Smithsonian Magazine December 2023

FOR MORE THAN a century, anthropologists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have obtained, studied and stored thousands of human remains. While the practice can reveal critical details about past civilizations, it now comes with a host of ethical considerations, which have significantly changed the scientific process. Most of the remains still in our possession were acquired decades ago without the proper consent of the individuals, their close relatives or their tribal communities. The Smithsonian is currently taking steps to rectify these wrongs and prevent any future recurrence. This month, the Smithsonian’s new Human Remains Task Force will deliver its recommendations on how we should best proceed with the repatriation of some 30,700 human remains in our collections. Most of those remains were obtained between 1903 and 1941…

“Zelia Nuttall traveled a path few women dared to at the time.” A Return to Vietnam The aptly named “Healing in Hanoi” (November 2023) is a well-balanced examination of the thoughts and feelings people on both sides have about the Vietnam War. I have traveled many times to Vietnam as a media adviser to the national television network VTV. I will admit that I was nervous on my first visit because I was not sure what I would find. What I found was a people who were friendly and welcoming. I am proud to say that I now have several hundred Vietnamese friends. Michael Castengera | Athens, Georgia In 1966 I enlisted in the U.S. military to help our country achieve its goals against North Vietnam. Looking back, I made…

TRUE HISTORY of the teddy bear begins in the American wilderness. In November 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a hunting trip in Mississippi with one main goal: to bag a black bear. As the tale goes, after Roosevelt had scoured the brush for several days without so much as spotting one, some of his hunting companions corralled an injured old bear and tied it to a willow tree. Here, they said, was Roosevelt’s opportunity to slay one and declare victory. Horrified, the president refused, saying it would be unseemly—unsporting!—for a man of honor to kill this vulnerable creature. He ordered the decrepit bear to be euthanized, and this odd show of mercy quickly became news. Editorial cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman captured the scene in several Washington Post drawings—one showing a…

LANCE ENCOUNTER Germany, Middle Pleistocene, c. 300,000 B.C. IN THE 1990S, archaeologists in Schöningen, Germany, discovered the earliest large-scale record of tools made by Middle Pleistocene humans, including a 30-inch double-pointed lightweight curved stick that was shaped and smoothed into an aerodynamic tool. Archaeologists believe that children in the Middle Pleistocene played with these pointed sticks and thereby developed throwing and hunting skills. In support of this theory, researchers have also noted that in later periods, children in far-flung countries like Chad and Indonesia once played with similar implements. MOTION PICTURES Ice Age Europe, 16,000-9,000 B.C. THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC version of flipbooks, rondelles are small disks made of bone, antler or ivory, with an image carved on either side and one or two holes for a cord in the middle. Tug…

ARGUABLY THE MOST important opponent of slavery in American history, Thaddeus Stevens is also the most forgotten. If the abolitionist Pennsylvania congressman is known at all today, it’s thanks to Tommy Lee Jones’ portrayal of Stevens in the 2012 film Lin coln, where he is the moral absolutist to Lincoln’s pragmatic deal maker on the 13th Amendment—a righteous scold with vicious one-liners and a bad toupee. Yet at the time of Stevens’ death in 1868, he was one of the most revered men in the country. When he died, he was only the third American ever to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. (Former Secretary of State Henry Clay was the first, in 1852. Lincoln was the second, in 1865.) Thousands of mourners attended his funeral. But within years, he…

LYDIA HAMILTON SMITH is often referred to as Thaddeus Stevens’ housekeeper—and, perhaps, his common-law wife. In fact, she was a great deal more: a fervent Catholic, a smashingly successful real estate entrepreneur and likely a daring participant in the Underground Railroad whose deeply held faith led her to pursue good works at nearly every juncture. Smith was born near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, around 1815 to a white father and a mother of both African and European heritage. She married once, around the age of 20, to a barber and musician named Jacob Smith, with whom she had two sons. Smith eventually left Jacob—perhaps, some histories say, because he was abusive—and in 1844 moved with her boys to Lancaster, to work for Stevens. There, her duties were expansive. Besides overseeing Stevens’ houses…