Science recovers what it can from what survives.

It has recovered a great deal.

But the name, the specific identity that would make the historical person fully present, is beyond recovery through any technique currently available.

This gap is not unique to Conquest Man.

It characterizes the vast majority of the human past.

The billions of people who lived before writing systems became widespread, or before they gained access to the literate culture that could record their names, or who lived in communities whose records have not survived, are in the same position: real, specific, individual, and irretrievably unnamed.

Modern science has made the unnamed more visible than at any previous point in history.