Hidden Links

Hidden Links asks a series of startling questions about the past. Could climate change wipe out and reset our world, as it did in 1700 BCE? How are the Rajputs of India related to the Kims of Korea? What odd parallels appeared in China during the Mahabharata war? And how did a band of nomads end up injecting misogyny into our DNA?

Sangeeth Varghese pulls these threads together one at a time. His focus is how events that seem unconnected and random, such as climate shifts, imperial ambitions, pandemics and nomadic migrations, have had an outsized and surprising effect on modern life.

The book mixes history with a sense of suspense, and it is meant to make readers doubt much of what they thought they knew about the past.