Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History

by Andrew Carroll

Prometheus was born about 2900 B.C., some two hundred years before the Egyptians began constructing the Great Pyramids. He was a wee sprout when Sargon of Akkad, the world’s first emperor, rose to power around 2300 B.C. near what is present-day Iraq, and he was just entering adulthood when the Trojan War began in 1190 B.C. (As lopsided juxtapositions go, Kerr’s two-sentence entry for 961 B.C. is a delight: “[Israel’s King] David dies and is succeeded by his son, Solomon. The Olmec invent the tortilla.”) By the time Prometheus was well into middle age, Solon had introduced democracy to Athens, the Buddha had found enlightenment, Brutus had stabbed Caesar, and Christ had been crucified. Prometheus was getting on in years but still strong and vigorous when Spanish explorers first set foot in America during the early 1500s. Then, on August 6, 1964, five men led by a thirty-year-old University of North Carolina graduate student named Donald R. Currey found Prometheus on the north slope of Wheeler Peak along Nevada’s Snake Range and literally chopped him to pieces. Despite having endured for five millennia in conditions that are fatally inhospitable to most living creatures, the ancient bristlecone pine tree was no match for half a dozen men armed with chainsaws.