Vere Childe -- Australia's gift to archaeology

For sheer adventure, Indiana Jones might outdo the late Vere Gordon Childe. But Indiana is Hollywood. Vere Childe was for real.

I’m supposed to be studying Austria this month but that doesn’t mean I can’t still learn a little more about places of past months and the people therein.

So I will muse momentarily on this man, who was born in Sydney, Australia in 1892 but did not stay put. He spent time in England, Greece, the Balkans, the Orkney Islands, Iraq, India and the U.S. Tragically and ironically, after all that, he died back in his homeland -- falling from a cliff in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

Mr. Childe is considered one of the twentieth century’s most important archaeologists … and one who brilliantly synthesized available knowledge of Old World history. He had a gift, a keen ability to discern and illuminate the main currents of prehistory, as shown in one of his best-known works, “The Dawn of European Civilization.”

Aussie, be proud!