case of good luck.…

Brother and sister, William and Caroline Herschel left their promising musical careers to become astronomers. Whatever history lost musically, it more than gained scientifically. Until the Herschels, stargazing had largely been limited to observing the sun, moon, and planets visible to the naked eye. With improved telescopes of William’s design, the siblings made the first systematic observations of the stars and nebulae beyond the solar system, setting the course for the modern, scientific discipline of astronomy. Their chosen profession was a long way from the humble life of the Herschel family in Hanover, Germany. Their father, Isaac, played oboe in the city’s military band, a few steps up from his own father’s position as a gardener. He insisted on a musical education for his 10 children as a means to social…

In the photograph speckled with age, the gaze of the woman is direct. The hands, strong, with long, tapered fingers, hold a scrap of fabric. She wears an apron. A closer look reveals it is more than a modest, domestic icon. It is an artistic statement. The material is common, cheap cotton, embellished by an uncommon exuberance of scalloped edges and large appliqued sunbursts. The sunbursts echo those on two late 19th-century quilts made also by the wearer of that apron, Harriet Powers, an African American woman from Athens, Georgia. Born enslaved, Powers would transcend that to express her powerful, creative vision in stitched squares of fabric. Her vision appears in a quilt, known as the Pictorial Quilt, in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston. Her other…

Few individuals in Egypt’s history have aroused as much curiosity, and as much skepticism, as Ramses II, third pharaoh of the 19th dynasty, whom history dubbed Ramses the Great. Today Ramses II is probably best known for leaving behind a monumental set of works—palaces, temples, statues, stelae—each one extolling his pharaonic achievements. Every battle was a mighty triumph, every building spectacular, every statue and public work magnificent, every act a near superhuman achievement. Ramses’ family came to power as outsiders. They were northerners hailing from the Nile Delta and rose through military service, rather than southerners rising from elite circles in Thebes. To rally support, Ramses II used these massive monuments to appeal to the people as part of a campaign to proclaim his greatness for all to see. Ramses lived…