Will this affect how we live? New technologies allow historians to read ancient texts and identify faces in faded photographs. Some think this will shake our sense of who we are.
2030 forecast: a new story of humanity
Out of the ashes: Lost for 2,000 years, a recently scanned piece of the Herculaneum scroll has now revealed its secrets about life in the ancient Roman city with the help of a high-energy X-ray beam. Glossary
Ancestors - The people related to us who lived a long time ago.
Lineage - A direct line of descendants from an ancestor. E.g. your grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents and so on.
DNA - Deoxyribonucleic acid is the material in an organism that carries genetic information.
Unified - Joined together to be one country.
Arminius - The Germanic Cherusci tribe chieftain who died in 21AD.
Battle of Teutoburg Forest - A 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.
AI - A computer programme that has been designed to think.
Archaeologists - Someone 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.
Herculaneum - An ancient city that was buried under volcanic ash after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. It is close to Pompeii.
Plato - One of the most important Ancient Greek philosophers.
Holocaust - The murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed.
Nazis - A 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.