The Significance Of Archaeology
Archaeology is the empirical evidence of history and it’s weightiness anchors ideas in science, math, art, music and literature. While we were reading history by biblical times, archaeology is a fairly young science and it often gives us a more profound understanding of the past. In fact, it is the only evidence we have of ancient history.
Science, more than any other discipline, requires hard evidence and when it comes to history, nothing proves it’s circumstances, quite like archaeology. In societies where reading and writing were restricted activities for the elite class only, archaeology provides what may or may not be between the written lines. Then again, there is also racial bias that must be considered.
This could prove especially important in the fields of psychology, sociology, biology, anatomy, micro biology and zoology. An example of questions being answered might be: What kinds of pets did this people have? What were the pets fed? What religion did these people practice? How did this effect them socially? Psychologically? Are we effected by any of this? How tall were these people as compared with us? Does this prove physical evolution? Was there a difference in their cellular make-up and ours? What did they eat? Did they exercise? Were they corpulent? Lean? Athletic? Wear jewelry? Were they terribly social? Anti-social? Cannibalistic? Given to contest? How different was their air environment from ours?
We are assured of our collective past by archaeology. It is the evidence that we existed and there has been a complex reorganization of life with each passing generation. Knowledge has increased. Technology has evolved.
Math-wise, where would we be without the historical archaeology left by Euclid, Rene Descartes, Pythagoras, Zeno of Elea, Benjamin Pierce, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, Carl Friedrich Gauss and David Hilbert, da Vinci? Not to mention Einstein.
When it comes to art, music and literature, archaeology enriches each subject by proving them. By proving an evolutional picture of each. Archaeology also shines light on mysteries. Such as the zenith like rise of genius musicians, who seemed to have come out of nowhere and then tapered off. How lucky we are to have copies of Mozart’s, Beethoven’s, Tchaikovsky’s and Johann Sebastian Bach’s music.
Recently, a dig at Jamestowne has provided many clues as to how life was going in 1609 for new British immigrants. The dig has yielded shell beads, smoking pipes as well as physical evidence of it’s triangular shape. For a long time, it was believed that the settlement was washed into the river.
It was not. Thanks to archaeology, legend coughs up truth.
