The world's last mysteries [antikvár]

DIGGING UP THE PAST Archaeology has been called 'a sentimental science' because of its mixture ofpassionate excitement and painstaking scientific methods. In the European world, this science was born in the 18th century with the excavation ofPompeii, and its early development coincided with the dawning of the romantic movement in the arts. Artists, preoccupied with emotion and imagination, were drawn to wild and picturesque places, including ruins. Before that time nobody had much use for, or even interest in, the debris ofhistory. Thus, early in its life, archaeology - the study of antiquity from whatever evidence can be found - gained a double aura of science and románcé. As men began to probe and question their past, often hoping to find clues to the future, they increasingly came to realise that a wealth of civilisations had preceded them. The probings of science began to replace the myths with reason. And yet many of the discoveries made by science proved to be so extraordinary and so enigmatic that even now many new finds are posing more questions than answers. This book begins with somé of European man's most cherished myths - the Utópián vision of Atlantis, the search for an Eldorado whose wealth was beyond imagining, the discovery of a green and fruitful New World - and shows what science now suggests is the reality behind each ofthese stories. New techniques haveproduced fascinating evidence about much of our mysterious prehistory. The carbon-14 dating method, which determines the age of man-made objects by measuring the decay of radioactivity in them, has revolutionised our thinking about the peoples who raised the stone monuments at Stonehenge and throughout Europe. It has alsó helped to reveal the technological sophistication that Middle and South American civilisations achieved hundreds ofyears before the Spanish conquest. Yet mysteries remain, despite the pace of modern discoveries. The final chapters in the story ofhumanity are far from being written. Who built the five cities of Tiahuanaco on the roof of the Andes? Why was Zimbabwe created, and by whom? Where was the final refuge of the last Inca king? How did the elaborate civilisations of the Mayas and the Khmers crumble? Who traced the mysterious lines in the desert at Nazca, in Peru, and for what possible reason? Paradoxically, as science advances its store of knowledge, more and more efforts are required ofman 's imagination in order to breathe life into statistics and give direction to the new technology.