Who are we? Why do we do what we do? These are the questions that have plagued humanity since its earliest days.

The search for answers has often led us to look behind us, to our ancestorsThe people related to us who lived a long time ago. . The website Ancestry.com, which helps people trace their lineage, has sold more than 15 million DNADeoxyribonucleic acid is the material in an organism that carries genetic information. kits for this very purpose.¹

Not just individuals, but whole nations, look to history to get a sense of who they really are. When Germany unified in 1871, it created a cult around the ancient German commander ArminiusThe Germanic Cherusci tribe chieftain who died in 21AD. , who defeated the Romans at the Battle of Teutoburg ForestA battle which took place in 9AD between the Roman empire and Germanic insurgents. Germanic leader Arminius likely prevented Rome from subjugating Germania east of the Rhine. .²

But we often find we can only go back so far. More than two hundred years and the evidence is already fragmentary, distorted. We know almost nothing about the world of two thousand years ago.

Nonetheless, human beings are nothing if not resourceful. DNA tests revolutionised the search for individual ancestors. Now AIA computer programme that has been designed to think.  is revolutionising the search for whole nations' origins.

Early last year, three scholars announced an astonishing leap forward in the study of ancient history.

Centuries before, archaeologistsSomeone whose job it is to understand what people of the past were like and how they lived. They dig up old buildings and objects to find out more about ancient peoples. excavated hundreds of scrolls from a library in HerculaneumAn ancient city that was buried under volcanic ash after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. It is close to Pompeii. . The scrolls could not be unrolled without destroying them. However, using AI, the scholarly trio was able to read them.³

One scroll revealed all-new information about the death of PlatoOne of the most important Ancient Greek philosophers. , the philosopher widely regarded as the father of all European thought.

This breakthrough followed other innovative uses of AI to uncover lost history. In 2021, Daniel Patt, a software engineer and descendant of HolocaustThe murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed. survivors, launched Numbers to Names, a website that uses facial recognition AI to identify people murdered by the NazisA German political party of the twentieth century, led by Adolf Hitler. The Nazis controlled Germany from the early 1930s until the end of World War II..⁴

What does this all mean for us? Our history has always shaped our sense of who we are. Whether or not they have ever read him, modern people's way of thinking has been profoundly influenced by Plato.

It may be that these new technologies reveal things we would never have dreamt about our own past. We believe Plato learned maths in EgyptA country linking northeast Africa with the Middle East. - what if we discovered in newly-deciphered scrolls that the real cradle of European philosophy was not Athens, but Africa?

It might be we come to recognise our societies are more deeply connected than we ever dreamt.

Will this affect how we live?

Yes: Our history has always defined our sense of who we are. Yet we have only ever seen that history through a glass, darkly. Now technology proposes to illuminate the whole. We may have to change everything we think about ourselves.

No: "True" history has always been less important to us than myth, and myths are extremely hardy. Much of what people believe to be historical is actually a fabrication. New information will not change that.

Or... It is unlikely that new breakthroughs will change how we live immediately. But over the course of time, it is certain to make a difference to how we behave.