Some sort of anniversary today, right?

While cruising the unfathomable domain of "believe-it-or-not" -- commonly called the internet -- on an otherwise lackluster day, I sort of stumbled onto "Our Banner in the Sky," originally oil on paper by Frederick Edwin Church. Church painted this dramatic and symbolic colorful sunset in 1861 to reflect "divine" support for the Union during the American Civil War. Seems just as relevant today, would you not agree? Our fundamental problem seems to stem from a lack of consensus about good guys and bad guys and our inability to agree to disagree in a cultured manner. Church, by the way, was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters and, for a time, the most renowned American artist.

"Oh baby, I really gotta go now"

"Every time you dig up something from the past, you give more meaning to the present."

That sentence was spoken by Robert Taylor portraying archaeologist Mark Brandon in "Valley of the Kings," a 1954 adventure film written and directed by Robert Pirosh from a screenplay by Pirosh and Karl Tunberg, "suggested by historical data" in the book, "Gods, Graves and Scholars," by C. W. Ceram.

I watched the film a few days ago and, since my life is a series of "what ifs," pulled out my copy of “Gods/Graves” to try for an "imaginary glimpse" of what life would have been like for me had I followed my "once-upon-a-time" plan to degree in and to pursue a career in archaeology.

Ceram was German journalist and writer Kurt Wilhelm Marek, who published "Götter, Gräber und Gelehrte" in 1949. In translation, it became "Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology," an account of the historical development of archaeology. Marek chose to use a pseudonym to mask his earlier work as a propagandist for the Third Reich. (Probably a good idea.)

The book covers Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian archaeology and  other regions, as well. It also provides short biographies of several notable figures in the field, including Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and archaeological pioneer, who excavated Hisarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with Mycenae and Tiryns, and English Egyptologist Howard Carter, who found the intact tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings.

Ceram later published more books, including "Yestermorrow: Notes on Man's Progress." Never read it, so far, but the title has hold of my curiosity ....

Yestermorrow .... what a great word, I think .... from Wiktionary:

"Noun yestermorrow (plural yestermorrows) A day in the sequence of days from past to future, emphasizing the connection between past and future events .... a time outside of time .... a time that cannot be fit into the normal timeline, possibly due to relativistic effects."

Author and screenwriter Ray Bradbury, known primarily for science fiction and fantasy novels and short-stories, such as "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles," also had a book titled "Yestermorrow." His was a series of essays, poetry and philosophical reflections, a few of which make stimulating reading, while others are pretty much a drag.

Back on point (whatever it might be .... your guess is as good as mine): I do keep up with what is happening in the field of archaeology to a degree, and recently have been feeling engulfed by the near-countless finds these days .... cemetery after cemetery in Great Britain; 400,000-year-old bone tools in Italy; hundreds of Bronze Age artifacts uncovered in France; thousands of previously unknown campsites and towns pinpointed in Europe and Africa through study of satellite photographs.

Well, you get my drift .....

My thought has been that at some point any shovelful of earth will reveal some manner of "archaeological treasures," most of them items not worthy of storage, much less of display.

I still think that, but I also think about the sentence: "Every time you dig up something from the past, you give more meaning to the present."

Could be, but are there such things as too much knowledge about the past, too many often trivial artifacts from eras stretching back even into prehistory?