Archaeology

Twenty-five years ago, the ancient Mayans were thought to be a mysterious and peaceful people governed by astronomer-priests. Today, researchers reveal stories of Mayan blood sacrifices as they uncover a world so foreign as to defy our understanding of it.

Romantic visions of the Explorer Hernando de Soto continue to celebrate the conquistador's arrival in North America 450 years ago as one of the most important events in the history of mankind. But archaeology tells a darker story, a story of death and destruction from the Gulf Coast to the mouth of the Mississippi.

In 1856, workmen in a cave in the Neander valley near Dussseldorf, Germany, unearthed a human skeleton. Its skull had a low, protruding brow, large teeth, and a massive bone structure. And from this discovery began a lengthy dispute: did the Neanderthal man represent an abnormal modern human? Or an extinct ancestor?

Rising out of the highlands of Sub-Saharan Africa are the ruins of the long-secluded, spectacular Great Zimbabwe. Dismissed by racist explorers as the work of some ancient black civilization and stripped by ignorance and prejudice of many of it's priceless artifacts. Can archaeologists undo the years of preceding damage?

Here, for the first time, is the story of how archeology was used not only to manipulate information about the past, but also to legitimize the genocidal regime of the Nazis.

One of America's most famous historical landmarks is The Little Bighorn, a site where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and more than 250 troopers of the 7th US Calvary rode to their deaths on June 25, 1876. Though detailed facts of the event were unknown, the battle became shrouded in tales of myth and mystery that have endured for over a century. Until now.

The tale of the Israelites' conquest of the Promised Land has long been an article of faith wherever the Bible is widely read and respected. But recent discoveries suggest that the military defeat of the Promised Land, as detailed in the Book of Joshua, simply never occurred.

During the Middle Ages a powerful, seafaring people known as the Vikings came swarming out of the northlands in their long ships to burn and pillage their way across civilized Europe. But there was another sphere of them: It was the Vikings who completed the Atlantic crossing westward to colonize Greenland, and disembarked upon the eastern coast of North America at a site they called Vinland.

In 9 AD, an arrogant Roman general, Publius Varus, anticipated that he would easily suppress several rebellious Germanic tribes, after which he could leisurely march his troops to their winter campsite. Unfortunately for Varus and three of Rome's crack legions, he walked into an elaborate and well-organized ambush.

Southeastern Utah is one of the richest and least disturbed archaeological areas in the Southwest. In 1990, archaeologists in this region discovered a dry cave/rock shelter with human remains. Only a small piece of sandal was removed in order to obtain a date on the site. Amazingly, the date was revealed as 5,490 BC.

After a perilous Atlantic journey, Captain Frobisher arrived at a large bay in the remote Northeastern Arctic of the New World and decreed that he had discovered the entrance to the 'Passage'. Frobisher also found layers of curious ore deposited along the coastline. The Englishman, unacquainted with this exotic but worthless mineral, somehow believed that he had discovered a hoard of gold.

Was Cleopatra black? Was Socrates? Did Egyptian armies conquer ancient Greece, thus setting the cradle of Western civilization in motion? Is this wishful thinking on the part of historical revisionists...or is it a long-suppressed historical fact?

Although almost twenty-five years have passed since the end of Israel's most ambitious archaeological undertaking, the name of this site, Masada, still exerts romantic appeal. For many Israelites and visitors to Israel, the isolated, flat-topped rock in the Judean Desert remains the most visible symbol of the power and significance of modern archaeology.