Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2023 i Smithsonian Magazine

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…

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…

Meet the magazine’s journalists and hear how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time. Art, biography, history, and identity collide in this podcast with Director Kim Sajet. From foot-long leeches to demonic dolls, this podcast sneaks you behind the scenes of the Smithsonian collections. Telling the human stories of achievement, failure, and perseverance behind air and space, history and culture. is a proud partner and distributor of these Smithsonian podcasts Available at si.edu/podcasts or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts…

“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…

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…

TO UNDERSTAND THE MAGIC and mystery of Carrara marble, I was told to start with a ride up a mountain. So one crisp afternoon last spring, I donned a blue safety helmet and an orange vest and hopped into a Land Rover with Michael Bruni, a local guide. The two-way, one-lane road was badly paved, and halfway up the mountain it became a rutted track littered with rocky debris. The incline was so steep and the switchback curves so sharp that Bruni had to stop the truck before we could turn. Beneath our wheels rocks shook and bounced the truck like a toy. Bruni explained that chunks of the mountain break off from the cliffs during heavy rainstorms or when mountain goats clamber up the slopes. He gesticulated dramatically as…

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…

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…

LEE MILLER’S big break began with a near-death experience. Miller was discovered at 19 by publishing scion Condé Nast himself when he pulled her out of the way of an oncoming car in Manhattan—then put her on the cover of Vogue. But Miller, born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1907, was not content to be a muse for male photographers. Instead, she moved to Paris, where she stepped behind the lens and studied with Surrealist photographer Man Ray, her mentor and lover. Miller mastered the technical aspects of photography quickly and distinguished herself among the few high-profile women photographers of the day by opening her own studio in the City of Light. There she took portraits of royalty, literary elites and even the pet lizard of a French socialite, who…

Q: Why can’t machines process CO2 the way trees do? Tom Brewer | Ponder, Texas THERE ARE MACHINES that absorb CO2, but they do it differently from trees. When plants perform photosynthesis, the carbon becomes part of their leaves, stems and trunks. Machines, on the other hand, turn CO2 from a gas into a liquid and store it underground. As of now, forests and wetlands are much more effective than machines at pulling carbon out of the air, and they provide other benefits like oxygen, water filtration and animal habitats. The main drawback is that plants eventually decompose and release the carbon. Better technology might someday help us store huge amounts of carbon deep in the earth for as long as 10,000 years. To solve the climate crisis, we’ll need…