September/October 2019 Issue

INDONESIA: When the 2004 tsunami hit the northwestern coast of Sumatra, it caused almost unimaginable destruction. It also unearthed evidence that a previous tsunami had struck some 600 years earlier. A survey along 25 miles of coast near Banda Aceh revealed that at least 10 medieval communities once thrived there as part of the maritime Silk Road. A 1394 tsunami destroyed all but one of them. Thousands of recently recorded 15th-century Muslim gravestones suggest that Islamic traders eventually resettled the abandoned coast.

CHINA: Long before it was popularized in the West by the 1960s counterculture, cannabis was an important part of Central Asian rituals. Researchers have detected trace amounts of the drug on several 2,500-year-old wooden braziers from the Jirzankal cemetery in far western China. This is the oldest scientifically verified evidence of cannabis smoking. The samples contained higher levels of psychoactive chemicals than most wild cannabis varieties, suggesting that locals may have cultivated the plant for its mind-altering effects.

RUSSIA: Some 200 years after Napoleon’s unsuccessful invasion of Russia, residents of Smolensk unknowingly danced on the grave of one of the emperor’s most trusted generals. The body of Charles Étienne Gudin was recently discovered beneath an outdoor dance floor in the city. The skeletal remains were consistent with records showing that Gudin’s left leg was amputated after the 1812 Battle of Valutino. Upon his death, Gudin’s heart was removed, brought back to France, and interred in Paris’ Pere Lachaise cemetery.