In March of 1994 some spelunkers exploring an extensive cave system in northern Spain poked their lights into a small side gallery and noticed two human mandibles jutting out of the sandy soil. The cave, called El Sidrón, lay in the midst of a remote upland forest of chestnut and oak trees in the province [...]

When the first thunderous boom echoed across the plain of Campania, quickly followed by a blistering hail of volcanic rock, the man and the woman hastily abandoned their village and made a run for it to the east, up a gently sloping hill toward what must have seemed like possible sanctuary in a nearby forest. [...]

It was late spring or early summer, when a modest tree called the hop hornbeam unfurls bright yellow clusters of flowers in the steep valleys that run north into the mountains now known as the Italian Alps. The man hurried through a forest he knew well, wincing from the pain in his injured right hand [...]