Over the past two centuries, archaeologists have found bones, footprints, and artifacts showing that people like ourselves have existed on earth for many millions of years. But many scientists have forgotten or ignored these remarkable facts. Why? Primarily because they contradict the now dominant evolutionary views about human origins and antiquity. According to these views, humans like ourselves have existed for only about 100,000 or 200,000 years, and before that there were only more primitive human ancestors. This evolutionary paradigm, to which influential groups of scientists are deeply committed, has acted as a "knowledge filter." And the filtering, intentional or not, has left us with a radically incomplete set of facts for building our ideas about human origins. Recovering the complete set of facts takes us on a fascinating expedition, across five continents to various archaeological sites, some long forgotten, some the center of ongoing controversy. The complete set of facts is consistent with the accounts of extreme human antiquity found in the Puranas, the historical writings of ancient India.
