The Inca artisans of the 1570s tried to recreate the pots their predecessors had made before the Spanish Conquest. Now Stanford's Archaeology Center retraces their steps and in doing so, rediscovers a vanished world.  

The blisteringly hot, primordial soup once thought to cover the Earth in its early years may actually have had a tepid temperature no hotter than a backyard hot tub, Stanford researchers say.  

"Why not have a spaceship come into the story? Why not?" asks the author who has been praised for his "satiric glee and elegiac compassion."