In 1789 the united states was about its current size

there are two main types of historical sources: primary sources and secondary sources. a primary source is something that originates from the past. it can be a chronicle, a piece of pottery, or even a piece of glacial ice that gives us climate data about the levels of atmospheric carbon one thousand years ago.

in his book, the riddle of the rosetta stone, james giblin talks about how there was a young british polymath and physician named thomas young who made a lot of advances on the deciphering of the rosetta stone. he says that even though young made a lot of mistakes because he was working under false assumptions, he also made huge contributions like deciphering three out of the seven symbols (more than anyone else before him). young published his findings and continued his good work but he wasn't able to progress much further due to some unfavorable situations, he still laid the basis for many other scholars and of course for the man who has been generally known to have deciphered it, jean-françois champollion