Ancient.Historiansl

  Over the decades, there have been many theories as to where the first people to get to the  New World originated, and now, thanks to DNA, we likely have a definitive answer.  We humans have a couple million years behind us, and it's taken us nearly that entire time  to spread across the planet. Anthropologists know for a fact humans evolved in what is  now Ethiopia and Somalia. Eventually modern humans stood up and started walking out of  Africa, but not long afterward, things get a bit blurry.  By following the fossil record, humans moved from Eastern Africa into South Africa and  onto the Arabian Peninsula. Over thousands of years, modern Homo Sapiens migrated throughout  Europe and Asia, supplanting or interbreeding with populations of Neanderthals and Homo- erectus. Eventually, modern humans spread to the New World and populated there too,  but how humans made it over here -- when the map makes it look SO. FAR. has been a puzzle...

In 1922, Egyptology Howard Carter was frustrated. Months ago he had sent a telegraph to his financier, Lord Carnarvon, informing him of another disappointing season of digging in the harsh Egyptian desert with no luck. Lord Carnarvon's reply back had been simple: you have one more season of funding to make a significant find. Carter thus returned to a spot he had previously scouted but not dug at in the Valley of Kings, a line of ancient huts mostly covered over with sand. Yet whatever secrets lay hidden under the Egyptian sands remained that way, and now time- and money- was running out. If he didn't make a major discovery in the next week or two, his funding and career both would be over. In the work site a young Egyptian water boy is hurrying along bringing drinking water to the thirsty workers when suddenly, he trips on a stone and dislodges it slightly. Curious, he pries the stone loose and his eyes widen when he spies a set of stairs cut into the bedrock. he r ushed to Ca...