Marching backwards, to better times: This must be...right before the executions?Courtesy Hysterical BerthaIt’s easy, sometimes, to get frustrated with the modern world. Society these days is confusing and violent, and it makes me yearn for humanity’s gentle youth.

7,000 years ago, for instance, would have been a refreshing time to be alive. That would be the life: living with your tribe in lush central Europe, hunting and gathering, perhaps herding cattle, being at one with nature and your fellow humans. Now and again you might run across another group of people, and you would interact in your simple, honest way—an argument might break out, one thing leads to another, and then you and the other men and children are bound with rope and struck on the left side of the head with an axe, while the women of the tribe are taken away by your executioners.

I guess this is why they call archaeology “the dismal science.”

Wait--do I have that right?