Some societies, though, only accidentally pass on their findings through future archeology. The Stone Age barely speaks to us because most of the evidence is lost in the mists of time.

But if you're talking, say, about the foundations of American culture in the early modern period, that's another question. The eternal debate in that case is whether that culture is founded more on Christianity or on liberal secularism and Greco-Roman humanism.

This article, by the way, is the first in a series that will further explore this thesis. I've already written the next few in the series, drawing from The Dawn of Everything.