Carl Bergstrom is a paleontologist of no particular note who, having failed marriage, is wrestling with confronting the effects on his life of a single-minded fossil hunting. In the midst of a soul-searching review of his life, Carl unearths a strange fossil in the Montana badlands and is led to a lost history, the dim memory of which spawned humankind's primordial myths. Along the way, after fumbling his academic opportunity, Carl meets a mysterious man who gives him a choice between failure and new possibilities of discovery. These possibilities include Katherine, an attractive, though aloof professor of chemistry who is remarkably disinterested in Carl. Initially clueless about the risks he is assuming, Carl learns that there are other, darker forces in the world also searching for ancient technology associated with the Elder race, who left a legacy and a choice for those transformed by discovering the secret of their prior existence. The answers to enduring mysteries revolving around the sudden, worldwide appearance of the fully developed civilizations of Sumer, Egypt, and the Indus River Cultures, hinted at in the most ancient of human writing, gradual reveal themselves during Carl's journey of self-discovery.