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 lineageA direct line of descendants from an ancestor. E.g. your grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents and so on. , 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 unifiedJoined together to be one country. 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 have often found the further back we go, the less we know about our past.

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 amazing 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. found hundreds of scrolls in 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.

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.