Indiana Jones’ Travel Guide Might Be This Archaeologist’s New Book

It’s backpacking season in Nepal and the streets of Kathmandu are brimming with travelers migrating through the narrow, dusty markets of Thamel. Row after row of outdoor suppliers offer goods ranging from knockoff North Face coats to crampons, trekking poles and trail bars. From midday until midnight, Thamel hums with the clangor of deals being made between some hikers bound for the Himalayas and the celebrations of other hikers who’ve made their way back Nepal’s bustling capital city.

Above this din—at a small desk inside the Mandala Hotel—Canadian archaeologist Raven Todd DaSilva furrows through a three-ring binder brimming with dividers and loose leaf paper. The archaeologist is here for a trek, a much-needed break from her day job in heritage at a museum in London and an opportunity to learn more about human history in the Himalayas.

But while the rest of her trekking group joins the cacophony below, the veteran archaeologist and art conservator who has put dirt to shovel in places like Oman, Greece, and Turkey steadies a pen over her binder. Handwritten inside are the final chapters of “The Other Ancient Civilisations: Decoding Archaeology’s Less Celebrated Cultures.”

For nearly two years, this book has been Todd DaSilva’s constant companion. Its 570 pages, written by hand, have been carefully sorted and caressed to life in a way that few modern books are. This is no cut-and-dry history book. Nor is it historical fantasy. Instead, Todd DaSilva’s book blends context taken from archaeological sites and uses it to reveal largely forgotten worlds to readers.

Each chapter is meticulously penned out by human fingertips and a tool, the same way that its stories might have been for the very first time, hundreds or thousands of years ago.

“Ancient people aren’t that different than you and I,” says Todd DaSilva. “That gets lost a lot of the time by monumental sites and historical records of big events and powerful names, but there is a magic in the mundane of archaeology that often gets overlooked in popular media.”

If Indiana Jones wrote a guidebook, it might mirror what Raven Todd da Silva has penned. “The Other Ancient Civilisations” gives life to the shadows of heroes and everyday people travelers walk in the footsteps of today. The stories in these pages come from cuneiform and Etruscan. Eons before the age of Amazon, they were etched in stone, notched into wood and penned onto papyrus. They were depicted in artwork on pottery, mosaic tiles and—sometimes—on the land itself.

Though the chapters revolve around a common theme, the delights are in the details here. Todd DaSilva walks the line between scientist and communicator to reveal stories like children playing inside of the walled city of Great Zimbabwe, and Thule Inuit storing summer foods in coolers to have a taste of warm weather during the depths of winter.

The book paints a portraits like those of the Nabataean builders of Petra, and the Nubians who birthed more pyramids than mighty Egypt. Readers are shown the likely son of a gardener planting the seeds of literature in Mesopotamia, the jungle shaman carefully hovering over the bones of the dead in the Amazon and the first rumbles of the Minotaur in the Mediterranean.

Todd DaSilva tells of outriggers across Oceana and delve into an ancient super city on the banks of the Mississippi River. Hooked by these captivating tales, “The Other Ancient Civilisations” leads into the backstories of people and places that shaped the modern world.

The book brings a new depth to the present that ushers the curious traveler onwards across the globe.

In general, even casual history fans know the basics of ancient societies in places like Rome, Egypt and Peru. But Todd DaSilva says there are many more civilizations that have captivating stories to tell. “Large monuments and sites and heavily documented periods of time are more accessible,” the author says. “Cultures and civilizations that capture large audiences also lead to more funding. Research on lesser-known cultures and civilizations is therefore usually done on a more regional level. In some cases, it has trouble crossing borders due to language barriers.”

Todd DaSilva says she scoured 15,000 years of ancient history to compile the 20 chapter book in an effort to show readers the hidden world of ancient societies. Often times—as is this case of Cahokia Mounds just outside of St. Louis—those societies existed alongside or directly beneath modern cities and states. Some of the stories are startling enough to seem like a major omission from grade school history books.

“Not much can be found in particular areas because certain environments degrade organic material and metals faster than others,” Todd DaSilva adds. “The less we can find, the less we know and therefore that particular area of archaeology doesn’t get as much attention as others with better preservation. I hope it also encourages readers to look outside their comfort zone and engage with local history.”

Debuting this week via booksellers worldwide, “The Other Ancient Civilisations” has now been painstakingly transcribed into from script to print. Readers don’t need to decipher lines of handwriting to uncover the stories inside, but Todd DaSilva says they do need to have a thirst for curiosity about worlds they may have taken for granted. ‘There are so many amazing ancient and historic cultures around the world that there’s probably evidence of one you’ve never heard of right in your backyard.”

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