This exhibition, held in a museum and architectural complex endowed, rebuilt and expanded by a series of Renaissance and Early Modern popes, includes many reminders of the papacy's glorious record of patronage of the arts and learning.

WSJ: Lux in Arcana | Capitoline Museum | The Papacy's Private Papers | By Francis X. Rocca

As for the difficulty of learning about our past, just recognize how incomplete the fossil record really is: The 280 million Americans alive today collectively have some 60 billion bones in their bodies.

FORBES: Fact and Comment