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PAINTING BY KADIR NELSON
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By Debra Adams Simmons, Executive Editor, HISTORY
Much attention has been focused this year on unearthing the past as archaeologists excavate in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in search of mass graves from a 100-year-old race massacre. So too, discovered graves of Indigenous children reveal further evidence of the horror they endured. Later this week, descendants of the enslaved people aboard Clotilda, the last transatlantic slave ship into the United States, will get an intimate look at the artifacts excavated from the submerged ship since it was discovered in 2019 in Alabama’s Mobile Bay.
Archaeology gives us a window into the past. Without it, we would know little about the world’s civilizations. Our understanding of human history has increased dramatically—aided by breakthroughs in technology—unlocking the mostly submerged stories of our ancestors.
The November issue of National Geographic explores 100 archaeological discoveries that have expanded our understanding of human history (Pictured above, the painting used as its cover.)
“Through recovered sites and objects, our distant ancestors can tell their stories,” Andrew Lawler writes for the magazine.
“Without the systematic study of sites and artifacts, history would be held hostage by those few texts and monumental buildings that survived the vagaries of time,” adds Lawler, a Nat Geo Explorer.
From the 1911 discovery of Machu Picchu, an intact Inca ghost town in the Andes hidden from the outside world for nearly 400 years to the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s treasure-filled tomb, his funerary mask is one of the most famous artifacts ever found, to the scripts on the Rosetta Stone that led to the deciphering of ancient hieroglyphs, archeology has enlightened us about people and places around the globe. (Pictured in a series, below: the terra-cotta warriors of Xian, China; the 2,000-year-old tombs of Nubian kings and queens that once ruled ancient Egypt; using technology to learn more from the preserved 5,300-year-old mummy of Ötzi the Iceman.)
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