STORIES
America’s Lost City
Written by Andrew Lawler
Published in
Science: 2011
EAST ST. LOUIS, ILLINOIS—Today, this city block is a vast, weedy lot next to a highway in a depressed industrial town. A century ago, it was a notorious red-light district catering to ranchers bringing cattle to a stockyard. But a millennium ago, this strategic spot along the Mississippi River was…
Ancient Buddhas, Modern Peril
Written by Andrew Lawler
Published in
The New York Times
Published: December 23, 2012 WHEN the Taliban blasted the famous Bamiyan Buddhas with artillery and dynamite in March 2001, leaders of many faiths and countries denounced the destruction as an act of cultural terrorism. But today, with the encouragement of the American government, Chinese engineers are preparing a similar act…
Spine of the Silk Roads
Written by Andrew Lawler
Published in
Saudi Aramco World
Without such places to rest in safety and relative comfort, Ibn Battuta's famous 28-year journey across Africa and Asia might never have taken place. Indeed, it was not until the Islamic era, beginning in the seventh century ce, that long-distance travel became a matter of at least as much routine…
National Museum, Baghdad: 10 Years Later
Written by Andrew Lawler
Published in
Archaeology
The round hole made by an artillery shell was visible long before we pulled up next to the National Museum in Baghdad in early May of 2003. The puncture, just below a frieze of a king in a chariot, was in the replica of a Babylon gate next to the…
How the Chicken Conquered the World
Written by Andrew Lawler
Published in
Smithsonian Magazine
The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his…
