And "lost" here means "unknown to the editors of NY Times". I remember studying about the Cucuteni culture in the 5th grade.

Here is a link with more info on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni-Trypillian_culture

Interesting. AFAIK my own education in the field of history was by most standards quite comprehensive and yet I'd never heard of it either( * ). So I'm kind of grateful the NYT has decided to fill up some space with an overview of a culture they apparently suspect not everyone knows about :-)

* but then "comprehensive" means little more than "a thorough overview of basic Western European history starting with the ancient Greeks". It's not hard to imagine a history curriculum that spends more time on cultures before that.

As far as this specific culture is concerned, however, note the article says very little about it was known until 1972 and even after that, the knowledge was confined to Bulgaria and Romania, so it's at least somewhat understandable that it didn't make it into 5th grade curricula until after the Iron Curtain came down (by which time I was in 9th grade, btw).

I am sorry I didn't qualify my statement but I am from Eastern Europe. So we learned about it quite early.

I was being sneaky a little but the point was that when it come to "the oldest artifact...X", the "earliest...Y" it should be something that is taught and studied world-wide.

The downside is that we didn't study much American history, or at least not as much as I would have liked.

And I'm sorry I'm apparently so culturally myopic that the thought that you could've said what you said because you were actually from Eastern Europe didn't even occur to me.

This reminds me of some of the truly hilarious anthropological expeditions from Time magazine to chronicle an obscure religious sect call "Christians." (Among many other excellent pieces of religious reporting over the years, they had an article about the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Which included Catholics -- including at least one Catholic priest wearing a Roman collar in the photograph they used.)

Edit: For benefit of our international readers: this is sort of like including a Golden Retriever (dog breed) in the lineup of 25 beautiful cats.

I'm confused by your comments here. Are you claiming that Roman Catholics aren't Christians? Or are you claiming that Roman Catholics are never evangelicals?

Certainly a Golden Retriever is never a cat - about that I am not confused.

Evangelicals are Protestants. "Protestant" is basically a blanket term for "not Catholic". We're pretty different across the board from Evangelicals, who are by and large turbo-fundamentalists. In 12 years of Catholic schooling, for instance, I was specifically and repeatedly taught that the world was not 10,000 years old, and that people did not ride dinosaurs.

This is my guess as to what Patrick meant.

Ah, I've learned something. I always thought "Evangelicals" were simply Christians (or indeed, others) who practised Evangelism. However, from what you say a particular sub-class of Christians have decided to take the name and make it their own. That makes sense, and matches what I've now double-checked.

Thank you. I'll read some more to avoid any further confusions.

Evangelism : Evangelical :: Islam : Islamism.

Really? Henry Luce was raised by protestant missionaries.

They seem to be talking about different things. The NYT article talks almost exclusively of the Danube valley between the Carpathian and Balkan mountains, whereas the wiki page lists the cucuteni culture as being centered around the Dniester river, north of the Carpathians.