BBC World Histories - 08.2019 - 09.2019

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THE BRIEFING History Headlines

EDINBURGH SCOTLAND

Missing piece of history

A chess piece tucked away for years in a drawer in an

Edinburgh home has been identified as one of the ‘Lewis

Chessmen’. After that collection of figures, dating from

the 12th or 13th century, were found on the Isle of Lewis

in 1831, five pieces remained missing – including this

‘warder’, the medieval equivalent of a modern rook.

Its owner, whose grandfather bought the walrus-

ivory figure for £5 in 1964, had no idea of its historical

significance or value: Sotheby’s, which auctioned

the piece, sold it for £735,000 at the start of July.

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History

Headlines

WORDS ELLIE CAWTHORNE

ALAMY/GETTY IMAGES/DREAMSTIME/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/PAT BRADLEY-WAMC

The walrus-ivory figure

revealed as one of the missing

medieval Lewis chessmen

QUEBEC CANADA

Last of the code talkers

The last Mohawk ‘code talker’ of the Second World War

has died, aged 94. Louis Levi Oakes, from the Mohawk

nation of Akwesasne, helped US forces in the Pacific by

communicating secret messages in a code created using

Native American languages. More than 400 speakers

of indigenous languages were recruited as code talkers,

but their contribution to the war effort was kept a

closely guarded secret for decades after the conflict.

The work of Oakes and others was

finally acknowledged with the Code

Talkers Recognition Act of 2008.

WASHINGTON UNITED STATES

Oriental insights

More than 1,000 rare Chinese texts have been digitised

by the American Library of Congress, making them

available to scholars around the world. The majority of

the documents, which all predate 1796, are from the

Ming (1368–1644) and early Qing (1644–1795) dynasties,

though the oldest

dates from the

10th century.

The collection,

which includes

maps, medical

remedies, Buddhist

sutras, water-

colours and silk

paintings, offers

rare insights

into life in pre-

modern China.

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Louis Levi Oakes,

the last of the Mohawk

‘code talkers’, who

died on 28 May

Boys learn to pound

grain in a painting

from an 18th-century

text about Taiwan

SACRED VALLEY PERU

Fighting flights

A new petition aims to block the

completion of an international

airport close to the Incan citadel

of Machu Picchu (pictured above).

Historians and archaeologists

argue that the airport – construc-

tion of which has already begun

at Chinchero, a small town

north-west of Cusco – will boost

the number of tourists at the

World Heritage site far beyond

Unesco recommendations; some

1.5 million visited in 2017. Critics

are also concerned about damage

that low-flying aircraft might

cause to Incan remains at nearby

Ollantaytambo. The airport is due

to be completed in 2023.

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