We at ELECTRUM Magazine are keen on studying the past or – perhaps more humbly – what we think it was. Some of us are archaeologically trained or we are professional historians and art historians and investigative journalists never tiring of asking questions of the past, even if we sometimes receive other answers to unasked questions rather than the ones we ask.

We at ELECTRUM respect that amateurs or professionals in other fields may love history as much or more than we do. Our readers are people who love history in its many aspects. We at ELECTRUM are old enough to know the past matters, we are young enough to hope we can add a valuable resource for others in electronic format.

You wouldn’t hire someone on the spot or marry someone without attempting to discover that person’s past, nor would you buy a used car based on a whim without carefully checking its history and provenance as best you could. This is also true of collecting antiquities, which is usually problematic, or fact-checking history, which can change. So the past matters. It is why we go to museums and attend lectures about archaeology and history in order to expand our personal horizons. We at ELECTRUM are advocates of the Archaeological Institute of America; most of us here are long-standing members and abide by its standards and ethical practices.

Rather than being so lost in the past or unhappy with the present or fearful of the future as to bury our heads in the sand, we constantly seek to understand ourselves better by examining whatever we can about our human ancestry. Thus we at ELECTRUM are constantly looking for links – and assistance from a reading public – to increase our own and others’ wider understanding of  ‘Why the Past Matters.’