National Geographic History

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION On a cold January evening in 1888, 33 scientists, scholars, and explorers met at the exclusive Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. They discussed the idea of founding a society of geography. Several months later, for October, they issued the first National Geographic magazine (pictured above). This month we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of National Geographic History. With a decade of publications behind us, we aim to carry on the tradition set forth for “a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.” In 10 years we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve traveled down rivers and ancient roads to examine empires and civilizations, crossed mountains and oceans with explorers and colonizers, probed for answers to unsolved mysteries, marveled at works of art, and uplifted…

What was it like to be sandwiched between two clashing powers during some of the most consequential wars in classical antiquity? A sensational stash of coins found in Turkey is furnishing some answers. Led by Christopher Ratté, professor of ancient Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Michigan, a team was excavating a house on the site of the harbor city of Notion, in western Turkey, when they struck gold: They found a pot containing Persian coins, all depicting a kneeling archer, buried years before the house was built. Artifacts found near the hoard create a picture of daily life in the city. Objects in the same layer as the hoard date the coins to the late fifth century b.c., when Notion lay in the buffer zone between Athens and Persia.…

STAMPED WITH a distinctive kneeling archer design, the darics found in the Notion hoard were minted from gold of very pure quality, likely in nearby Sardis, the capital of Lydia. Located by the Pactolus River, Sardis was rich in gold deposits, a crucial resource for the wealthy King Croesus before he was defeated and conquered by Persia in the sixth century b.c. The name "daric" could be derived from Darius I, Persian king until 486 b.c., or from dari-, the root of the Old Persian word for gold. The figure of the archer is in a kneeling position, holding a bow in his left hand and a spear in his right. Used to pay Persian mercenaries, one daric was equal to a month’s wage.…

THE CITY-STATE OF NOTION was famed in antiquity for its military harbor. From the seventh century b.c. it was eclipsed by neighboring Colophon, but following the latter’s fall to Persia in the sixth century b.c., Notion flourished in the orbit of Athens. Stout fortification walls were built following Alexander the Great’s conquests. The University of Michigan team is focusing on residential life at Notion. The hoard of Persian daric coins was buried in the courtyard of a late fifthcentury b.c. house, the walls of which are shown in purple in the plan below. Over the ruins of this house, a later house was built, dating to the Hellenistic period (after the time of Alexander the Great). That house’s walls are shown on the plan in yellow. ALL: NOTION ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT/UNIVERSITY…

When Scottish geologist Roderick Murchison arrived in Lyme Regis, England, in September 1825, he knew exactly where to go on his hunt for important fossils. As he walked down a beach in the wake of drenching rain, he found who he was looking for: 26-year-old Mary Anning. “I soon discovered her with her dog, hammer & basket,” he later wrote. “Her genius in grouping the dislocated bones of any one of the [dinosaurs] is astonishing,”Murchison observed. He had just met one of the most important figures in early geology and paleontology: a woman whose class and gender made her a most unlikely fossil expert. On the Coast Born in 1799 to a cabinetmaker and his wife, Anning was one of 10 children in a working-class family. At the time, Lyme…

1811 As a child, Mary Anning uncovers a complete ichthyosaur skeleton with her brother, Joseph, in Lyme Regis, England. 1823 On the Jurassic Coast of southern England, Anning discovers the first complete plesiosaur, known briefly as the sea dragon. 1824 Anning realizes a group of hollow-seeming fossils are in fact coprolites, fossilized feces containing remnants of digested creatures. 1826 Despite opening Anning’s Fossil Depot, she remains poor. A lithograph of Lyme Regis is later sold to benefit Anning and her family. 1847 Anning dies of breast cancer at age 47. Three years later, her local church installs a stained glass window in her memory.…