A Tale as Old as Time

Many hundreds of millions of years ago, there was only one vast continent on Earth, surrounded by water on all sides. Geologists have named this immense territory Pangaea. Our version of Pangaea has left us a legacy of exquisite handicrafts, the products of a great civilization with a remarkable history and culture. In the presence of these pancontinental artifacts, we remain open-mouthed: could such figures actually have existed, and could anyone alive have actually depicted them? To quell these doubts, we need only remember that, given a sufficiently long span of time, almost everything comes into being. These incredible artifacts gaze out at us with eyes that have watched aeons pass and the face of the Earth change radically. They are accompanied by a text, a direct eyewitness account of the world of Pangaea. Words and imagery together constitute an enigma, but we wouldn’t want to provide any spoilers. If you’re insatiably curious, you can find the solution to this mystery at the end of this article.