Walls between Cultures

Walls demarcate frontiers, deter predators, and protect people and their families and possessions. Stone walls punctuated by towers and gates have surrounded cities in the Middle East and North Africa since biblical times, when fortifications were often built in concentric rings and outlined by a ditch or a moat for added protection. Walls were a prominent feature of many medieval and early modern cities; from Baku to Delhi to York to San Juan, visitors still relive a past when constant vigilance and strong defenses were a feature of daily...

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Facts About United Service Organization

A touch of home for the U.S. military--that was the aim of Congress in creating the United Service Organizations (USO) in 1941 at the request of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who believed that private groups should handle the recreational needs of the country's fast-growing military. A touch of home and support for the military remain the USO's goals today. Since its inception, the USO has served as a bridge between the American people and the nation's armed forces. A private nonprofit organization, the USO relies on donations and volunteers....

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Interesting Facts About Trick-or-Treat

When costumed children mark the evening of October 31 by going door to door begging for sweets, they are participating in rituals similar to those that have been practiced for centuries. Halloween, now so much a part of American tradition, has both pagan and Christian roots. The Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the beginning of the new year, was traditionally celebrated on November 1, when summer was over and the harvest gathered. In a time when gods and spirits were very much a part of everyday life, the Celts believed that on...

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The Secrets of Cival: How One Ancient City Is Rewriting Maya History

The ancient Maya city of Cival may represent that most tantalizing of archaeological prospects: a find that forces a sweeping reanalysis of all conventional thinking about an ancient culture. Although the Maya left behind many fabled and enduring monuments, there are relatively few written records of their 2,000-year hold over modern day Mexico and Central America. Consequently, archaeologists are required to decipher Maya history in blurry hindsight, with finds such as those made at Cival potentially forcing vast revisions of our image...

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The Secret of Range Creek: Waldo Wilcox and the Fremont Indians

For more than 50 years, a man named Waldo Wilcox guarded a secret treasure on his ranch in eastern Utah: possibly the greatest single collection of artifacts that belonged to the Fremont Indian tribe, a people who mysteriously disappeared 700 years ago. Today, the former Wilcox ranch represents one of the most significant archaeological treasure troves in North America, but one that now is imperiled by two simple facts: Waldo Wilcox is no longer standing guard, and the rest of world knows what is there. In 1951 Waldo Wilcox purchased 4,200...

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The Preservation of Petra

The ancient Jordanian desert city of Petra regained fame as the location of the 1989 filming of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The restoration of the city, however, is still incomplete, and many of Petra's archaeological treasures have yet to be uncovered. The challenge in the meantime is for Petra to withstand the tests of time, tourism, and temperature and the effects of a growing Bedouin population. Petra is often referred to as the "rose-red city" because of the color of the sandstone from which it was built. The city came into...

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The Placebo Effect: Mind over Matter

An individual receives an injection from his or her doctor to reduce the discomfort caused by a recurrence of rheumatoid arthritis. The physician, in line with an ethical obligation, has already explained to the patient that he or she will be the beneficiary of either an effective new drug that is in the final stages of research or a placebo. After taking the medicine, the individual reports that the pain and stiffness have eased and that the swelling and inflammation have objectively improved. What the patient does not know is that the...

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The Paradox of Women's Status in South Asia

South Asia has produced more female leaders than anywhere else in the world, yet it has one of the world's worst records on women's rights. This striking contradiction was noted in the 2000 "Human Development in South Asia" report, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and devoted to the state of women in the South Asia. Indeed, it was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) who in 1960 became the world's first female prime minister. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, held the office from 1994--2005. In...

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The Fight against Polio Is Now a Fight against Time

One of the primary goal of the World Health Organization (WHO) is to rid the world of polio. Some fear that the time to eradicate the disease may be now--or never. When WHO first declared war on polio, forming the Polio Eradication Initiative with partners Rotary International, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) in 1988, there were approximately 350,000 cases of polio in 125 countries on five continents. After an international investment of U.S.$3 billion and the combined efforts...

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Sylvester Graham and His Crackers

By the 1830s the American diet was largely based on meat and white bread; fruits, vegetables, and coarse breads were not thought to contain much nutrition. So it is quite understandable that most of his contemporaries regarded Sylvester Graham as a pure eccentric. A Presbyterian minister, Graham was hated and sometimes attacked by butchers, bakers, and liquor and tobacco companies for railing against meat, potatoes, tobacco and alcohol, coffee and tea, and chocolate and pastries and for preaching for the consumption of pure water and coarse...

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Responding to SARS: The Reform of Canada's Health-care System

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a new coronavirus, was first identified in China in November 2002. Within weeks the potentially fatal virus had spread throughout the world. According to the Swiss-based World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 8,098 people worldwide became infected with SARS during the outbreak, and 774 people died from it. As of July 2003 no new cases of SARS had been reported, and the outbreak was believed to have been contained (although a lone case from December 2003 caused some concern among officials)....

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Reindeer Husbandry

Reindeer, domesticated thousands of years ago by the indigenous peoples of Scandinavia and Siberia, served the Arctic tribes for centuries as a universal resource, much as the bison served the American Indians of the Great Plains. The tribes relied on the deer for milk and meat, for clothing and housing, for tools, for transportation, and as decoys to entice wild reindeer. In the 17th and 18th centuries, reindeer husbandry became the foundation of livelihood and the primary source of income for many of the northernmost peoples. Reindeer...

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Peace through Preservation: The Peace Parks Movement

Environmentalists and politicians are often at cross-purposes. But sometimes the two join forces to create a political, economic, and environmental entity that serves both. Such is the case with the cross-border peace park. More than a simple wildlife preserve, a cross-border peace park is designed to traverse political boundaries. These divisions, while relevant to humans, are usually meaningless and even harmful to regional ecology. By creating an environmental preserve independent of national boundaries, peace parks help foster common interests...

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Paleoethnobotany: Plant Use in Prehistoric Societies

Paleoethnobotany, also known as archaeobotany, is the subdiscipline of archaeology that studies how plants were used by prehistoric societies. Until the mid-19th century, paleoethnobotanists did not work at the site, relying instead on other archaeologists to gather materials in the field. As the discipline developed, however, the need to ensure that appropriate sampling strategies and analyses were used in collecting and organizing samples prompted archaeobotanists to go on-site to collect their own data. They could then more accurately...

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Human Origins and the Neanderthal

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, includes among its definitions of Neanderthal the slang meaning "crude, boorish or slow-witted person." Recent evidence, however, suggests that this usage perpetuates a misconception of these early hominids and their lifestyle. Neanderthals take their name from the Neander Valley in Germany, the location of an early anthropological find that provided evidence of their existence. They ranged and hunted for about 250,000 years during the late Pleistocene Epoch in the...

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Genealogical Research: A Family Key

People may be motivated to research their family tree for many reasons. Some common incentives include a sense of history and identity, the requirement of proof of inheritance or pedigree, ancestor worship or salvation, or simple curiosity regarding one’s background. Historically, familial memory and oral history were keys to the establishment of one’s family lineage. In modern times the proliferation of written records has largely replaced the need for dependence on such unsubstantiated sources—although not all written records are dependable,...

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Emma Goldman, Anarchist and Feminist

The American anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman was arrested so often that she always carried a book to her public-speaking engagements, so that she would have something to read to help pass the time in jail. She often lectured on the social ills of American workers in 1900. Her topics included union organizing, the eight-hour workday, equality for women, and free speech. Such issues were considered controversial in 1900. They earned Goldman the appelation "red Emma." In addition she was perceived by many as a threat to established...

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Draft Resistance in America: Moral Obedience and Civil Disobedience

With roots in early colonial times, the American antidraft movement has evolved from individual acts of resistance based on religious convictions to mass demonstrations and concerted acts of civil disobedience for political, economic, and ideological purposes as well. At the heart of resistance, however, are individuals who choose not to comply with compulsory military service and who suffer the legal and social consequences of their decisions. From the early 1600s many American colonists struggled with the ideological implications of conscription...

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Clandestine Cargo: Smuggling along the Southeast Coast of England

Lively stories of 18th- and 19th-century smuggling ventures along the south coast of England are easy to uncover---especially in Kent and Sussex where the narrow English Channel offered easy access to the riches of continental Europe. Colorful tales of gangs, murder, and fortunes gained and lost are still part of the region's folklore. Behind this smuggling heyday, however, lies a long history of hardship and bleak prospects for economic improvement that dogged the area during the 1700s and early 1800s, creating ripe ground for a culture...

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Chinese Americans and Racism: The Rock Springs Massacre

By the middle of the 19th century, the United States was experiencing a large influx of Chinese immigrants. China's economy had taken a downturn and many of that nation's nationals had come to the United States in search of greater job opportunities and higher wages. The bulk of the Chinese immigrants worked on the transcontinental railroad and in the gold fields of California. Unfortunately, the boon in railroad construction was of limited duration and opportunities in gold prospecting soon declined, leaving many of the Chinese unemployed....

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Breathless Exploration: Dr. Robert D. Ballard and the Black Sea

Dr. Robert D. Ballard is arguably the most acclaimed undersea explorer of his generation, and the Black Sea is potentially the richest hunting ground for marine archaeologists on the planet, so it is little wonder that Ballard has been so obsessed with his work in the Black Sea. If his exploits in the Black Sea are successful, they could unlock secrets of human settlement, trade, and even mythology dating back 7,500 years. Our story begins in around 5500 B.C., when the Black Sea was most likely an inland freshwater lake separated from...

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Amazon Warriors - Fact or Fiction?

Greek mythology includes many tales of the Amazons, a tribe of women who were reputed to be fierce fighters. They figure prominently in the epic poem the Iliad, Homer's 8th-century-B.C. account of the Trojan War. Homer depicted the Amazons as a race of female warriors who lived in a matriarchal society, keeping only their daughters and maiming or killing their sons. Some myths say that the Amazons performed mastectomies, cutting off one breast to allow them to shoot more effectively with bow and arrow. Herodotus, the 5th-century-B.C....

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