The canopy of the Amazon is not a forest; it is a green shroud covering the tomb of a civilization that was more advanced than our own. As we initiate the final transmission of this dossier, we are looking through the eyes of orbiting gods—Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and LiDAR—to witness the “Satellite Satori.” The…
By Sam Guss We often use the term “Dark Ages” as a metaphor. We think it refers to a lack of books, or a decline in philosophy, or the fall of Rome. We imagine it as a “dimming” of the intellect. But new climate archaeology proves that the darkness wasn’t a metaphor. It was literal….
By Sam Guss We think of history as something written in books or carved into stone. We trust the physical evidence: the pot shard, the arrowhead, the femur bone found in a cave. If we can’t hold it, we assume it didn’t exist. But biology is a stricter historian than archaeology. While the bones dissolve…
By Sam Guss We have a romantic hallucination about the jungle. We imagine it as the “Pristine Wilderness.” We see the dense green canopy of the Yucatán or the Amazon as a place where nature reigns supreme, untouched by the hand of man. When we imagine an archaeologist, we imagine a rugged figure with a…
By Sam Guss We suffer from a chronological arrogance. We believe that “Globalization” was invented in the 20th century. We think the concept of a complex, international supply chain—where a component made in China is assembled in Vietnam and sold in New York—is a uniquely modern miracle enabled by container ships and fiber optics. We…