Saturday, November 17, 2007

Ten discoveries that rewrote history

We know Patrick Hunt from his lectures about Hannibal for Stanford on iTunes U. Aside his major investigations on Hannibal and his tenacious quest for identifying the exact route Hannibal took over the Alps, Hunt also serves as a great promoter of archeology in general. He is connected with National Geographic, which will be the first to report any spectacular findings Hunt will make in the Alps between France and Italy.

A great promotion for archeology in general is his latest book Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History, which is aimed at the wide public at large. It takes the reader through ten major archaeological discoveries: the Rosetta Stone, Pompeii, Nineveh, Troy, King Tut's Tomb, Machu Picchu, Thera-Akrotiri, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Olduvai Gorge starting with the Leakey Era and the Tomb of the Ten Thousand Warriors in China. Hunt describes how the discoveries were made and why they had such great impact on our historiography.

Hunt personally sent me a copy of his book, after I mentioned his lectures on this blog. Now that I have read the book, I can recommend it warmly. Especially for those who are not terribly familiar with the related histories.