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FROM THE EDITOR
Craft Brewing in Caves: Earliest Evidence of Beer • A new discovery in Israel reveals how a prehistoric community consumed beer as a part of their paleo diet, centuries before humans took up farming.
BEER AND BREAD
Scientist or Schemer?
Mesmer: Master of Animal Magnetism • In the late 18th century this German doctor’s magnetic therapy sessions caused a furor in Vienna and Paris. While some viewed him as a fraud, others saw him as a miraculous healer.
POWER OF PLACEBOS
MESMER AND MOZART
A HEALING VESSEL
PEARL HUNTERS
Rome’s Passion for Pearls • Scorned by moralists and coveted by the nobility, the gems of the sea became Rome’s must-have extravagance that fed the republic’s economic boom in the first century B.C.
Cleopatra’s Expensive Tastes
THE ARCADE OF PEARLS
ÇATALHÖYÜK THE FIRST STEPS TO CITY LIFE • Settled more than 9,000 years ago on Turkey’s Konya Plain, Çatalhöyük gave rise to a new kind of civilization, one focused on farming with the seeds of urban living planted at its heart.
Life of a Neolithic Settlement
GOING WITH THE GRAIN
Mountain or Man-Eater?
FEMALE FIGURINES
RAISING THE DEAD
DELPHI SEARCH FOR THE ANCIENT ORACLE • Hidden for centuries beneath a Greek hillside, the ruins of Delphi emerged when a team of 19th-century archaeologists set out to find the sacred center of the ancient world.
DISCOVERIES FROM THE BIG DIG
HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD
GRAND TOUR OF DELPHI
FINDING THE FIRST TWIN
SAVED BY THE BURIAL
CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
COPTIC CHRISTIANITY IN ANCIENT EGYPT • Christianity’s origins in the ancient world are found in many places, but perhaps the most surprising are in Egypt, where the new faith took root and flourished shortly after the death of Jesus.
EGYPT’S HOLY HISTORY
Powerful Prayers
NICOLAUS COPER NICUS • As new ideas about science and religion were dividing Europe, a Polish clergyman quietly pieced together a unifying theory that reorganized the heavens.
The Sacred and the Stars
FAITH IN ASTRONOMY
CLEAR SKIES
MAPPING THE STARS
ECONOMIST AND ASTRONOMER
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS
CENTER ED ON THE SUN
THE COMPOSER AND THE CONQUEROR • Not only did Napoleon Bonaparte leave his mark all over the map of Europe, his presence is palpable in the world of music and the works of Ludwig van Beethoven.
HERALDS OF A NEW AGE
THE HANDS OF HAYDN
STAGES OF GRIEF
TO THE VICTORS
VIENNA UNDER FIRE
WAR of the WORDS • As tensions over Cuba soared between America and Spain in the 1890s, so too did U.S. newspaper sales, fed by sensationalist reporting. The new media barons wanted a war, and the facts were not going to spoil a good story.
END OF AN EMPIRE: THE RISE AND FALL OF SPAIN • The Spanish Empire had no equal during its golden age. It was the undisputed ruler of the world with territories from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After unifying Spain in the late 15th century, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella began an era of exploration with Christopher Columbus’s expedition in 1492.
THE SPANISH EMPIRE’S STEEP DECLINE
CLASH OF THE TITANS
REMEMBER THE MAINE • THE NEWS OF THE SINKING OF THE MAINE HAVANA INFLAMED AN ALREADY JITTERY AND JINGOISTIC AMERICA. CAPITALIZING ON THE APPALLING LOSS OF YOUNG LIFE IN THE EXPLOSION, THE...