A Story Still Being Written

Many people think of history as a set of unchangeable facts, and while that is mostly true, particularly in prehistory, we are still uncovering new evidence about our ancient past. Scientists often form theories based on the evidence they have, which, until recently, was surprisingly little. Archaeologist and famous fossil hunter Richard Leakey often said that, one hundred years ago, we could fit most of our evidence of prehistory on a small card table. We have discovered many more artifacts in the last century, but taken together, the physical evidence of the people before humans could read or write would still today fit into a middle school gymnasium.

The Hidden History of the Stone Age

We often refer to a period of prehistory as the “Stone Age,” because stone artifacts can survive for thousands of years. The ancients almost certainly created tools and objects from softer materials, such as leather and wood, which decayed over thousands of years. In some cases, bones survived because they were buried quickly and protected from decay. In rarer cases, the bones were slowly replaced with minerals, preserving their shape in stone. There is more to the story of human history, but we are missing most of the evidence.

Many familiar stories of ancient Egypt remained unknown until Jean-François Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone in 1822. Technology continues to unlock mysteries of the past, and modern-day “Champollions” are still uncovering new facts that reshape what we know about history.

Rewriting the Human Story

In the 1990s, scientists began mapping the entire human genetic code, which we call the genome. Since then, many of the ‘fixed facts’ we once taught in every classroom have turned out to be false. Scientists once thought that Homo sapiens—modern humans—and Neanderthals were completely separate. But the DNA evidence proved the experts were wrong. It turns out that Neanderthals left a genetic story that is shared by billions of people worldwide. While this ancient DNA isn’t found in everyone, it is a permanent part of the genetic code for most people with European or Asian ancestry. Full-blooded Neanderthals may be gone, but their DNA lives on in us.

The Girl from Denisova Cave

Scientists have discovered other ancient humans whose DNA lives on in us today. Many people in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands carry Denisovan DNA. These mysterious people were named after a single finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, a remote part of Russia. This tiny bone was the only clue we had until scientists read its DNA and realized they had found a whole new branch of the human family tree.

The Cities that Moved

For decades, scholars have debated what happened to the people of the Indus River civilization. They built large, carefully planned cities such as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, complete with plumbing and toilets, but were mostly abandoned by 1700 BCE. Earlier writers sometimes suggested that the people had disappeared, but a skeleton found in 2019 and other genetic studies indicate that their descendants still live throughout the region. We still do not understand their writing, so perhaps that mystery of why they moved will one day be solved.

The Rewarding Human Story

Television shows and podcasts sometimes promote wild theories about space aliens or other implausible ideas. The truth is actually more interesting and more inspiring. We humans are more inventive and more creative than we often imagine. It would be hubris — a word that means foolish overconfidence — to suggest that there are no surprises ahead. The greatest discoveries about the human story may still be waiting for us to find them, and that is what makes studying the human experience so rewarding.

Bishop Ussher

Today, science points to a world that is 4.6 billion years old. However, in the seventeenth century and for many years after, many Western Europeans followed the teachings of James Ussher. Ussher, who lived from 1581 to 1656, was an Irish bishop in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) who studied the Bible and concluded that the Earth was created on the evening of Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE.

The Great Flood, according to Bishop Ussher, began on December 7, 2348 BCE. It was a Wednesday and, given the circumstances, presumably cloudy. For most of the next two centuries, these were not just guesses; they were widely accepted as the “official” dates of human history, even by many scholars.

It is easy to make light of Ussher’s calculations, but he was working with the limited tools he had at the time. Current scientific evidence suggests that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, but scientists are unsure of the day of the week the planet formed.