Science and its times vol 6

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Understanding the Social Significance of Scientific Discovery

Science

and Its Times

V O L U M E

1 9 0 0 - 1 9 4 96

Neil Schlager, EditorJosh Lauer, Associate Editor

Produced by Schlager Information Group

Understanding the Social Significance of Scientific Discovery

Science

and Its Times

V O L U M E

1 9 0 0 - 1 9 4 96

V O L U M E6

1 9 0 0 - 1 9 4 9

NEIL SCHLAGER, Editor

JOSH LAUER, Associate Editor

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Preface ix

Advisory Board xi

Contributors xiii

Introduction: 1900-1949 xvii

Chronology: 1900-1949 xxi

Exploration and Discovery Chronology of Key Events 1

Overview 2

Topical Essays The Palace at Knossos: The Archaeologial Discovery of Minoan Civilization 4

Ancient Writings Shed Light on Past Civilizations 6

The Northwest Passage, Sought by Europeans for 400 years, Is Found and Traversed by Ship by Roald Amundsen 10

Sven Hedin Maps Tibet 12

The Exploration of the Poles 14

The First Women Aviators 17

The Exploration of South America 19

Finding the Tomb of King Tut 22

Scaling the Heights: Mountaineering Advances between 1900-1949 24

Finding the Pygmies: Westerners Learn More about Africa’s Ituri Forest People 27

Flights into History and Their Effects on Technology, Politics, and Commerce 30

Journey Across China 33

Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer Are the First to Enter the Stratosphere 36

Charles William Beebe and Otis Barton Set Depth Record 38

Prehistoric Cave Art Found at Lascaux 41

Breaking the Sound Barrier 44

Oil Is Discovered in the Middle East 47

Biographical Sketches 49

Biographical Mentions 80

Bibliography of Primary Sources 88

Life Sciences Chronology of Key Events 91

Overview 92

Topical Essays The Rediscovery of Mendel’s Laws of Heredity 94

The Fruit Fly Group Contributes Key Discoveries to Genetics 96

Hermann J Muller and the Induction of Genetic Mutations 99

The Genetic Foundation of Natural Selection 102

The Modern Synthesis of Evolutionary Theory 104

The Scopes Trial Highlights the Battle over Evolution 107

The Emergence of Endocrinology as a Medical Science 110

The Boveri-Sutton Theory Links Chromosomes to Heredity 112

Elucidating the Structure and Workings of the Nervous System 115

Developments in Embryology 117

The Eugenics Movement: Good Intentions Lead to Horrific Consequences 120

Advances in the Understanding of Energy Metabolism 122

Advances in Understanding Viruses 125

Advances in Understanding Brain Behavior in Animals 129

Behavioral Studies Develop through Animal Observation and Experimentation 131

Imprinting and Establishment of Ethology 134

Advances in Botany 136

Developments in Ecology, 1900-1949 139

Developments in Anthropology, 1900-1949 142



Contents

The Disastrous Effects of Lysenkoism on

Soviet Agriculture 145

Advances and Trends in the Agricultural Sciences 148

Key Scientific Research Institutions Are Founded 151

Biographical Sketches 153

Biographical Mentions 180

Bibliography of Primary Sources 196

Mathematics Chronology of Key Events 199

Overview 200

Topical Essays The Foundations of Mathematics: Hilbert’s Formalism vs Brouwer’s Intuitionism 202

Bertrand Russell and the Paradoxes of Set Theory 204

Mathematical Logic: Proofs of Completeness and Incompleteness 205

David Hilbert Sets an Agenda for Twentieth-Century Mathematics 207

The Bourbaki School of Mathematics 210

Lebesgue’s Development of the Theories of Measure and Integration 212

Development of the Fundamental Notions of Functional Analysis 214

The Decimation of Mathematics in Hitler’s Germany 217

Operations Research 219

The Development of Computational Mathematics 221

The Origins of Set-Theoretic Topology 224

Hermann Minkowski Pioneers the Concept of a Four-Dimensional Space-Time Continuum 227

Seeking the Geometry of the Universe 229

The Organization of the Mathematics Community 230

The Establishment of the Fields Medal in Mathematics 233

Advances in Game Theory 235

Advances in the Field of Statistics 237

Emergence of Women at the Highest Levels of Mathematics 240

The Emergence of African Americans in Mathematics 243

Modern Probability As Part of Mathematics 244

Investigations into the Irrationality and Transcendence of Various Specific Numbers 247

The Thorough Axiomatization of Algebra 250

Advances in Number Theory between 1900 and 1949 252

New Levels of Abstraction: Homological Algebra and Category Theory 254

Biographical Sketches 257

Biographical Mentions 280

Bibliography of Primary Sources 296

Medicine Chronology of Key Events 297

Overview 298

Topical Essays The Development of Schools of Psychology Leads to Greater Understanding of Human Behavior 300

Advances in Identifying the Causes of Major Infectious Diseases 304

The Discovery of Vitamins and Their Relationship to Good Health 307

The Discovery and Importance of Penicillin and the Development of Sulfa Drugs 310

Salvarsan Provides a Cure for Syphilis and Ushers in the Field of Chemotherapy 313

The Development of Modern Blood Transfusions 316

The First Birth Control Clinics in America and England 318

Advances in Dentistry, 1900-1949 321

Western Medicine Re-Discovers the Ancient Chinese Herb Ma Huang 323

New Diagnostic Tests Are Developed 325

The Development of Antihistamines 328

Johannes Fibiger Induces Cancer in Lab Animals and Helps Advance Cancer Research, in Particular Leading Directly to the Study of Chemical Carcinogens 330

Introduction of Electroshock Therapy 333

Advances in Surgical Techniques 335

The Treatment of Blue Baby Syndrome 338

The Development of Modern Hearing Aids 340

Hormones and the Discovery of Insulin 344

Therapeutic Innovations Related to Respiration 346

The Impact of Radioactivity on Medicine between 1900 and 1949 349

Medical Advances During War 352

Fluoridation and the Prevention of Tooth Decay 355

Founding of Major Health Organizations 357

Aspirin 359

Biographical Sketches 362

Biographical Mentions 389

Bibliography of Primary Sources 399

Contents

1900-1949

Physical Sciences

Chronology of Key Events 401

Overview 402

Topical Essays Mass Migration of Continental European Scientists to the U.S and Elsewhere 404

The Manhattan Project and the Decision to Drop the Bomb 407

National Jewels: The Beginnings of Commercial Research Labs 413

Einstein’s Theories of Relativity 415

The Development of Quantum Mechanics 418

From an Expanding Universe to the Big Bang 420

Life Cycles of the Stars 424

The Development of Radio Astronomy 427

“The Coldest Spot on Earth.” Low Temperature Physics, Superfluidity, and the Discovery of Superconductivity 430

Models of the Atom 432

Enrico Fermi Builds the First Nuclear Reactor 435

Frederick Kipping Develops Silicones 437

The Advent and Use of Chlorination to Purify Water in Great Britain and the United States 439

Wolfgang Pauli’s Exclusion Principle 442

Achievements by Indian Physical Scientists 445

The Development of Artificial Radioactivity 447

The Use of Poison Gases in the First World War 450

The Bergen School of Dynamic Meteorology and Its Dissemination 453

The Great Barringer Meteor Crater 456

Geologist Richard Oldham’s 1906 Paper on Seismic Wave Transmission Establishes the Existence of Earth’s Core and Demonstrates the Value of Seismology for Studying the Structure of Earth’s Deep Interior 459

Finding Earth’s Age and Other Developments in Geochronology 461

Alfred Wegener Introduces the Concept of Continental Drift 463

Radar Mapping of the Solar System 466

Biographical Sketches 468

Biographical Mentions 500

Bibliography of Primary Sources 513

Technology and Invention Chronology of Key Events 515

Overview 516

Topical Essays The Development of Airships 518

Drilling for Offshore Oil 521

The Invention of the Airplane and the Rise of the Airplane Industry for Military and Civilian Purposes 523

The Soviet Union Promotes Rapid Technological Development in the Communist Ideology 527

The Development of Plastics 529

Model T: The Car for the Masses 533

Building of the Panama Canal 535

The Development of RADAR and SONAR 538

Rocketing into Space: The Beginnings of the Space Age 541

The Empire State Building: Skyscraper Symbol of America’s Power 544

The Development of Jet Engines 546

The Invention of Nylon 548

The Birth of Television 551

Computers: The Dawn of a Revolution 553

The Development of Mass Production Has a Dramatic Impact on Industry and Society 556

Helicopters: The Long Journey 558

“Mr Carmody, We Want Lights”: The Tennessee Valley Authority and Rural Electrification Under the New Deal 561

Household Work Is Transformed by Technological Developments 564

American Physicists William B Shockley, Walter H Brattain, and John Bardeen Produce the First Transistor, Initiating the Semiconductor Revolution 567

The Technology of War 569

Hydroelectricity and the “Big Dam Era” 574

Birth of the “Talkies”: The Development of Synchronized Sound for Motion Pictures 577

Women Inventors between 1900-1949: Setting the Stage for Equal Opportunity 580

The Development of the Tape Recorder 582

Biographical Sketches 584

Biographical Mentions 604

Bibliography of Primary Sources 614

General Bibliography 617

Index 621

Contents

1900-1949

The interaction of science and society is

increasingly a focal point of high schoolstudies, and with good reason: by explor-ing the achievements of science within their his-

torical context, students can better understand a

given event, era, or culture This

cross-discipli-nary approach to science is at the heart of

Sci-ence and Its Times.

Readers of Science and Its Times will find a

comprehensive treatment of the history of

sci-ence, including specific events, issues, and trends

through history as well as the scientists who set

in motion—or who were influenced by—those

events From the ancient world’s invention of the

plowshare and development of seafaring vessels;

to the Renaissance-era conflict between the

Catholic Church and scientists advocating a

sun-centered solar system; to the development of

modern surgery in the nineteenth century; and

to the mass migration of European scientists to

the United States as a result of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi

regime in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s,

science’s involvement in human progress—and

sometimes brutality—is indisputable

While science has had an enormous impact

on society, that impact has often worked in the

opposite direction, with social norms greatly

influencing the course of scientific achievement

through the ages In the same way, just as history

can not be viewed as an unbroken line of

ever-expanding progress, neither can science be seen

as a string of ever-more amazing triumphs Science

and Its Times aims to present the history of science

within its historical context—a context marked

not only by genius and stunning invention but

also by war, disease, bigotry, and persecution

Format of the Series

Science and Its Times is divided into seven

volumes, each covering a distinct time period:

Volume 1: 2000 B.C.-699 A.D.Volume 2: 700-1449

Volume 3: 1450-1699Volume 4: 1700-1799Volume 5: 1800-1899Volume 6: 1900-1949Volume 7: 1950-presentDividing the history of science according tosuch strict chronological subsets has its owndrawbacks Many scientific events—and scien-tists themselves—overlap two different timeperiods Also, throughout history it has beencommon for the impact of a certain scientificadvancement to fall much later than theadvancement itself Readers looking for infor-mation about a topic should begin their search

by checking the index at the back of each ume Readers perusing more than one volumemay find the same scientist featured in two dif-ferent volumes

vol-Readers should also be aware that many entists worked in more than one discipline dur-ing their lives In such cases, scientists may befeatured in two different chapters in the samevolume To facilitate searches for a specific per-son or subject, main entries on a given person orsubject are indicated by bold-faced page num-bers in the index

sci-Within each volume, material is dividedinto chapters according to subject area For vol-umes 5, 6, and 7, these areas are: Explorationand Discovery, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Med-icine, Physical Sciences, and Technology andInvention For volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4, readerswill find that the Life Sciences and Medicinechapters have been combined into a single sec-tion, reflecting the historical union of these dis-ciplines before 1800



Preface

Arrangement of Volume 6: 1900-1949

Volume 6 begins with two notable sections

in the frontmatter: a general introduction to ence and society during the period, and a gener-

sci-al chronology that presents key scientific eventsduring the period alongside key world historicalevents

The volume is then organized into six ters, corresponding to the six subject areas listedabove in “Format of the Series.” Within each chap-ter, readers will find the following entry types:

chap-Chronology of Key Events: Notable

events in the subject area during theperiod are featured in this section

Overview: This essay provides anoverview of important trends, issues,and scientists in the subject area duringthe period

Topical Essays: Ranging between 1,500and 2,000 words, these essays discussnotable events, issues, and trends in agiven subject area Each essay includes

a Further Reading section that pointsusers to additional sources of informa-tion on the topic, including books, arti-cles, and web sites

Biographical Sketches: Key scientistsduring the era are featured in entriesranging between 500 and 1,000 words

in length

Biographical Mentions: Additionalbrief biographical entries on notablescientists during the era

Bibliography of Primary Source

Docu-ments: These annotated bibliographic

listings feature key books and articlespertaining to the subject area

Following the final chapter are two tional sections: a general bibliography of sourcesrelated to the history of science, and a generalsubject index Readers are urged to make heavyuse of the index, because many scientists andtopics are discussed in several different entries

addi-A note should be made about the ment of individual entries within each chapter:while the long and short biographical sketchesare arranged alphabetically according to the sci-entist’s surname, the topical essays lend them-selves to no such easy arrangement Again, read-ers looking for a specific topic should consultthe index Readers wanting to browse the list ofessays in a given subject area can refer to thetable of contents in the book’s frontmatter

arrange-Additional Features

Throughout each volume readers will findsidebars whose purpose is to feature interestingevents or issues that otherwise might be over-looked These sidebars add an engaging element

to the more straightforward presentation of ence and its times in the rest of the entries Inaddition, the volume contains photographs,illustrations, and maps scattered throughout thechapters

sci-Comments and Suggestions

Your comments on this series and tions for future editions are welcome Please

sugges-write: The Editor, Science and Its Times, Gale

Group, 27500 Drake Road, Farmington Hills,

MI 48331

Preface

1900-1949

Amir Alexander

Research Fellow Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies UCLA

Amy Sue Bix

Associate Professor of History Iowa State University

Lois N Magner

Professor Emerita Purdue University

Lloyd T Ackert, Jr.

Graduate Student in the History of Science

Johns Hopkins University

Arter & Hadden LLP

Sherri Chasin Calvo

Phillip H Gochenour

Freelance Editor and Writer

Brook Ellen Hall

Professor of Biology California State University at Sacramento

Israel Kleiner

Professor of Mathematics York University

Judson Knight

Freelance Writer

Lyndall Landauer

Professor of History Lake Tahoe Community College

University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner

Division of History, Politics, and International Studies

Sue Rabbitt Roff

Cookson Senior Research Fellow Centre for Medical Education Dundee University Medical School

Keir B Sterling

Historian, U.S Army Combined Arms Support

Command Fort Lee, Virginia

A Bowdoin Van Riper

Adjunct Professor of History Southern Polytechnic State University

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Michael T Yancey

Freelance Writer

Contributors

1900-1949

The years between 1900 and 1949 were a time

of extremes that included two world wars, a

rev-olution in Russia, and the Depression in the

United States Scientific revolutions brought

exciting new knowledge but also called into

question the most basic concepts New

tech-nologies and materials provided more deadly

instruments of war but also lengthened lives and

eased the demands on raw human muscle

power Exploration in this period echoed these

extremes Since many of the easier targets had

already been reached, explorers headed for the

poles, ventured deep beneath the ocean’s

sur-face, and high into the atmosphere

Scientists also explored new frontiers, ducing new concepts while at the same time

intro-upsetting much of the perceived order by which

the natural world worked Revolutions in physics

drew an entirely new picture of the most basic

elements of physical reality Our knowledge of

the age, extent, and history of the universe, and

Earth’s place in it, shifted radically The concept

of evolution, introduced in the nineteenth

centu-ry and developed in the twentieth, had profound

implications for the nature and meaning of

human life Culturally and intellectually, these

were exhilarating but deeply unsettling times

Science provided so many answers duringthis period that scientists enjoyed increased pres-

tige, especially after the creation of the first

atom-ic weapon that effectively ended World War II In

a world that was growing increasingly secular,

sci-ence offered a source of understanding and

mean-ing; science took on questions that were once the

province of religion, such as human origins, the

creation of the universe, and the nature of

con-sciousness and behavior Scientific growth is

visi-ble in the founding of research institutes and the

growth of professional scientific associations

Looking Back to the Nineteenth Century

The rapid pace of invention that accelerated inthe twentieth century began in the nineteenth

New machines and new capabilities in nication and transportation brought large-scalesocial changes Many of the inventions of thenineteenth century followed advances in theunderstanding of electricity, thermodynamics,and the chemical properties of materials Theseadvances were part of a science that expresseditself by classifying and rationalizing the worldaround us, so as to better understand and utilizeits complexities

commu-In addition to studying physical

phenome-na, scientists explored and classified the livingworld This study of living things led to theemergence of the concept of evolution, in whichnatural variations in animals lead, through nat-ural selection, to changes that tailor animals tospecific habitats It’s no surprise that in this timewhen people’s daily lives were changing as aresult of new technologies and gadgets, the idea

of change itself, and the idea of progress toward

a future that humans can shape, became central

to Western experience

Scientific Revolutions and Developments

In 1900 scientists had identified only one atomic particle (the electron) Over the next 50years, physicists identified the other two majorsub-atomic particles (protons and neutrons) anddeveloped a surprising picture of the atom, based

sub-on the idea that the amount of energy an atomicparticle can have is limited to certain discrete val-ues, or quanta Quantum mechanics, developedindependently by Erwin Schrödinger and Wern-

er Heisenberg, plus a series of developmentsfrom Albert Einstein, including general and spe-cial relativity and the equivalence between massand energy, utterly transformed not only physics



Introduction: 1900–1949

but astronomy and chemistry, explaining atomicstructure, the properties of chemical elements,and the process of nuclear fusion that fuels thestars Furthermore, exotic concepts from quan-tum physics and relativity (such as the dualwave-particle nature of light) called into questionsuch everyday concepts as space, time, and reali-

ty, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle gested that there are inherent limits to our mea-surements of physical properties

sug-Physics was deeply affected by World War

II The Manhattan Project, an American effortthat developed the first atomic bomb, did much

to bring physics and physicists dramatically tothe forefront of public consciousness The use ofatomic bombs over the Japanese cities ofHiroshima and Nagasaki hastened the end ofWorld War II and set the stage for an arms race

in the second half of the twentieth century Thepeaceful development of nuclear power heldgreat promise toward the end of the first half ofthe twentieth century (although later develop-ments had mixed results)

Astronomers during this period resolved animportant debate about spiral nebulae, deter-mining that these were separate, distant “islanduniverses” or galaxies This shifted the MilkyWay from being the only such system in the uni-verse to being only one among many EdwinHubble discovered that other galaxies are reced-ing from us, with speeds proportional to theirdistances This was the first evidence for anexpanding universe, in which galaxies rush awayfrom each other as the result of the birth of theuniverse in an initial Big Bang

Closer to home, scientists also studied theplanets of the solar system Percival Lowell’sobservations of Mars convinced him that he hadseen evidence of life on the red planet Althoughhis perception of canals on the Martian surfacelater proved to be mistaken, his work con-tributed to a great interest in Martian and otherextraterrestrial life This interest is evident in thescience fiction of the times, including the novels

of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the novel War of the

Worlds by H G Wells When a radio script

based on this novel was presented on the air in

1938, large numbers of people mistook thebroadcast for a news report, and panic followed,illustrating the growing power of the media aswell as the hold other worlds had on the popu-lar imagination

Atomic and quantum physics providedtools that chemists used to explain the chemicalproperties of the elements and how these relate

to their places on the periodic table, continuingand refining the work done in the nineteenthcentury to organize and rationalize this science.Chemists developed new materials—for exam-ple, silicones—later widely used as lubricantsand water repellents, and built on previous dis-coveries related to radioactivity In 1927, forexample, Hermann Müller demonstrated thatgenetic mutations are simply chemical changesthat can be induced by radioactivity

Müller’s work was part of the major cal effort of this time period, understanding themechanisms behind natural selection The redis-covery of Gregor Mendel’s laws of heredity in

biologi-1900 helped biologists begin to understand thegenetic foundations of natural selection Biolo-gists also explored the role of chromosomes inheredity and advanced their understanding ofother areas such as the ways that cells and hor-mones work

Biology had a very direct impact on people’slives, as indicated by the Scopes trial in Ten-nessee in 1925 and the use of eugenics as arationale for efforts to eliminate “undesirables,”such as Germany’s 1933 Eugenic SterilizationLaw Genetics was also applied to agriculture,with the introduction of hybrids and theimprovement of animal stocks Developments inagriculture, including dam-building and irriga-tion that allowed dry lands to be cultivated,resulted in shifts in occupation and population,

as fewer farmers were able to feed more people.Science also sought to bring a rational, sys-tematic approach to the mysteries of the mind.Ivan Pavlov, B F Skinner, and other scientistsstudied behavior in animals, and some of theirdiscoveries were applied to the developingschools of psychology attempting to explainhuman behavior In addition to psychoanalysis,shock therapies, such as electroshock therapyand surgical lobotomy, were developed to treatmental illness

New Capabilities and Conveniences

Scientists’ ability to identify causes and solveproblems was especially evident in public healthduring this period Life-saving developmentsinclude the chlorination of drinking water to killdisease-causing micro-organisms, the discovery

of the specific agents that cause infectious eases such as yellow fever, whooping cough,measles, and scarlet fever, the realization thatsome diseases are caused by a vitamin deficiencyand can be treated by vitamins, the development

dis-Introduction

1900-1949

of the first antibiotics, the development of

diag-nostic tests such as the Pap test, and the

fluori-dation of water to prevent tooth decay

New machines eased some of the burdens ofmaintaining a household Women’s lives began

to change as a result of electric appliances such

as refrigerators and electric irons; the first

microwave was patented in 1945 New materials

found a variety of uses and also made life easier

Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, was patented

in 1907 Advances in the understanding of

poly-mers, an effort that began in the 1920s, led to

increased use of plastics after World War II In

the 1930s nylon became the first successful

syn-thetic fiber product, introducing clothing that

was easier to maintain and less dependent on

natural sources such as silk

Transportation

The first powered flight at the beginning of the

century heralded an era of rapid developments

in transportation Passenger travel in dirigibles

ended due to the potential for disaster,

demon-strated in the Hindenburg explosion in 1936 The

patenting of the jet engine in 1930, however,

helped make airplanes increasingly important

for carrying passengers and goods, as aviation

progressed from its adventurous early days

marked by the daring flights of Charles

Lind-bergh, Amelia Earhart, and others Aviation was

in its infancy in World War I, but by World War

II air power played an important role, making

possible the fire-bombing of cities and providing

a way to deliver the first atomic bombs

Humanity looked to the skies in other ways

as well, with the first liquid-fueled rocket,

launched by Robert Goddard in 1926 Although

one of the earliest applications of rocketry was

warfare, the German V-2 rockets, used against

England during the war, were later the basis for

early experiments in space-going rockets

devel-oped in the United States

Everyday life was overwhelmingly affected

by the automobile, which became much more

widely used due to Henry Ford’s development of

the Model T, the first car to be mass-produced

on an assembly line Relatively cheap and easily

available, it launched a series of changes that

transformed modern life, making the United

States in particular a much more mobile country,with cities and lifestyles increasingly builtaround the personal car

Mass Production and Mass Communication

Mass production and mass communication hadtheir beginnings in assembly lines like Ford’sand the introduction of radio, television, andmovies From the first regular radio broadcasts

in Pittsburgh in 1920, to the first regular TVbroadcasts by the BBC, to the earliest regularlyscheduled U.S TV in 1941, mass media becameincreasingly available in the home Popular massculture began to develop in this age when moreand more people were exposed to the same newsand entertainment content and the same con-sumer goods Advances in transportation com-bined with these developments to make theworld seem a smaller place, well on its way tothe global culture of the close of the century

The Legacy of Science: 1900-1949

Building on the science and technology of thisperiod, and funded by post-war affluence, sci-ence introduced a dizzying array of new tech-nologies that have wrought radical socialchanges While many new technologies (forexample, nuclear power and the creation of arti-ficial materials such as plastics) were originallygreeted enthusiastically, during the second half

of the century the negative side of a highly nical culture became more evident, and sciencewas both castigated as the cause of these ills andhailed as the means for dealing with increasingpopulation, dwindling natural resources, andpollution The physical sciences were prominent

tech-in the immediate post-war period, as the spacerace followed up on the rocketry work of WorldWar II The biological sciences attained moreprominence later in the century as advances ingenetics, diagnostic and surgical procedures,and drug therapies improved the length andquality of life Mass media, combined with com-puting and satellite technologies, continued todevelop far beyond their beginnings in the firsthalf of the century As the twenty-first centurybegins, the networked world we now knowgrows and changes daily

MARY HROVAT

Introduction

1900-1949

1900 Austrian-American physician Karl

Landsteiner discovers the four blood types

(A, B, AB, and O), thus making possible

safe and practical transfusions

1903 Using a craft he designed with his

brother Wilbur, Orville Wright makes the

first controlled and powered flight in

his-tory, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

1905 Albert Einstein publishes his first

papers on the special theory of relativity

(including the famous equation E = mc2),

which he will follow up with his general

theory of relativity in 1916

1908 Henry Ford designs his Model T,

which will become the first automobile

produced by assembly-line techniques; by

the time of its discontinuation 20 years

later, Ford will have sold more than 15

million Model Ts

1914-18 World War I claims more than

10 million lives; ends the German,

Austri-an, RussiAustri-an, and Ottoman empires; and

ushers in the atmosphere of

disillusion-ment that characterizes the early twentieth

century

1915-22 Ottoman Turkey makes

system-atic efforts to kill off its Armenian

minori-ty, leaving some 1.5 million Armenians

dead

1917 Seizure of power in Russia by the

Bolsheviks under V I Lenin leads to the

establishment of Soviet Communist

totali-tarianism

1918-20 A worldwide outbreak of

influenza, whose spread is hastened by the

movement of populations associated withthe war, claims more than 20 million lives

1920 Building on a quarter-century oftechnological development that includesthe creation of wireless telegraphy byGuglielmo Marconi (1896) and LeeDeForest’s triode amplifying tube (1907),KDKA in Pittsburgh begins the world’sfirst regular radio broadcasts

1920s Innovations in the arts: cubism,surrealism, and Dadaism; jazz and theImpressionist music of Debussy and Ravel;

James Joyce’s Ulysses, Marcel Proust’s

Remembrance of Things Past, and T S.

Eliot’s The Waste Land.

1922 Benito Mussolini takes power inItaly, introducing a new form of totalitari-anism to compete with Communism: Fas-cism

1922 Howard Carter, a British gist, discovers the tomb of Tutankhamen,the only pharaoh’s grave not looted bygrave robbers

Egyptolo-1927 Charles A Lindbergh becomes thefirst man to complete a solo, non-stopflight across the Atlantic Ocean

1927 Werner Karl Heisenberg, a Germanphysicist, postulates his principle of inde-terminacy, which states that it is impossi-ble to determine accurately and simultane-ously two variables of an electron

1928 Scottish bacteriologist AlexanderFleming discovers penicillin, the first anti-bacterial “wonder drug.”

1928 In writing The Theory of Games and

Economic Behavior (published 1944), John



Chronology: 1900–1949

von Neumann and Oskar Morgensternestablish the principles of game theory,which will come to prominence in the lat-ter half of the twentieth century.

1929 American astronomer Edwin ble formulates a law, named after him,which marks the beginning of the theory

Hub-of the expanding universe

1929 The crash of the U.S stock marketbegins the Great Depression, whichspreads from the United States to Europewith the failure of Austria’s Credit-Anstalt

in 1931

1929 Josef Stalin emerges as the dictator

of Soviet Russia; launches a brutal tivization program; and begins vanquish-ing all opposition through extermination

collec-of “rich peasants” (1929-34), man-madefamine (1932-33), and party purges(1936-38)

1931 Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödelpresents his incompleteness theorem,which states that within any rigidly logicalmathematical system, there are proposi-tions that cannot be proved or disproved

by the axioms within that system

1933 Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor ofGermany; Nazi persecution of Jews andothers begins immediately, and culminates

in the “Final Solution” during World War

II, when more than 6 million are dered in death camps

mur-1936-39 A civil war in Spain becomes afocal point for international tensions, pit-ting a regime allied with Soviet Russiaagainst a force supplied by Nazi Germanyand Fascist Italy

1937 Japan, now under the control of amilitarist regime, invades China, which istorn by civil war between Nationalist andCommunist forces

1939-45 World War II claims an lable death toll; ushers in the nuclear age;establishes the United States and SovietUnion as superpowers; and brings aboutthe end of European colonial empires inAfrica and Asia

incalcu-1944 Canadian scientists OswaldTheodore Avery, Maclyn McCarty, andColin Munro Macleod discover that DNAcarries a genetic “blueprint.”

1945 Years of atomic research culminate

in the destruction of two Japanese cities,Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by U.S atomicbombs—the first and only use of nuclearpower as a weapon—which leads to theJapanese surrender and the end of WorldWar II

Chronology

1900-1949

Exploration and Discovery

1900 Archaeologist Arthur Evans

uncov-ers the remains of the previously

unidenti-fied Minoan civilization at Knossos in

Crete

1909 Americans Robert E Peary and

Matthew A Henson become the first men

to reach the North Pole

1911 American Hiram Bingham

discov-ers the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in

the Andes

1911 Norwegian Roald Amundsen

be-comes the first man to reach the South

Pole

1922 Howard Carter, a British

Egyptolo-gist, discovers the tomb of Tutankhamen,

the only pharaoh’s grave not looted by

grave robbers

1927 Charles A Lindbergh becomes the

first man to complete a solo, non-stop

flight across the Atlantic Ocean

1931 Aboard a pressurized balloon, guste Piccard and Paul Kipfer become thefirst men to enter the stratosphere

Au-1933 Wiley Post, an American aviator,makes the first-ever solo flight around theworld

1934 In their submersible bathysphere,Charles William Beebe and Otis Bartondive to a record-breaking depth of 3,028feet (923 m)

1940 Prehistoric cave paintings are covered at Lascaux, France

dis-1947 Chuck Yeager, an American pilotflying a Bell X-1 aircraft, becomes the firsthuman being to break the speed of sound

1947 At Qumran, Jordan, two Bedouinboys discover a set of first-century Jewishreligious manuscripts that come to beknown as the Dead Sea Scrolls

Exploration and Discovery 1900-1949

One of the driving forces behind explorationand discovery is the overwhelming curiosity ofcertain men and women who are not content tosit at home with unanswered questions aboutEarth’s mysteries Throughout the ages, men andwomen have journeyed through jungles andforests, across scorched deserts and icy tundras,over mountains, along rivers, and across oceans

in a quest for answers about geography, peoples,and ancient history

In the nineteenth century, historic oceanvoyages, epic adventures, and exhaustive expe-ditions rapidly expanded national boundariesand imperial domains as well as scientificknowledge in the fields of botany, zoology, or-nithology, marine biology, geology, and culturalanthropology By the end of the nineteenth cen-tury, few areas of the world remained undiscov-ered and unexplored by humans

Two of the less explored regions of theworld at the turn of the twentieth century wereSouth America and Central Asia In expeditions

to South America from 1906-12, British armyofficer Percy Fawcett (1867-1925?) mapped Bo-livia’s boundaries with Brazil, Paraguay, andPeru, explored uncharted interior regions south

of the Amazon, and discovered the source of theRio Verde before mysteriously disappearing inthe Mato Grosso region of Brazil From 1913-14,former American president Theodore Roosevelt(1858-1919) and Brazilian Cândido Rondĩn(1865-1958) led a mapping expedition down atotally unknown Brazilian river that Rondĩnchristened the Rio da Dúvida (River of Doubt),later rechristened the Rio Roosevelt

From 1893 to 1933, Swedish geographerand explorer Sven Hedin (1865-1952) made sig-nificant expeditions to Central Asia, one of themost mysterious regions of the world—a waste-land of deserts and mountains from Afghanistan

to Tibet to Mongolia and Siberia In 1931 Frenchautomobile-manufacturer Citroën, who hadsponsored expeditions to the Sahara Desert in

1922 and from Algeria to Madagascar in 1924,conducted a retracing of the ancient Silk Roadfollowed by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century

At the beginning of the twentieth century,the greatest ambition of many explorers was to

be the first to reach the North and South

Poles—literally the last places on Earth to be ited by man The most famous of these explorerswas Robert Peary (1856-1920), who had facedthe icy Arctic winds eight times only to lose tothe elements In 1909, at age 52, he set out forhis ninth and last try, and finally reached theNorth Pole on April 6th, along with MatthewHenson (1866-1955), his famous African-Amer-ican companion who had been with him on allprevious attempts, and four Eskimos His ac-complishment fired the race for the South Polebetween Norwegian Roald Amundsen (1872-1928), who reached the pole in December 1911,and British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott(1868-1912), who reached the pole in January1912—second by just weeks—and died tragical-

vis-ly in a blizzard on the homeward journey.Significant scientific exploration of the Arc-tic and Antarctic continued throughout thetwentieth century During the years between thetwo World Wars, numerous expeditions toAntarctica traveled overland onto the centralplateau, mapping further areas of the coast andgathering much valuable scientific data Howev-

er, the most significant technological advance fortwentieth-century exploration was the invention

of the airplane (a technology whose progresswas aided by the discovery of vast fields of fossilfuel in the Middle East in the early 1900s) Theintroduction of the airplane drastically trans-formed the technique of polar exploration Fromthe 1920s through the late 1940s, AdmiralRichard E Byrd (1888-1957) revolutionizedAntarctic exploration by the use of aircraft, espe-cially as part of Operation High Jump, a UnitedStates Naval expedition he commanded from1946-47 Byrd was also the first to fly over boththe North and South Poles in May 1926 and No-vember 1929, respectively

From the moment Orville (1871-1948) andWilbur (1867-1912) Wright put their plane inthe air at Kitty Hawk in 1903, the competition

to be the first, the fastest, and to fly higher andfarther was on The science of flight—with itscorresponding technological, scientific, and mil-itary applications—rapidly advanced in the firsthalf of the twentieth century World War Ibrought enormous advances in the field of avia-tion Pilots took to the air and became heroes to

a fascinated public Men such as the Wright

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

& Discovery

1900-1949

brothers and Charles Lindbergh (1901-1974)

were celebrated in books, songs, and films

Women like Elise Deroche (1889-1919), the first

licensed female pilot, and Amelia Earhart

(1898-1937), the first woman to fly solo across both

the Atlantic and the Pacific, were also a part of

the excitement surrounding the airplane

In addition to aviation, twentieth-centuryscientists and engineers designed vessels that

could venture to the absolute heights of the

at-mosphere and the depths of the sea In 1931

Au-guste Piccard (1884-1963) and Paul Kipfer were

the first to reach the stratosphere in a balloon—

reaching 51,762 feet (15,781 m) before returning

to the Earth’s surface Other adventurers such as

William Beebe (1877-1962) and Otis Barton were

the first to explore the ocean depths In 1934

Beebe and Barton took their “bathysphere” to a

record depth of 3,028 feet (923 m) to study

deep-sea marine life near Bermuda Later, in 1960,

Jacques Piccard (1922- ), son of Auguste Piccard,

would pilot his bathyscaphe Trieste, a redesign of

his father’s balloon gondola, to a record depth of

35,800 feet (10,912 m) in the Mariana Trench,

nearly 7 miles (11.3 km) down

While some twentieth-century explorers setout to unravel Earth’s mysteries, others were fas-

cinated by the mysteries of mankind and human

civilization Beginning in 1900, several

momen-tous archaeological expeditions returned

li-braries of new data and priceless artifacts to

mu-seums, universities, and collectors around the

world In 1900 Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941)

began 31 years of systematic excavations of

Knossos, the Great Palace of Minos on Crete,

originally discovered in 1878 A year later, in

1901, a team of French archaeologists

discov-ered a black stone pillar in Iraq bearing the Code

of Hammurabi, one of the earliest known

writ-ten compilations of law Then, in 1907, while

tracing ancient caravan routes between China

and the West, Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943)

un-covered frescoes, statues, and a vast collection of

priceless manuscripts in Ch’ien Fo-Tung, the

Cave of the Thousand Buddhas (During the

next 25 years, Stein made several more journeys

through Central Asian deserts, each producing arich harvest of archaeological treasures.) In 1911Yale University professor Hiram Bingham (1875-1956) discovered the ruins of the great Inca city

of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes In 1922one of the most astonishing archaeological dis-coveries of all time was made by Howard Carter(1873-1939) and Lord George Carnarvon(1866-1923), who unearthed the tomb of KingTutankhamen, the only tomb of an Egyptianpharaoh to survive essentially intact over thecenturies since its closing A total of 3,500 arti-facts were removed from the tomb

Most of the archaeological discoveries of theearly twentieth century were made by historians,anthropologists, and archaeologists who hadspent years examining the past civilizations forwhich they were searching However, in Septem-ber 1940 four boys exploring caves in the woodsnear Lascaux in southern France stumbled uponPaleolithic engravings, drawings, and paintings

of figures and animals that dated to about15,000 B.C Then, in Jordan in 1947, two youngBedouins looking for a goat accidentally discov-ered a cave containing the Dead Sea Scrolls, over

800 manuscripts written between 250 B.C and

A.D 68, perhaps the most important ical discovery of the century

archaeolog-The first half of the twentieth century sawthe last of the truly terrestrial explorers Building

on the advancements in technology up to 1950,science fiction became science fact in the laterpart of the twentieth century as humans finallyrealized the dream of visiting the Moon Earthexploration became three-dimensional—into theoceans and skies, under the icecaps, and downinto the Earth’s crust Fascinating archaeologicaldiscoveries also refocused attention on man’s an-cient past, the subject of intensive study duringthe second half of the century Thanks to thetechnologies developed in the first half of thecentury, explorers were able to go where previ-ously only books and dreams could take them

The quest for answers to the last of Earth’s teries extended to the universe beyond Earth

mys-ANN T MARSDEN

The Palace at Knossos: The Archaeological Discovery of Minoan Civilization

Overview

Knossos (also spelled Cnossus) is located 3.1miles (5 km) inland from the northern coast ofCrete near the present-day town center of Her-aklion (Iraklion) Known in Greek mythology asthe capitol of King Minos and the site of theMinotaur’s labyrinth, Knossos was the center ofMinoan civilization, the earliest of all Aegeancivilizations

Greek myth and epic poetry attested to theexistence of an ancient city called Knossos onCrete Later inhabitants of the region oftenfound artifacts of previous civilizations whenthey tilled their fields Originally attracted by thediscovery of stones bearing an unknown script,British linguist and archaeologist Sir ArthurEvans (1851-1941) first visited Crete in 1894hoping to decipher the script and link the Cre-tan tablets with similar artifacts of the recentlydiscovered Mycenaean civilization in Greece

When Evans published his research a year

later in Prae-Phoenician Script, he acknowledged

that the Cretan pictorial script, and a later linearscript he named Linear A, were that of anotherculture Only one script, Linear B, was found tohave a direct link with Mycenae Three years later,Evans began a survey of the Knossos site that wasbased on studies of myth, language, art, and ma-terial culture He spent the next 31 years excavat-ing the archaeological site, work that revealed apalace and surrounding network of buildings thatwere the capitol of the Bronze Age culture thatdominated the Aegean from 1600 to 1400 B.C

Background

The first person to excavate in the area was anIraklionian merchant and amateur archaeologist,Minos Kalokairinos He had already uncoveredtwo storerooms by 1878, when the site’slandowners forced him to stop his investigation

of the ruins In 1900 Evans began a systematicexcavation of the site After expanding uponKalokairinos’s initial dig, Evans discovered acomplex network of corridors and rooms thatreminded him of the legendary labyrinth of KingMinos Evans accordingly named the palace,Knossos, after that of Minos

As the ongoing excavations yielded dence of distinct pottery, artwork, and architec-

evi-ture, Evans realized that he had indeed ered a civilization distinct from that of the re-cently discovered Mycenae This Cretan civiliza-tion became known as the Minoan

discov-Recognizing the site’s uniqueness, Evansrapidly expanded his excavations The intricate,multistoried palace he unearthed spanned anarea of 22,000 square miles (56,980 sq km).Each section had a specific use The westernarea, with large rooms and a theater, was builtfor administrative and court functions The east-ern area consisted of smaller rooms with veran-das and numerous interior frescos characteristic

of Minoan art, many portraying men andwomen leaping bulls These frescoes, along withseveral artifacts from cultures foreign to Crete,suggest that the Minoan civilization at its zenithwas a highly developed society that routinelytraded with its Mediterranean neighbors.Archaeological evidence also suggests thatthis “Great Palace of Minos,” as Evans called it,was destroyed by fire in 1400 B.C Around thesame time, the political center of Aegean civiliza-tion shifted to Mycenae As a result, the palace atKnossos was not rebuilt to its previous form, al-though small-scale inhabitation of the site con-tinued in subsequent centuries By 1903 Evanshad unearthed nearly all of the palace structureand survey work began on the surrounding area.Soon after the large palace had been exca-vated and mapped, Evans and his team discov-ered that it was not the only structure that hadbeen built upon the site Below the Palace ofMinos lay the ruins of yet another, earlier palacethat had a simpler form and consisted of a series

of structures surrounding a rectangular court Ithad been built around 2000 B.C and destroyed

by earthquake, according to Evans’s hypothesis,some 300 years later

Evans developed a chronology for the siteusing a complex pottery sequence, which he es-tablished by associating types of pot shards, orsmall fragments of pottery, with Egyptian orMycenaean trade goods and other artifacts thathad been more concretely dated Through thiswork, Evans realized that the Minoan civiliza-tion had existed within the chronological con-text of the larger Aegean civilization He contin-ued to dig below the first palace structure in the

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

hope of finding some proof of earlier

inhabita-tion on the site

Excavations below the Bronze Age strata vealed that the area had been inhabited as far

re-back as the Neolithic period (6000 B.C and

per-haps even earlier.) The excavated Neolithic

lev-els at Knossos are still among the deepest in

Eu-rope Archaeological survey of the upper strata

of the Neolithic site revealed artifacts such as

gold jewelry, glazed pottery, and bronze A

prepalace structure from 3000 B.C was also

identified, thus making the Early Minoan Period

contemporary with the emergence of the Early

Bronze Age in the Aegean

Impact

Evans’s discoveries in Crete were a major

influ-ence on the field of linguistics He published the

first study on the Minoan scripts, but it was not

until English architect and cryptographer

Michael Ventris (1922-1956) deciphered Linear

B in 1952 that the approximate relationships of

the different scripts were known Ventris

identi-fied the Minoan Linear B as an early form of

Greek that dated as far back as 1400 B.C.—

roughly contemporary with the events depicted

in the epic poems of Homer Though the

pho-netic sounds depicted in the Minoan Linear A

are decipherable from Linear B, the actual

lan-guage represented by Linear A is unknown How

the Minoan pictorial, or hieroglyphic, scriptidentified by Evans is related to the linear scripts

as well remains unknown This linguistic nection offered further proof that the Minoanand Mycenaean were among the ancestral civi-lizations of Greek and later Western civilization

con-Evans’s archaeological research at Knossosalso provided new insight into the technology ofurban planning For example, the Palace ofMinos at Knossos had an elaborate system ofdrains, ducts, and pipes that brought a watersupply to the community and improved its sani-tation, innovations once thought only to haveemerged in later, more advanced Greek andRoman civilizations The palace also containedworkshops and massive storage compartmentsfor agricultural products, and the urban areaaround the palace was connected to outlyingtowns and ports by a network of paved roads

Thus, Knossos was not just a ceremonial palace,but a vibrant working city with seemingly mod-ern amenities

In addition, the discovery and excavations ofKnossos and Mycenae added an historical and cul-tural frame through which to view Greek mytho-logical literature These ancient myths, if notwholly reliable, could be corroborated with newlyfound physical evidence to offer an additional di-mension of understanding and contextual insightinto the history and society of the Greeks

In 1901 a team of French archaeologists ered a black stone pillar bearing the Code ofHammurabi Inscribed in Babylon over 3,700years ago, it is one of the earliest known compi-lations of law Almost half a century after its dis-covery, Bedouin shepherds found a collection ofancient scrolls stored in jars and hidden away in

discov-a cdiscov-ave nediscov-ar the Dediscov-ad Sediscov-a Eventudiscov-ally more thdiscov-an

800 manuscripts were discovered in the area,most of which were fragmentary They werewritten between about 250 B.C and A.D 68, andprovide unique insight into the time and placefrom which both rabbinic Judaism and Chris-tianity emerged

Background

The civilizations of the ancient Middle East had

an immense impact on world history In fact,history itself may be said to have begun in the

“fertile crescent” of Mesopotamia It was there

Several later scholars have disputed some ofEvans’s earlier conclusions More recent excava-tions brought new evidence to light that suggestsflaws in the pottery sequence that Evans devel-oped Advances in archaeological dating tech-niques, most notably the advent of radiocarbon(C-14) dating, have helped refine the establishedchronology of Knossos Scholars also hesitate torely on mythological explanations for the politicalstructure of Knossos Though there is evidencethat Knossos was ruled by an individual, the ar-chaeological record yields few clues about thegovernmental structure of Minoan civilization

Though Evans was one of the pioneers ofscientific excavation, his preservation methodsremain controversial As a greater portion of thepalace grounds was excavated, questions arose ofhow best to protect and preserve the structure,art, and artifacts that were exposed In the laterphase of his excavations, Evans decided to recon-struct part of the palace His reconstruction ofpart of the Palace at Knossos used contemporarybuilding materials such as reinforced concrete,lead paints, and plasters This method of preser-vation and reproduction received considerable

that writing emerged among the Sumerians, wholived in the world’s first cities more than 5,000years ago With writing came the ability torecord business transactions, codify laws and re-ligion, and chronicle events Writing provides ameasure of immortality, as it makes known thenames and exploits of people who movedthrough history thousands of years before us.One of the prominent figures we know offrom ancient writings is King Hammurabi, whoascended the throne of Babylon in about 1792

B.C By this time, Mesopotamia had experienced

a number of invasions and migrations from rounding areas, but the more advanced localculture, based on Sumerian civilization, re-mained dominant Many of the newcomers be-longed to nomadic tribes, speaking Semitic lan-guages with origins in the Arabian peninsula.Hammurabi was a member of one such group,the Amorites The language of his kingdom wasAkkadian, a Semitic tongue related to Hebrewand Arabic Hammurabi was arguably the great-

sur-criticism because it combined ancient artifactsand modern building materials that were foreign

to Minoan construction practices Among ern archaeologists, the reconstruction of archaeo-logical ruins has largely fallen out of favor.Regardless of modern questions surround-ing his research at Knossos, Evans is still widelyadmired as an astute scholar and pioneering ar-chaeologist Knossos remains an active archaeo-logical site and excavations still continue today

mod-ADRIENNE WILMOTH LERNER

Further Reading

Chadwick, John The Decipherment of Linear B

Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Farnoux, Alexandre Knossos: Searching for the Legendary

Palace of King Minos Translated by David J Baker.

New York: Harry N Abrams, 1996.

Hamilton, Edith Mythology New York: Warner Books,

1999.

Woodard, Roger D Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer:

A Linguistic Interpretation of the Origin of the Greek phabet and the Continuity of Ancient Greek Literacy Ox-

Al-ford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

Ancient Writings Shed Light on Past Civilizations

est king ever to rule Babylonia He transformed a

beleaguered city-state into a large empire Arts,

sciences, commerce, and government all

pros-pered during his reign

In 1901 a team of French archaeologistsunder the direction of Jacques de Morgan

(1857-1924) was excavating the town of Susa

(the biblical Shushan) at the foot of the Zagros

Mountains in Persia They came upon a 7-foot

(2.13 m) tall black basalt pillar with almost

4,000 lines of inscriptions in the wedge-shaped

cuneiform script of Mesopotamia When the text

was translated by the Dominican friar and

Ori-entalist Jean-Vincent Scheil, it was found to be a

compilation of 282 laws Scholars knew of older

Sumerian legal codes, including the laws of

Esh-nunna and the even more ancient laws of

Ur-Nammu, dating from around 2,100 B.C., but the

Code of Hammurabi was the most complete ing that had ever been found The column is be-lieved to have once rested in the center of Baby-lon’s temple of Marduk, the national god,whence it was carried off to Persia as booty bythe invading Elamites Today it is exhibited inthe Louvre museum in Paris

list-The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrollswas very different Rather than a team of archae-ologists, the discoverers were a pair of youngBedouins looking for a lost goat In a cave nes-tled among cliffs above the Dead Sea, 13 miles(21 km) east of Jerusalem, they found seven an-cient scrolls hidden away in tall clay jars Duringthe 1950s, archaeologists and Bedouin tribes-men alike scoured the area for more manu-scripts Eventually about 25,000 fragments werefound, some no bigger than a postage stamp Al-

together more than 800 manuscripts were atleast partially pieced together Meanwhile, exca-vations continued at the nearby site of Qumran,

as scholars attempted to understand the Jewishsect that had hidden this library away

Impact

Scholars studying the Code of Hammurabiquickly noticed many similarities to the Mosaiclaws recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, both inform and in content In addition, a relief carving

at the top of the pillar from Susa showedShamash, the Babylonian god of justice, dictat-ing the laws to Hammurabi The scene is remi-niscent of Moses receiving the Ten Command-ments, which were also carved in stone

Such echoes can be explained by the ian influence both on later civilizations ofMesopotamia and on Hebrew culture andthought For example, some of the Creation ac-counts in the Hebrew scriptures closely parallelMesopotamian writings, such as the Epic of Gil-gamesh Abraham, whom the Jewish and Arabpeoples regard as their common patriarch, is be-lieved to have been one of a tribe of Semitic no-mads living in the Mesopotamian city of Ur It wasfrom there that the Hebrews migrated westward toCanaan In their travels around the Mediterraneanarea, and especially through the influence of theBible, they helped make Sumerian culture one ofthe foundation stones of the Western world

Sumer-Like the laws of the Hebrews, the Code ofHammurabi bears the marks of both the Sumer-ian legal codes and the tribal customs of theirSemitic adopters From the vantage point of asociety that takes the Bill of Rights for granted,even while arguing over its interpretation, theseancient legal systems seem extremely primitive

The criminal law in the Code of Hammurabi, for

example, was based on the principle of lex

talio-nis, or the law of retaliation This is familiar from

the Hebrew scriptures as “an eye for an eye, atooth for a tooth.” However, it is important torealize that such formulations, by setting a limit

to retaliation, were a major advance over ing feuds to continue indefinitely

allow-We also tend to forget how recently we rived at our own civil rights-based concept ofthe rule of law The basics of Hammurabi’s crimi-nal code, complete with trial by physical ordealand a hair-raising catalog of execution meth-ods—drowning, burning, hanging, impaling—

ar-for a variety of offenses, held sway in Europeuntil the eighteenth century Many of the laws,

criminal and otherwise, survived to influence lamic jurisprudence as well

Is-The entire concept of a legal code was madenecessary by cities in which people lived in closequarters Laws allowed the existence of an or-dered society In addition to the criminal code,the laws of Hammurabi dealt with commerce,the treatment of slaves and other workers, andfamily relations They assumed the division ofsociety into three social classes, each with itsown rights and responsibilities Like the laws ofMoses, they reflect the subordinate status ofwomen in the ancient Middle East even whileproviding some measure of protection for wid-ows and orphans The inscriptions found at Susarefer to another copy, and additional fragments

of a similar pillar have been discovered, as well

as copies of the laws on clay tablets at Nineveh.The repetition suggests a concerted attempt tostandardize the legal system across Hammurabi’skingdom This effort may have been prompted

by a desire to assimilate recently conquered ritories into the empire

ter-The impact of the discovery of the Dead Seascrolls was even greater than that of the Code ofHammurabi It was perhaps the most importantarchaeological discovery of the twentieth centu-

ry The manuscripts include biblical texts, ously unknown psalms, commentaries, laws andliturgies, and elaborations of biblical stories.While some of the material was actually com-posed in the earliest days of Israelite history, thetexts were written onto the scrolls between thethird century B.C and the first century A.D Thesudden appearance of a large number of textsdating from a time when great changes were oc-curring in Judaism, and shortly before the emer-gence of Christianity, was unprecedented in Bib-lical scholarship

previ-Controversy soon erupted over who was tohave access to the scrolls The manuscripts weremostly in Hebrew, and the remainder were inAramaic, a closely related language commonlyspoken in the Jewish community 2,000 yearsago and still used in some Jewish prayers andtexts So the more-or-less intact scrolls, of whichthere were about a dozen, could be read withoutmuch difficulty In 1958, they were published byIsraeli and American scholars However, thebulk of the material was fragmentary, and had to

be pieced together like a collection of jigsawpuzzles In order to accomplish this, all the frag-ments needed to end up in the same place.With an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem act-ing as a middleman, the fragments found their

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

way from their Bedouin discoverers to what was

then called the Palestine Archaeological Museum

in east Jerusalem At that time the Old City of

Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan, and it was

under Jordanian auspices that a team of

interna-tional scholars were assembled

Because both Jordan and the president ofthe museum were hostile to the state of Israel at

that time, no Jews were permitted to participate

in the study of these Jewish documents Most of

the team consisted of Catholic priests, who

ac-complished the impressive feat of arranging,

de-ciphering, and transcribing the many thousands

of fragments over the course of about seven

years beginning in 1953 Since the scrolls date

from 250 B.C to A.D 68, the Catholic scholars

were naturally most interested in the extent to

which the texts anticipated or depicted the

events recounted in the New Testament,

specifi-cally the life and ministry of Jesus

Unfortunately, the team refused to releasethe text of the fragmentary scrolls, and this

caused a bitter academic scandal The

informa-tion void was filled with angry speculainforma-tion by

excluded scholars and sensational conjecture by

the media Many suggested that the largely

Catholic team was not releasing the material

be-cause of content that in some way conflicted

with the Christian faith However, scholarly

tra-dition held that those working on an ancient

text controlled access to it until they published

it, and the tradition specified no time limit After

1987, a few Jewish researchers were finally

ad-mitted to the team, but access remained

con-fined to this inner circle At last, after a 30-year

struggle, the “secret” texts were published in

1991, and their study has become an academic

discipline in its own right

The scrolls tell us a great deal about daism at a time of great social and religious up-

Ju-heaval They date from a time when traditional

Jews felt threatened by Hellenistic influence The

Greek way of life had been introduced to the

Middle East after much of it was conquered by

Alexander in 332 B.C When the scrolls were

written, the Second Temple still stood in

Jerusalem, but was soon to be destroyed by other wave of conquerors, the Romans The syn-agogue-centered, rabbinical religion beginning

an-to emerge was that which would sustain theJewish people during their long exile The “offi-cial,” or canonical version of the Bible was notyet established, and slightly different versions ofits various books were still in circulation Jewishsects, such as the one centered at Qumran, ex-perimented with ways of living in the world thatwas changing around them

Contrary to some of the sensationalist counts that circulated before their public release,the scrolls do not mention Jesus, nor are theythe documents of an early Christian sect

ac-Nonetheless, they remain important to tians as well as Jews Most Christian scholarsagree that, in order to understand the life andteachings of Jesus, and the rise of the Christianmovement, it is necessary to understand the reli-gious and social context in which these eventsoccurred The Dead Sea scrolls, in illuminatingthe Jewish culture out of which Jesus and hismessage came, have much to tell New Testamentscholars Many are choosing to learn Hebrewand Aramaic as a result

Chris-Ancient writings like the Code of murabi and the Dead Sea Scrolls provide aunique view of the cultural developments andhistorical events that have shaped the world Inlearning about them, we learn about the origins

Ham-of our own civilization and way Ham-of life

SHERRI CHASIN CALVO

Further Reading

Covensky, Milton The Ancient Near Eastern Tradition.

New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

Honour, Alan Cave of Riches: The Story of the Dead Sea

Scrolls New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956.

Schiffman, Lawrence H Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994.

Shanks, Hershel The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea

Scrolls New York: Random House, 1998.

Time-Life Books Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings

Alexan-dria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1995.

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

The Northwest Passage, Sought by Europeans for 400 Years, Is Found and Traversed by Ship by Roald Amundsen

Overview

Europeans searched for 400 years for a passagethrough North America that would take them tothe fabled lands of the Orient Their searchesmet with little success The first man to take asailing ship from the Atlantic to the PacificOcean through this fabled passage was RoaldAmundsen (1872-1928) of Norway in 1903-06

By then, Europeans had found other ways to get

to China and southeast Asia, and entrepreneursand traders were no longer interested in thispassage Nonetheless, Amundsen’s voyage was aculmination of human effort as well as a signal

of the new understanding of the lands at thenorthern end of the earth

Background

The 1492 discovery by Christopher Columbus(1451-1506) of new land masses unknown to theEuropeans created a problem that was not solvedfor over 400 years Columbus refused to admitthat he had not reached India, and he thoughtthat China was just on the other side of the land

he did find Subsequent explorers tried to find away through or around these two massive conti-nents that lay between Europe and the Orient

It is ironic that America was discovered byaccident and, when found, a great deal of effortwas expended to find a way through or around

it Europeans wanted to reach India and China

to trade for the gold, silver, spices, brocades, andsilks that the nations of the Orient were reputed

to have Columbus’s fourth voyage in 1502 cused on finding a way through the continent

fo-He did not find it The Spanish claimed much ofthe southern continent, but English and Frenchmerchants were more interested in passingthrough or around this obstacle Explorationsfanned out north and south with the hopes offinding a bay, a river, or an inlet that would takethem all the way through the continent andshorten the trip to the Orient Riches awaitedthe person who found it

Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (1475-1519) was part

of a Spanish expedition to Venezuela in 1501 Heeventually helped found the new settlement ofDarièn on the isthmus of what is now Panama,and became its governor In 1513 he crossed the

isthmus, climbed to the top of a mountain, and

discovered a huge ocean, which he called the Mar

del Sur (South Sea) which he claimed for Spain.

(Seven years later it was renamed the PacificOcean by Ferdinand Magellan.) This exciting dis-covery, however, did nothing to help ships getfrom the Atlantic to the newly discovered Pacific,even though the land was only 130 miles wide.Voyages of discovery were soon sent out to find anew way to the Orient Among these were Ferdi-nand Magellan (c 1480-1521), sent by Portugal in

1520 He found a southern, very difficult passagethrough South America, now called the Straits ofMagellan It was the only way around the conti-nent for centuries Magellan was the first to sailacross the Pacific Ocean and around the world SirFrancis Drake (1540?-1596) of England was look-ing for a western outlet for the Northwest Passage

in 1577 when he also traversed the Pacific Oceanand went around the world

During these and subsequent voyages toSouth America, sailors realized that there was noeasy way through the huge land mass That leftNorth America to explore in the hopes of find-ing a Northwest Passage In 1524 Giovanni daVerrazzano (1485-1528), sailing for France, fol-lowed the North American coast as far north asMaine In 1535 Jacques Cartier (1491-1557),also of France, reached Canada and thought hehad found the passage He sailed a thousandmiles up the St Lawrence River before he decid-

ed that it was not the passage In 1576 MartinFrobisher (1535?-1594) of England got as farnorth as Baffin island without finding a passage

In 1609 Henry Hudson (1565?-1611) ered the Hudson River in New York, and Hud-son Bay in northern Canada Both had possibili-ties but were disappointing The weather and icewere often so bad, especially in the high north-ern latitudes that taking sailing ships into thearea was hazardous and sometimes fatal.Soon Russia, the Netherlands, and Denmarkjoined the frantic search for a way through theNorth American continent to the Pacific While

discov-no passage was found, a great deal of territorywas mapped, charted, and claimed for Europeancountries

Explorers continued to look for a NorthwestPassage in the eighteenth century, but it was sel-

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

dom the major purpose of these voyages and

hopes for its discovery became more symbolic

than practical Captain James Cook (1728-1779)

of England made several trips in the 1770s to

look for it, but his main focus was the South

Pa-cific In the 1790s English sea captain George

Vancouver (1757-1798) made a number of trips

into the Pacific Ocean Appended to these

voy-ages were several trips to North America to look

for the passage While there he also discovered

the Canadian island that still bears his name, as

well as the Puget Sound

It has been said that the Northwest Passagewas not found until the idea of reaching gold

and spices in the Orient was replaced by the

passion for discovery for its own sake A more

likely answer is that more thorough exploration

could not be made until ships and equipment

were available to stand the bitter cold in the

north and until men and supplies were prepared

for it One man came close to finding the

pas-sage but turned back John Davis (c

1550-1605) of England got to northern Canada in

1616 He eliminated one dead end and found

another bay that was a possibility He reached

Lancaster Sound between Devon Island and the

north end of the huge land mass called Baffin

Is-land The strait to the east, now called Davis

Strait, leads into a viable passage, but Davis

could go no further and did not find it This

turns out to be the eastern end and the actual

beginning of a viable Northwest Passage

In the nineteenth century expeditions were

no longer sponsored by merchants, and it was

government-sponsored naval expeditions that

continued the search for the fabled passage John

Franklin (1786-1847) of England came close to

finding the passage, but all members of his

expe-dition perished when the ship was caught and

crushed in the ice While searching for Franklin’s

crew, Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure

(1807-1873) discovered two entrances to the

passage After his ship became icebound,

Mc-Clure abandoned it and began to travel over land

by sledge He was eventually rescued by Henry

Kellet; when the two men made their way on

foot to Beechey Island, they became the first men

to completely traverse the Northwest Passage

The passage had still not been traversed bysea, however Credit for that feat goes to a Nor-

wegian Roald Amundsen grew up determined

to become a Polar explorer He wanted to be the

first to reach both the North Pole and the South

Pole He also wanted to answer many questions

about the magnetic position of the poles and

whether they were movable or fixed In 1906, at

the age of 29, he obtained a ship called Gjoa,

also 29 years old With a crew of six, he was thefirst to make his way by water from the AtlanticOcean to the Pacific A few years later, he be-came the first to reach the South Pole, just a fewdays ahead of Robert F Scott (1868-1912) Hewas acclaimed a hero, the first Norwegian toachieve fame since Norway gained her indepen-dence in 1906

Impact

Despite the centuries of effort that had been pended to find the Northwest Passage, Amund-sen’s achievement was not of great economic im-portance There was no cheering and no rush touse the passage No countries lined up to follow

ex-it into the Pacific In the years of the search, ropean nations had made other accommoda-tions They had set up trading centers andcolonies near the source of spices and gold andcreated regular shipping routes to bring the ma-terial back to Europe This was one of the rea-sons that no trade routes ever traveled throughthe Northwest Passage Another was the weather

Eu-At 75° north latitude, 1,000 miles (1,609 km)from the North Pole, snow, ice, and fog make theroute impractical for any regular operation

As we look back on the centuries of effort tofind such a passage, the significant thing is thatthe effort led to genuine scientific advancementand knowledge During the search, the configu-ration of Earth was made clear, giving educatedmen an idea of its real size and shape Thesearch also led to the mapping of a great deal ofNorth and South America To reach this goal,ships, sails, and equipment had to be improved

to stand the rigors of long voyages and severeweather and ice in the north The explorers wereable to test the correctness of charts and the cor-rect positions on the globe of islands, straits, andmountains Correct readings of longitude andlatitude were taken, and new instruments, espe-cially the new chronometer for finding longi-tude, were put into use These explorers discov-ered the poles and their position And they un-covered many new peoples and places thatwould not have come to light were it not for theneed to get through this continent

In 1942 the Royal Canadian Mounted

Po-lice vessel St Roch steamed through the

North-west Passage North-west to east and back again It was

a symbolic voyage, still fraught with danger andhardship After that, the passage was seldomused In 1960 an atomic submarine traversed

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

At the beginning of the nineteenth century proximately four-fifths of the land area in theworld was still virtually unknown to the Westernworld In particular, there was very little knowl-edge about central and eastern Asia Between1893-1933 Swedish geographer and explorerSven Hedin (1865-1952) made four expeditions

ap-to central Asia ap-to gather geographic and otherscientific information During the third expedi-tion between 1906-08 Hedin explored andmapped large tracts of previously uncharted ter-ritory in central Asia and the Himalayas He wasable to trace the Indus, Brahmaputra, and Sutlejrivers to their source as well as discover and mapthe Kailas mountain range This expedition made

a significant contribution to our knowledge andthe geography of Tibet and central Asia

Background

In a previous expedition into Tibet, Hedin haddisguised himself as a Mongol Hiring a Tibetanmonk as an interpreter, he had led a large andwell-equipped caravan across Tibet, which inthe nineteenth century was officially off limits toforeigners Jesuit missionaries had visited Lhasa,the capital city, in the seventeenth and eigh-teenth centuries, but otherwise almost no West-erners had traveled in Tibet Nominally underChinese rule, the Tibetans were very much incontrol of who came into this remote place

Tibet was anxious to keep their country out ofthe British sphere of influence During his 1901expedition, Hedin took leave of his caravan and,accompanied by only an interpreter and oneother person, attempted to enter Lhasa After aseries of harrowing experiences, Hedin wasturned back by Tibetan warriors and escorted

the passage, but this time under the ice Theselater voyages are of import because it took solong to find the passage and absorbed so muchenergy They represented a symbolic end to theeffort and celebrated the conquest of this mostdifficult and elusive passage

LYNDALL B LANDAUER

back to his caravan He later attempted anothercrossing of Tibet but was stopped by ordersfrom the Dalai Lama and ordered to leave Tibet.Despite these problems, Hedin returned toTibet in 1906, aiming to explore a region that theBritish maps simply designated as “unexplored.”Hedin set two goals for this expedition: the map-ping and surveying of the great mountain rangenorth of the Himalayas that later he was to callthe Trans-Himalaya; and to find the precise defi-nition of the sources of the great rivers Brahma-putra, Indus, and Sutlej This area covered amountainous area north of Tsangpo, or the upperBrahmaputra River, and as far as was known, noWesterners had ever been there before

This time Hedin decided to enter Tibet fromthe south He was able to obtain letters of intro-duction from the Tashi Lama, second in com-mand to the Dalai Lama Through Swedish con-tacts he received a passport from the Chinesegovernment allowing him to travel in Sinkiangprovince, where he was known because he hadworked on a previous expedition in the region.Although this document made no specific men-tion of Tibet, he hoped it would impress officials

if needed and allow his party to travel overland.When Hedin left the British summer capital

of Simla, he informed officials that his tion was Leh, capital of the British-controlledwestern-most province of Tibet, Ladakh Travel-ing northward, he entered into SinkiangProvince and once in Leh, assembled a caravan

destina-of considerable size He engaged the services destina-of

21 men and bought or hired 88 horses, 30mules, 10 yaks, and many sheep and goats Thelatter served a dual purpose: if the caravan were

to run into Tibetan officials, Hedin planned todisguise himself as a shepherd, while at the same

Further Reading

Delgado, James P Across the Top of the World New York:

Checkmark Books, 1999.

Huntford, Roland Scott & Amundsen: The Race to the Pole.

New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1979.

Morison, Samuel Eliot The Great Explorers: The European

Discovery of America New York: Oxford University

Press, 1978.

Wilson, Derek The Circumnavigators New York: M.

Evans & Co., 1989.

time some of the animals were to provide food

for the expedition

Hedin left Leh in mid-August 1906, and for

the next several months was “lost.” The British

authorities forbade him to enter Tibet; however,

he managed to slip into the Tibetan highlands

before that order was received by the British in

Leh For the next six months, through the harsh

winter of the highlands, Hedin and his caravan

traveled eastward across Tibet He crossed the

great chain of mountains that ran parallel to the

Himalayas to the north He measured the

eleva-tions of mountain peaks and passes and the

depths of remote salty lakes, as well as making

maps, drawing panoramas, and sketching

land-scapes and people The temperatures reached

minus 50° and sheep and horses froze to death

For months the expedition saw no other human

beings However, in early February 1907, Hedin

ran into Tibetan officials, who immediately

or-dered him to leave Tibet

When a shipment of mail from India

“found” Hedin’s group, however, the Tibetan

of-ficials were so impressed that they allowed the

party to continue its journey to the Tashi Lama’s

residence in Lhasa Part of the journey was by

riverboat on the upper course of the

Brahmapu-tra River Hedin managed to keep a low profile

in Lhasa and was able to stay for nearly six

weeks His Chinese passport impressed the local

officials, and he was cordially received by the

Ti-betan officials, including the Tashi Lama Hedin’s

time in Lhasa coincided with the Tibetan New

Year, a time of special celebrations, and he was

able to photograph and sketch the spectacular

ceremonies and festivities without hindrance

During Hedin’s stay in Lhasa, negotiations

occurred between Lhasa, Peking, and London

regarding his future travel, since under the

Chi-nese-British convention of 1904 foreigners were

not allowed to enter Tibet After complex

negoti-ations Hedin was allowed to return to Leh, and

he and his remaining caravan departed for

west-ern Tibet However, it was another 17 months

before he returned to India, and some of his

most important scientific work was conducted

during this time

Other travelers who visited western Tibet

be-fore Hedin had established the general area where

the Indus, Brahmaputra, and Sutlej rivers were

lo-cated However, it was Hedin’s expedition that

mapped with topographic accuracy the location

of the headwaters of these three great rivers: the

Brahmaputra at 15,860 feet (4,834 m) above sea

level where a small rivulet runs from a large

glaci-er; the Indus at a group of springs; and the Sutlej,one of the major rivers of Pakistan, at the Gan-glung Glacier in western Tibet By April 1908Hedin felt satisfied that the goals of the expedi-tion had been accomplished He then mapped,surveyed, and sketched his way back into India

Impact

Hedin’s third expedition into Tibet lasted nearly

28 months He accomplished his goal of ping and surveying the Trans-Himalayan moun-tain range and found the precise sources of thethree Asian rivers This work made a significantcontribution to our knowledge and geography ofTibet and provided the first accurate maps of theunknown regions through which he traveled Hehad cleared up so many problems of Tibetan ge-ography that no major discoveries remained; thework of future explorers would be simply to fill

map-in the details on Hedmap-in’s maps

Hedin’s other major contribution to the ography of Tibet included his series of measure-ments, maps, and panoramas describing theTrans-Himalaya, the great mountain system thatruns parallel to the Himalayas, north of the areaoccupied by the Indus and Brahmaputra rivers

ge-He crossed seven of the major passes across theTrans-Himalaya and recorded the extent, height,and boundaries of the range Among the descrip-tions of the land and people of Tibet, one of themost interesting is the chapter on the pilgrimscircumambulating the holy mountain of MountKailas Here the mountain rises nearly 22,966feet (7,000 m), and around its base is a 28-mi(45-km) trail that was used by pilgrims making acircuit of the mountain Hedin himself walkedthe trail around Kang-Rinpoche—the Holy IceMountain—with a group of Buddhist pilgrims

Hedin published the results of his

expedi-tion in a massive work entitled Transhimalaya:

Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, written for a

non-scientific readership The three volumes (inthe English edition) total nearly 1,300 pages andare illustrated with photographs and sketchesmade by Hedin It contains many enthusiasticdescriptions of the events that he regarded ashigh points of the journey

The nine volumes of Southern Tibet:

Discov-eries in Former Times Compared with My Own searches, 1906-1908, were published between

Re-1917 and 1922 This set of volumes is a plete survey of the exploration and mapping ofTibet up until the early twentieth century Thesevolumes represent Hedin’s most significant con-

com-Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

When Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) reachedthe South Pole in 1911, one phase of the explo-ration of the Earth ended and another began.

Background

From time immemorial, mankind knew of thefrozen wastes to the north The Norse, Siberians,Inuit, and others lived in it and even merchantsailors came across icebergs broken loose fromthe northern ice packs Eventually, as peoplecame to understand that the Earth was a spherespinning in space, they realized that the Earth’saxis of rotation would be found in the far northand the far south

While the far north was known to be hidingthe North Pole, little was known about it savethat it was virtually uninhabitable, cold, icy, anddesolate Some were convinced a continent layhidden beneath the ice, others felt it contained ashallow sea, and some thought it was an ice-cov-

tribution to geography, with the volumes taining impeccable scholarship along with lavishillustrations The eight volumes of text togetherwith the separate index volume total 3,547pages In addition to the text there are two port-folios containing 98 maps compiled fromHedin’s own maps drawn in the field and 552panoramas, also drawn by him The volumescontain historical and ethnographic information,survey and mapping information, as well as me-teorological, astronomical, geological, andbotanical information about the entire centralAsia region The books were favorably reviewedand have given readers past and present an un-paralleled opportunity to travel with this emi-nent geographer and explorer

con-The scientific research and results he andthe men under his leadership obtained are hislasting legacy He was a fine geographer, map-

ered ocean However, it was all speculation, informed by any real information

un-As little as was known of the northern polarregions, even less was known about the farsouth The ancient Greeks posited the existence

of a southern continent because they felt it wasneeded to balance the weight of the northernlandmass, but it was not sighted until 1840,when the American sailor Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) made the first confirmed sighting of land.However, as with the northern polar regions, ex-ploration on foot was to wait for some time.The northern polar region was the first to beextensively explored, probably because it was just

a short distance from the major nations engaged injourneys of exploration Perhaps the most daringattempt to reach the North Pole was Fridtjof

Nansen’s (1861-1930) voyage in the Fram, which

left Norway in 1893 and returned in 1896 Unlikeprevious polar explorers, Nansen chose to workwith nature Knowing that the polar ice driftedwith time, he and his companions designed a shipthat would become frozen into the ice purposely,letting the ice itself carry them to the Pole.While unsuccessful, Nansen did reach a highernorthern latitude than any previous explorerand became famous upon his return The NorthPole was finally reached on foot by Matthew

maker of extraordinary talent, and an artist ofunusual skill His books were translated intomany languages and he was well knownthroughout the world He was honored by kingsand emperors and by the great geographical so-cieties of the time, and he left a legacy of unsur-passed exploration and discovery in Asia

LESLIE HUTCHINSON

Further Reading

Hedin, Sven Transhimalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in

Tibet 3 vols Leipzig, Germany: F.A Brockhaus,

1909-13.

Hedin, Sven Southern Tibet: Discoveries in Former Times

Compared with My Own Researches 9 vols Stockholm,

Sweden: Lithographic Institute of the General Staff of the Swedish Army, 1917-1922.

Kish, George To the Heart of Asia: The Life of Sven Hedin.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1984.

Henson (1866-1955) and Robert Peary

(1856-1920) in 1909 The first flight over the North

Pole was claimed by American Richard Byrd

(1888-1957) and pilot Floyd Bennett

(1890-1928) in 1926, but doubt about their actual

suc-cess remains Byrd’s diary, found in 1996,

indi-cates that they were probably about 150 miles

(240 km) short of the Pole when an engine oil

leak forced them to turn back The first

docu-mented flight over the North Pole was made

three days after Byrd’s attempt by the team of

Roald Amundsen (Norway), Lincoln Ellsworth

(U.S.), and Umberto Nobile (Italy), who crossed

the Pole in a dirigible

While the assaults on the North Pole wereshowing fruit, serious attempts were made to

visit the South Pole, too As with the North

Pole, there were many unsuccessful attempts,including Ernest Shackleton’s (1874-1922) epicvoyage in 1914 Plagued by frostbite, snowblindness, and dysentery, Shackleton’s expedi-tion covered over 1,700 miles, but stoppedshort of the continent and spent nearly twoyears before its rescue The first successful expe-dition to the South Pole was that of RoaldAmundsen in 1911, who beat the unfortunateEnglishman Robert Scott and his team to theSouth Pole by a matter of weeks Tragically,Scott and his entire party died on their returnfrom the South Pole, neither the first nor thelast to fall victim to the polar regions The ubiq-uitous Admiral Byrd became the first to fly overthe South Pole in 1929; among his most notableachievements was the establishment of the firstscientific outposts on the continent

Public interest in polar explorers and their complishments was avid in the era of Byrd andAmundsen, and remains high even today, despitethe fact that visiting the Poles is now almost rou-tine Television shows on the Arctic and Antarcticare popular, as are books and movies set there

ac-As recently as 1999, world attention focused onthe plight of a woman scientist with suspectedbreast cancer who could not be evacuated fromthe south polar station for many weeks; at thesame time, a news station aired a documentary

on scientific expeditions that traveled by nuclearsubmarine beneath the Arctic ice cap

Part of the reason for this continuing tion is probably because the Poles were, literally,the last places on Earth to be explored As withMount Everest, elaborate attention to preparationand equipment is essential, making mere survival

fascina-a triumph of humfascina-an will, technology, or both Itmay be, too, that we are drawn by such extremesbecause they test us as nothing else can and, in sodoing, make us see what is best in ourselves Or,

as John Kennedy once said with respect to neying to the Moon, “We choose to do this, notbecause it is easy, but because it is hard.”

jour-In addition, polar exploration is, in manyways, a romantic activity, full of adventure, ide-alism, and with little immediate practical appli-cation It may be that, to a public living in an in-creasingly practical world, following the exploits

of polar explorers throughout the twentieth tury provided (and continues to provide) an out-let for that part of our human nature that longsfor an escape from the practicalities of modernlife Whatever the reasons, polar exploration hasexcited public interest for over a century, an in-terest that shows little sign of abating

cen-In the political and military arena, the Polesoffer much, as well From the start, nationalpride and prestige were reflected in exploration

of any sort, rich as they were with potential forthe discovery of new sources of raw materials,new trade routes, and the like Conquering thePoles, however, also offered military and eco-nomic advantages that many nations have beeneager to explore

While most nations have relinquished anyterritorial claims to the Antarctic, many have acontinuing presence on the continent The Unit-

ed States, Russia, Britain, New Zealand, and ers maintain scientific personnel on a more-or-less continuing basis; some countries, notablyChile and Argentina, have attempted to maintain

oth-small colonies Chile actually set up a oth-small lage at one point, encouraging pregnant women

vil-to give birth in Antarctica vil-to bolster their claim vil-toportions of the continent (which have never beenrecognized by other nations) In general, whilemany countries jockey for position in Antarctica,little will likely come of it unless the AntarcticTreaty fails at some point to be renewed

International treaty also prohibits exploringfor or recovery of natural resources in Antarcti-

ca The entire continent has been declared limits, in spite of evidence for deposits of coal,minerals, and perhaps petroleum This sametreaty also prohibits the use of Antarctica formilitary purposes, although several nationsmaintained military personnel on the continent

off-to assist their scientific outposts For that reason,the primary advantage to a continuing presence

in the Antarctic is political prestige The Arctic,however, is a different story

Although there are no mineral resources neath the Arctic ice cap, the Arctic environmentwas studied for decades by both the U.S and theSoviet Union because of its military importance.Since the mid-1950s, nuclear submarinescrossed beneath the Pole regularly, perfectingunder-ice navigation and warfare techniques.The Soviet Union (and, later, Russia) developedballistic missile submarines specifically designed

be-to break through leads in the ice be-to launch theirmissiles at the U.S or Europe, while the U.S de-veloped ways to find these submarines amid thecacophony of sounds made by drifting ice Tothis end, the U.S embarked on a continuingprogram of subsea exploration designed to re-turn information about the oceanography, sub-marine geology and geography, as well as otherfactors that could provide a military advantage

in wartime Both nations studied above the ice,too, with the knowledge that nuclear missiles, iflaunched, would travel over the Poles

In conclusion, the scientific returns fromAntarctica are impressive and appear likely tocontinue for some time Antarctic science hasconfirmed and deepened our understanding ofterrestrial phenomena such as plate tectonics,ozone depletion, past climate change, mete-orites, paleontology, glaciology, biology, andmore In addition, relatively new telescopes areproviding a great deal of valuable informationabout high-energy astrophysics, and neutrinos,and allow long-term observations of phenomenaduring the months-long Antarctic night

The most significant impact of Antarctic ence, however, could simply be a better appreci-

sci-Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

& Discovery

1900-1949

Overview

It was only six years after the Wright brothers’

first flight that the first woman flew an airplane

In the next few decades, women aviators became

increasingly common and attracted an

increas-ing amount of attention, culminatincreas-ing with

Amelia Earhart’s (1898-1937) flights in the

1920s and 1930s With Earhart’s death in 1937,

women aviators became less prominent, but

continued to contribute greatly to aviation,

espe-cially as auxiliary pilots during the Second

World War Thanks to the early female aviators,

women are now accepted as pilots in both

mili-tary and commercial aircraft

Background

The first woman took to the air in 1784, not

long after the first human flight of any sort

Fly-ing over the French countryside, Elisabeth

Thi-ble was so thrilled she burst into song as she

as-cended to a height of nearly a mile In spite of

this early start, women remained by and large

earthbound, relinquishing the skies to men

There were, of course, exceptions, and over 20

women flew balloons during the 1800s, but not

many women took to the air

Over a century later, in 1909, women again

took to the air, this time in heavier-than-air craft

Another French woman, Elise Deroche

(1889-1919), who referred to herself as a baroness

al-ation of the speed with which small changes in

global temperature can cause the Antarctic ice

sheets and polar cap to collapse This could lead

higher sea levels, potentially flooding many

major world cities such as New York,

Amster-dam, London, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, and others

An ongoing debate over the fragility of parts of

the ice sheet has some scientists arguing that

very little change is needed to cause such a

col-lapse If this is the case, they suggest, it may

al-ready be too late to do more than prepare for

higher sea levels in the next century or so

Al-though this controversy has yet to be resolved, it

will profoundly affect the way we interpret our

ecological influence If the ice sheet can collapse

rapidly, we may soon be faced with a crucial

choice: try to lower global temperature or

pre-though the legitimacy of the title was doubtful, came the world’s first licensed woman pilot in

be-1910 In the next few years, women in Germany,Italy, and America became licensed to fly, many ofthem explicitly trying to prove that women were

as capable as men in the air

The first American woman to fly solo wasBlanche Scott (1890-1970), hired by the CurtissAirplane Company to demonstrate the safety oftheir airplanes For the next six years, Scott flew

in aerial exhibitions, performing stunts beforeexcited crowds She retired in 1916, citing,among other reasons, the difficulty she had inbeing taken seriously by both male pilots andthe crowds

Another woman, Bessie Coleman 1926), attacked barriers of race as well as gen-der Although she was not permitted to attend

(1893-an Americ(1893-an flight school because of her race,she eventually earned her pilot’s license inFrance, becoming the first black woman in theworld to do so Returning to the U.S after thisaccomplishment, she opened a flight school in

1921 Unfortunately, she died in a plane crashjust five years later

There were a number of other notablewomen pilots in the 1910s and 1920s, includingHarriet Quimby (1884-1912; the first woman tofly across the English Channel), Ruth Law (whoset a non-stop distance record for both men andwomen), and Katherine Stinson Most famous,

pare to evacuate hundreds of millions of peoplefrom low-lying areas around the world Eitherchoice will reverberate for decades or centuries

P ANDREW KARAM

Further Reading

Books

Gerrard, Apsley Cherry The Worst Journey in the World.

New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers, 1998.

Green, Bill Water, Ice, and Stone Harmony Books, 1995.

Hundford, Roland The Last Place on Earth New York:

The Modern Library, 2000.

Lansing, Alfred Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage.

New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers, 1998.

Nansen, Fridtjof Farthest North New York: The Modern

Library, 1999.

The First Women Aviators

of course, was Amelia Earhart, whose exploitsare more fully described in another essay And,during the Second World War, the Soviet Unionput women pilots into combat, mostly flying an-tiquated bombers to attack German positions inthe Crimea.

These women flew for a number of reasons,but they had some motivations in common Inthis pre-Suffrage era, many women wanted sim-ply to show that women could do the samethings that men could Some were attracted tothe danger and romance of flight, and some feltthis was the only way for a woman to experienceany adventure in her life since so many other av-enues were closed

Women pilots faced similar obstacles, too,

no matter in what nation they flew All met withsome degree of resistance from male pilots and,

in many cases, from the airplane owners, theirfamilies, and the public In general, this resis-tance stemmed from a few basic causes Somebelieved that women were too weak or too slow

to safely control aircraft moving at high altitudesand high speeds Flying was considered “unfem-inine,” and women who wanted to fly were sus-pected of being the same Many tried to protectwomen, too, in this era, and one way of doing sowas by keeping them from doing things known

or suspected to be dangerous Some men simplydidn’t want women stepping into the spotlight

with them, while other men felt that, were awoman flyer to die in a crash, the whole field ofaviation would be set back by several years be-cause of public outcry Nonetheless, womenflew, partly to prove the men wrong, but mostlybecause they loved to fly

Impact

As women took to the air, several things pened, some of which continue to this day First,after several women set altitude, speed, or dis-tance records, many men had to grudginglyadmit that women really could fly safely andskillfully Although this grudging respect did notnecessarily carry over into other areas, it was anecessary first step in the later acceptance ofwomen in other technical professions

hap-Secondly, crowds flocked to see women flyand perform stunts Part of this attraction was be-cause of the novelty of women performing these

“masculine” deeds, leading to a wider acceptance,again, of women in other technical fields

Finally, these were the first in what was tobecome many steps by women in aviation, cul-minating (thus far) in the first woman to com-mand a space mission, which happened in 1999.Although women’s roles in the military re-main more limited than those of men, womendid begin to receive larger and more technical

& Discovery

1900-1949

Overview

By the end of the nineteenth century, South

America had barely been explored by civilized

man In the first three decades of the twentieth

century, however, several adventurers made

ex-tensive treks into the heavily forested and often

treacherous interior of this continent Their

work offered a glimpse of South America’s flora

and fauna, along with a view of its human

cul-tures and past histories Among the many

dis-coveries of the era, Percy Fawcett surveyed

country boundaries and mapped rivers,

includ-ing the Rio Verde, from 1906-10 In 1911,

Hiram Bingham (1875-1956) discovered the

ruins of the Incas at Machu Picchu, and three

years later Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) and

Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon (1865-1958)

traveled the River of Doubt

Background

South America in the early 1900s was a largely

unexplored continent It held few roads to

con-nect major cities, relying instead on waterways for

travel and trade Often, the only available route

roles in World War II and in later years In

par-ticular, women were permitted to join the

mili-tary and to fly in supporting roles for the Allies

By ferrying planes from factory to air base and

across to Europe, for example, women pilots

freed men up for combat missions However,

women’s roles in military aviation stalled out at

this point for many years in the U.S because of

continuing public, military, and governmental

reluctance to place women in harm’s way In

fact, it was not until after the Persian Gulf War

in the early 1990s that American women were

finally permitted to fly combat aircraft in

poten-tially hostile situations

Things were different in other countries

Driven by a severe shortage of men during

World War II, the Soviet air force enlisted the

talents of women almost from the start Women

bomber pilots flew over 24,000 missions for the

Soviets in their war against Hitler’s Germany,

and other women flew combat sorties in fighter

planes In fact, some women flew up to 18

bombing sorties per day while the top Soviet

between cities was a trip down a river that snakedthrough the thick vegetation of tropical forests Inmany places, travel was blocked by groups ofhostile, indigenous people who lived along theriverbanks In other cases, travel was made im-possible by powerful, white-water rapids

As the times changed at the turn of the tury, and the governments of South Americancountries sought to become more economicallycompetitive, officials realized the importance ofmapping their nations, cutting roads throughthe wilderness, and building cross-country com-munications systems At the same time, educa-tors and explorers from other countries saw thevast continent as a treasure trove filled withamazing potential for discovery

cen-One of the greatest South American ers was Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon Hiscareer as an explorer began in 1890 when he be-came a Brazilian army engineer charged withstringing a telegraph line across the state of MatoGrosso and later building a road from the state’scapital in the center of the continent to Rio deJaneiro on Brazil’s Atlantic coast With those twotasks completed, from 1900-1906 he took on

explor-woman fighter pilot, Lilya Litvyak, downed adozen German planes in combat

In later years, drawing on these wartimeexperiences, the Soviet Union continued plac-ing women in technical roles, including theworld’s first women astronauts It was not untilthe 1980s that the U.S followed suit, sendingwomen aloft in the Space Shuttle, and in 1999the first American woman commanded a shut-tle mission In this, finally, women had accom-plished virtually everything in the air as theirmale counterparts, proving themselves everybit as talented and skilled, and deserving ofequal respect

Moolman, Valerie Women Aloft Time-Life Books, 1981.

The Exploration of South America

the challenge of building a telegraph line acrossthe entire country Rondon’s adventures broughthim into areas previously unseen by any civi-lized person.

As Rondon completed the Brazilian line,British army officer Percy Fawcett made his firsttrip to South America to survey the boundary be-tween Bolivia and Brazil Local residents piquedhis interest with tales of lost cities in the SouthAmerican interior, and he returned on several oc-casions to continue his investigation of this large-

ly unknown territory On his next job, surveyingthe Rio Verde in eastern Bolivia, he embarkedwith a ragtag team of men of different nationali-ties and specialties—including a waiter, a silver-smith, and a baker Although the trip was fraughtwith problems, the group completed the survey,although shortly thereafter five of the portersdied, apparently from the rigors of the trip

After Fawcett’s Rio Verde journey in 1908and a return trip in 1909, Hiram Bingham struckout into the South American wilderness in 1911

in search of the lost capital of the Inca (The Incawere South American Indians whose empire, bythe sixteenth century, ran along the western coast

of South America, from the northern border ofmodern Ecuador to the Maule River in centralChile By the time of the Spanish conquest, theInca numbered about 12,000,000 people.) Withseveral South American adventures already

under his belt, including his journeys retracinghistorical routes through the wilderness, Bing-ham was searching for the city of Vilcabamba,from which the Inca had fought a last, desperate,and unsuccessful rebellion against the Spanishinvaders in the 1572 In 1911 he discovered Vit-cos, the last Incan capital, and the architecturalwonder Machu Picchu, the most famous in a se-ries of fortifications, inns, and signal towersalong the network of Incan footpaths

While Fawcett and Bingham were makingtheir discoveries, Rondon continued his explo-rations In 1914, he embarked on a journey withTheodore Roosevelt (U.S president 1901-09) totraverse the River of Doubt, a waterway thatRondon had named after discovering it severalyears earlier As with most other ventures intothe South American forests, the team facedmany difficulties; some did not make it out ofthe wilderness alive In fact, Roosevelt diedfewer than five years later, apparently from thelingering effects of his ordeal during the tripwith Rondon Nonetheless, the group completedits task and mapped the river, which had beenunknown just a few years earlier

Impact

Rondon, Roosevelt, Fawcett, and Bingham eachmade important contributions to the overall ge-ographical and scientific knowledge of the South

American wilderness Rondon also made great

strides in protecting the region’s indigenous

peo-ple and their cultures

Rondon’s construction work in early eth-century South America brought with it some

twenti-of the first comprehensive studies twenti-of the

conti-nent’s interior He was able to produce some of

the first biological specimens from these

territo-ries, and provided valuable insights into the

ge-ography of the expansive, unexplored lands

within the massive country of Brazil On one

eight-month expedition from Mato Grasso to the

Madeira River, he and his men ran out of food

less than halfway through the journey and were

forced to eke out a living from the land

Al-though weak, they eventually reached their goal

on December 25, 1909 It was on this trip that

Rondon discovered a river that the Brazilians did

not even know existed He named it the River of

Doubt; he later renamed it the Roosevelt in

honor of the former president who would

ac-company him as they surveyed it

The trip along the River of Doubt broughtmany perils, but the team was able to map the

entire length of the river, which runs

north-south in approximately the center of the

conti-nent It eventually connects with the Madeira,

which meets the Amazon River farther

north-east The American public became interested in

South America when in 1914 Roosevelt released

his book Through the Brazilian Wilderness, which

chronicled his adventures with Rondon

Besides Rondon’s contributions to the raphy and biology of the region, his many jour-

geog-neys helped him learn a great deal about the

dif-ferent native peoples who sparsely populated the

forests and river banks Many of those he met

while stringing telegraph wire or building roads

were known only through legends or stories

passed from village to village Often, he found

that he was the native people’s first encounter

with civilization, so he had not only to complete

his construction work but also strike peaceable

agreements with the people who laid claim to

the land or the river on which he traveled

Through the years, Rondon developed asense of responsibility for the native people and

their cultures, and became an activist on their

behalf Largely because of his efforts, the

Brazil-ian government in 1910 formed the National

Service for the Protection of the Indians, which

was designed to help the native populations

re-tain their cultures and avoid exploitation from

outside businessmen and settlers In addition,

Rondon later began the national Indian

Muse-um Eventually his work as an explorer and tector of indigenous people brought him consid-erable accolades, including the honor of having

pro-a territory npro-amed for him; thpro-at territory ofRondônia is now a state

Fawcett added to the geographical standing of the region by mapping the Bolivia-Brazil boundary Before his expedition, neithergovernment was sure where one country endedand the other began Fawcett not only mappedthe area, but learned about great civilizationsthat were rumored to have remains hidden deepwithin the forests His desire to find these lostcities brought him back to South America timeand time again, yielding valuable informationabout the wilderness, including a comprehen-sive map of the Rio Verde in eastern Bolivia Ac-companied by his son and a friend, Fawcett em-barked on his last South American expedition

under-on April 20, 1925, in Mato Grosso All members

of his team disappeared a month later Most torians believe they were killed by a group ofhostile native people

his-Bingham’s most celebrated expedition washis 1911 journey in which he discovered theIncan ruins of Machu Picchu in the region sur-rounding Rio Urubamba Local residents ledhim to the site, some 8,000 feet (2,438 m) abovesea level Surrounded by thick, lush forests, theruins had survived in good condition for hun-dreds of years There Bingham saw numerousfinely crafted stone buildings, including palacesand a majestic three-sided temple The area hassince become a well-known tourist destination,and in 1983 was named a UNESCO World Her-itage site Throughout his life Bingham remainedconvinced that Machu Picchu was the elusivecity of Vilcabamba; ironically, it was another ofhis discoveries, the Inca city of Espíritu Pampa,which American archaeologist Gene Savoyshowed to be a more likely site in 1964

In all, these four men, and the many otherswho helped them on their expeditions, battledrepeated hardships to pave the way into a conti-nent’s interior and provide a glimpse into themysteries of South America

LESLIE A MERTZ

Further Reading

Baker, Daniel B Explorers and Discoverers of the World,

first edition Detroit: Gale Research, 1993.

Bingham, Hiram Across South America Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1911.

Exploration

& Discovery

1900-1949

When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon covered the tomb of Tutankhamen, it created aworldwide sensation Such a find was consideredimpossible for three reasons: First, many peoplebelieved Tutankhamen’s tomb had already beendiscovered, because artifacts with his name onthem had been found in an earlier dig Second, ithad been a dozen years since the last major dis-covery Archeologists had scoured the Valley ofthe Kings, and it was generally agreed that nomajor finds were left Third, in the three millen-nia since Tutankhamen had been buried, robbershad been hard at work pilfering the tombs Wher-ever archeologists had gone, they’d found thatnearly all the treasures had long since been takenaway An intact pharaoh’s tomb was unheard of

dis-Archeology was still a young science whenCarter and Lord Carnarvon made their find Verylittle digging had been done until Napoleon’stime, and most of that amounted to disorganizedlooting until the mid-1800s when Auguste Mari-ette (1821-1881), on behalf of the Service des An-tiquités, began to establish rules to organize exca-vations Even then, there was a constant competi-tion between treasure hunting and science

Emile Brugsch Bey experienced such a case

in 1881 A local family had managed to make agood living for six years by selling artifacts from amajor site they had discovered, the tomb of

Fawcett, Percy Lost Trails, Lost Cities New York: Funk &

Wagnalls, 1953.

Hemming, John Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian

Indians Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Queen Astemkheb When their secret was ered, Bey discovered that the site contained themummies of 40 pharaohs, including Ramses II,believed to have been the pharaoh who contend-

uncov-ed with Moses in the biblical book of Exodus.There was another major find in 1905—not

of a pharaoh, but of a high government official,Prince Yuaa, and his wife Although the tombhad been rifled, many artifacts were untouched,still fresh from millennia before It was the rich-est find to date, and provided the most completesingle view of ancient Egypt

Howard Carter was a careful man who hadbegun his career as an archeologist in Egypt atthe age of 17 Though he had no formal train-ing, he had studied under William MatthewFlinders Petrie (1853-1942), the man who de-veloped the first principles of systematic excava-tion When Carter began his search for King Tu-tankhamen’s tomb, he already had two majordiscoveries to his credit, the tombs of QueenHatshepsut and Thutmose IV, both found in

1902 in the Valley of the Kings

Carter was a meticulous planner with goodintuition He believed that Tutankhamen’s tombhad not yet been found, and he began a method-ical excavation of a spot he had chosen in theValley of the Kings Because digging in one areawould have inconvenienced tourists visiting thetomb of Ramses VI, he and Carnarvon spent sixseasons exploring other parts of the site Finally,Carter took on the untouched area and found astaircase Because his partner was in England, hehad his workers rebury the stairs, and he waitedthree weeks for Lord Carnarvon to arrive To-gether they supervised the digging, then theopening of a door that had been shut with theseal of Tutankhamen for over 3,000 years.Though there were signs throughout the tomb of

a foiled attempt by robbers, chamber afterchamber held their wonders untouched Themost remarkable treasure was the sarcophagus

of the boy king himself, which was rich withgold and jewels

Key, Charles E The Story of Twentieth Century Exploration.

New York: Alfred A Knopf, Inc., 1938.

Roosevelt, Theodore Through the Brazilian Wilderness.

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914.

The discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb was an

al-most immediate worldwide sensation Carter

be-came famous He spent 10 years supervising the

removal of artifacts from the tomb (3,500 in all),

and the care with which he catalogued and

pho-tographed the site became an inspiration for

fu-ture archeologists News reports and films about

the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb increased

public awareness of Egyptology People reveled

in erroneous rumors of curses (which grew in

the wake of Lord Carnarvon’s sudden death five

months after the tomb’s discovery) and in stories

of adventure Carter became a model for

cine-matic heroes from Frank Whemple in The

Mummy to Indiana Jones.

The public also became interested in

Tu-tankhamen himself, but the only thing

remark-able about the boy king was how unremarkremark-able

he was Tutankhamen had been a weak king,

dead by the age of 18 This seemed

extraordi-nary, given the treasures that were buried with

him The third coffin alone is a marvel, 74 inches

(188 cm) long and made of 243 pounds (110 kg)

of solid gold The mask, perhaps the most

fa-mous artifact, is exquisitely shaped from 24

pounds (11 kg) of gold and decorated with

in-lays of turquoise, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and

ama-zonite If such honor and wealth was heaped

upon him, then the trappings of the builder of

the Great Pyramid and other important kings ofEgypt at its height must have been unimaginable

The Egyptian designs and styles found inthe tomb became popular with the public Thefashion world, and the Art Deco movement inparticular, adopted these motifs for jewelry, fur-nishings, and clothing At the same time, an ap-preciation developed for history and historicalsites in general The realization of what had beenlost by thieves and plunderers over the centuriesled to greater protection for archeological sites

Today, the United Nations Educational, entific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)designates World Heritage sites This designa-tion, which results from a 1972 treaty, calls onmember states to contribute the necessary finan-cial and intellectual resources to protect humani-ty’s common cultural heritage Cultural heritage,according to the UN, refers to “monuments,groups of buildings and sites with historical, aes-thetic, archaeological, scientific, ethnological oranthropological value.” The World HeritageCommittee has established a fund to supportemergency action for sites in immediate danger,repair and restore sites (particularly when thelocal government lacks resources), provide tech-nical assistance and training, and promote edu-cational activities In Cartegena, Colombia, ithelped local officials create laws and buildingcodes that protected the historic city center In