This week’s essay of the week was selected under some protest from some of our staff. It was felt that 60 page essay “The Prehistoric Origins of European Economic Integration” was just too much to ask anyone to read.

But such complaints where brushed aside. The essay is 60 pages double spaced which means it is more like 30 pages single spaced. And besides, people should stretch themselves every now and again.

The essay is full of fascinating tidbits that will interest anyone who has much knowledge of the bible (thought the bible is scarcely mentioned in the essay and illuminating it was furthest thing from the authors mind). But if there is anyone overarching lesson to be taken from the essay, it is how slender our knowledge of antiquity is and how the self confidence assertions of scholars should be taken with a large grain of salt.

This is not the point the author was trying to make. Rather, the overarching theme of the essay is that the peoples of antiquity were far more numerous, wealthy, and literate then scholars have previously supposed. But when one reads about how few finds it took to upend previously held beliefs, ones glimpse the precarious foundation of modern knowledge of antiquity