1. Many of the ideas that we think of as modern and cutting edge have been used in the past. Some years ago, an article in Harvard Magazine dealt a serious blow to the Hollywood version of pyramid building, in which Charlton Heston as Moses commands the pharaoh to “Let my people go!” The article reported that archaeologist Mark Lehner has found evidence that pyramid workers were not slaves at all—at least not in the modern sense of the word. Instead, Lehner believes, the pyramids were built by “a rotating labor force in a modular, team-based kind of organization.”

66 Lehner’s discovery provides a good example of how many techniques that we think are very modern are really not. Can you think of any other seemingly new developments that were actually taken from the past?