Archeologists search for artifacts.
Paleontologists uncover old bones. Genealogists shake the family tree for a deeper understand-ing of the road once traveled. Each science, in its own way, is concerned with origin and continuity-how the past has shaped the present, and the mysterious connection between them. Although the work required in each of these disciplines is mostly tedium, from time to time some fortunate soul is present at a discovery which radically changes commonly held perceptions with new understanding. It is as though a thousand years of tarnish is wiped away, leaving the silver to gleam as brightly as the day it first met sunlight.