Quest for the Past: Amazing Answers to the Riddle of History

The 19th-century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow suggested that people who make history leave "footprints on the sands of time. "Footprints in the sand may blow away, but this does not necessarily erase their significance. To be sure, much of the past is cloaked in mystery and is likely to remain so. For hundreds of centuries our ancestors left no written records; for many more centuries they recorded events haphazardly, if at all. Yet their "footprints" have seldom been fully obliterated. Clues to the past keep turning turning up everywhere. The sudden finding of long-buried artifacts in America can indicate the existence of a forgotten Indian village. The discovery of a portrait in a tomb may reveal the countenance of an ancient Macedonian king. Modern scholars are constantly broadening our historical horizons by means of increasingly sophisticated archaeological methods, technological advances, and sheer persistence.

There are facts behind every legend, truths at the heart of every fanciful anecdote, whether about Cleopatra, the first Japanese emperor, King Arthur, the ruins of Zimbabwe, or any of the countless people and places that once loomed large in history. And wherever the reality can be unearthed, today's historians and archaeologists are gradually revealing it. The purpose of this book is to give you a rich sampling of their work.