Archaeology is concerned with explaining mysteries of the human past ranging from the origins of human beings to the rise and fall of civilizations. This course is designed to guide students in investigations of mysteries that capture the popular imagination, but which many scientists do not wish to discuss. What is the scientific evidence for the Biblical account of Creation, the Great Flood, or the Tower of Babel? Was the Great Pyramid encoded with lost knowledge or predictions of the future? Did Chinese, Africans, Celts, or Vikings visit the Americas before Columbus? Is Stonehenge an astronomical observatory? Who built the giant statues on Easter Island? Where are the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria? The methods and theories of archaeology and anthropology will be used to address these and other questions. We will develop methods of evaluating information available from various published and online sources to judge when a claim represents a revolutionary new idea or a strategy for extracting money from the uninformed? Students will learn to be critical consumers of scientific and non-scientific information, and our goal will be to identify ways to be skeptical while maintaining an open mind when confronted with conflicting claims.