History

On a hot January morning in 1971, plainclothes security agents knocked on the door of the beachfront home of former Brazilian lawmaker Rubens Paiva. Hustled into his car, Paiva was sped away under armed escort and never seen again, leaving his wife and five children to pick up the pieces. This is the broad plotline of I’m Still Here, the Oscar-winning film set during Brazilian military rule. But rather than dwell on the dictators’ dungeons and the all too visceral horrors of state-sponsored violence, director Walter Salles flips the narrative....

Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), are the human species that has attracted the most attention as our closest evolutionary relatives. The first fossils related to Neanderthals weren’t recognized as such until 1863, although they were discovered decades earlier. The ongoing intrigue should come as no surprise because, for a long time, Neanderthals were the model for the missing link between our own species, Homo sapiens, and the first apelike pre-human ancestors—but then they disappeared. This is the story of an extinction.

As a public historian and National Geographic Explorer, I’m constantly on the trail of interesting stories that connect a series of events dating back several centuries but continue to resonate into modern times. On a recent road trip through the American South, my partner, National Geographic photographer Kris Graves, and I drove through Tuskegee, Alabama, where we found a connection to time long before human beings walked the Earth. It’s a story of how the geology of the Cretaceous Period, between 70 and 100 Million years ago, emphatically changed the...

For the first time in decades, archaeologists have stepped inside the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh—to be greeted by hallmark hieroglyphs on the walls and traces of a faded celestial mural on the ceiling painted thousands of years ago. Last week, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that a joint British and Egyptian archaeological team had uncovered the new find, which could change modern understandings of the ancient kingdom at a critical time in the 15th century B.C. It also highlights how Egyptology has changed from its origins...

In the hit Apple TV series Severance, the microchip-bearing employees of Lumon Industries traverse the eerie halls of a massive office building that serves as a kind of corporate hell. The hallways are sterile and seemingly infinite—and the departments spread so far apart that employees need maps to find each other. But that imposing building isn’t a Hollywood soundstage: It’s filmed at the real-life Bell Laboratories complex in Holmdel, New Jersey, one of the last works by famed architect Eero Saarinen. Bell Labs is iconic as both an homage to...

During the era known as the Third Intermediate Period (ca 1075–715 B.C.), Egypt’s government was in the throes of political chaos and decline. Nubia was left fairly free of pharaonic intervention, and several new, independent Kushite kingdoms flourished. In one of these, near the Fourth Cataract, a dynasty of rulers emerged in the mid-eighth century B.C., this time establishing the kingdom’s capital at Napata and a necropolis at nearby El Kurru. The rulers of this Kushite kingdom would eventually govern those who had once controlled them, even becoming pharaohs of...

The middle-aged seamstress was an unlikely civil rights hero. But when Rosa Parks refused to give up a seat on a segregated bus in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, she became a titan in the struggle for racial equality. Parks’ modest looks and quiet demeanor belied her true identity: that of a fierce, disciplined, and committed civil rights activist. A force to be reckoned with, Parks contributed to the movement long before—and long after—her act of protest on that bus. Here’s what to know about the woman whose simple act of...

Walk through the streets of the United Kingdom, and you’ll see Queen Victoria’s name everywhere, from rail stations to parks, pubs, and a line on the London Underground. The reason? Between 1837 and 1901, Victoria reigned over a rapidly changing world—one that saw the rise of trains, telegraphs, and electric light. But she wasn’t just a ruler. She was a cultural force. Victoria was what historian John Plunkett has called the “first media monarch,” one who was squarely in the public eye thanks to an expanding media culture. Images of...

Crammed with exquisite objects, a 2,200-year-old tomb is revealing fresh insights into a period of upheaval and cultural flourishing that forged modern China. The site of Wuwang­dun lies near the city of Huainan in eastern China. The site was a few miles from the last capital of the Chu state, which by 260 B.C. occupied a swath of southeastern China, with the Yangtze River at its heart. Archaeologists working on the site of Wuwangdun, a cemetery complex in eastern China’s Anhui Province, have not made any statements on the tomb’s...