This was one of the world’s biggest empires
In today’s newsletter, we discover how Alexander the Great’s death paved the way for one of the world’s great empires, visit the scary, nearly 1,000-year-old Tower of London, recall how today in the U.S. became Indigenous Peoples’ Day … and if you’re Canadian, Happy Thanksgiving (but isn’t it a little early?)
History books go on and on about Alexander the Great, but his early death helped launch a 150-year empire that would prosper, enshrine religious tolerance, and eventually renounce violence, even to animals.
Precious little is taught about the Mauryan Empire, which consolidated vast power and land after Alexander died in 323 B.C. It was the first great Indian empire, and its peaceful ambitions were enshrined in the message-laden pillars that remain throughout India. “Truth and virtue they hold in esteem,” Nat Geo quotes one historic court chronicler as saying. Sounds pretty good these days.
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(In the painting at top, Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Mauryan Empire, sits with his mentor Kautilya.)
STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING
• These families live double lives across the U.S.-Mexico border
• Face of ancient queen revealed for first time
• This pathbreaking Ice Age discovery was an accident
• How COVID response helped get health info to people speaking rare Indigenous languages
• A face transplant transformed a young woman’s life
• Behind the U.S. switch from Columbus to Indigenous Peoples’ Day
• If you’re Canadian, Happy Thanksgiving! (But why is it so early?)
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
About time: For 60,000 years, Australia Indigenous people have lived there. Now, the government has turned over two swaths of land to its Indigenous people—one outright, another to co-manage in three new marine parks, Nat Geo reports. (Pictured above, Talbot Bay, part of Western Australia’s pristine Buccaneer Archipelago, where the new marine parks are located.)
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Following the reindeer: For many of Russia’s Nenets Indigenous people, life revolves around herding reindeer and trailing their migration. Nat Geo has reported on the modern-day struggles (climate change, mining) threatening their lives. In this image by Nat Geo Explorer Evgenia Arbugaeva, recently republished as part of our Photo of the Day collection, a Nenets child in Russia urges his mother to make the reindeer sleigh go faster.
LAST GLIMPSE
Rowdy & raunchy: For eight weeks each spring, crested auklet (Aethia cristatella) crowd shorelines and vie for mates. Males flash feathers, contract their pupils (pictured above), yap like small dogs, and—if they find a potential mate—release a tangerine-scented substance that may act like an aphrodisiac. “It looks like some sort of 1960s-style love-in,” biologist and Nat Geo Explorer Ian Jones tells Nat Geo.
