We spend a lot of life learning about the things in front of us.

Those little board books that kids love to have read to them are a perfect example.

They can point to an object, say the name, and allow something new to embed itself in

their mind.

Which is why I love to nerd out so often about the work that historians and archaeologists

do.

Because a lot of the time they're doing the opposite of those board books, they point

to gaps in an environment or a document, and then they fill in the blank.

They infer a long lost reality based on the emptiness that it left behind.

A great example actually hit the news just a while back in January of 2023.

Researchers in Denmark announced that they had discovered a massive Viking structure

that dates back as far as the 9th century.

And all evidence points to it having been an important building, probably used for community

and political gatherings.

But they didn't discover this structure by finding its walls and furniture.

No, they just found the holes that the buildings beams once stood in.

They're width and depth and spacing across the dig sites, all paints a clear picture.

One that's comprised of invisible elements only trained experts might spot.

Their job is simply to fill in the blanks.

Humans have been inventing answers to life's mysteries for as long as we've been around.

But there's one place in the world where that tendency has been going on for over a thousand

years.

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