 Historian Tudor Parfitt has declared that "the Lost Tribes are indeed nothing but a myth", and he writes that "this myth is a vital feature of colonial discourse throughout the long period of European overseas empires, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, until the later half of the twentieth".Expanded exploration and study of groups throughout the world through archeology and the new field of anthropology in the late 19th century led to a revival or reworking of accounts of the Lost Tribes.For instance, because archeological finds of the Mississippian culture's complex earthwork mounds seemed beyond the skills of the Native American cultures known to European Americans at the time of their discovery, it was theorized that the ancient civilizations involved in the mounds' construction were linked to the Lost Tribes.