The Importance of Archaeology Today
Fun fact: Archaeologists aren’t all Indiana Jones. They do not search for what we assume to be lost treasure but instead dig up a timeline of our planet’s history, carefully modifying past theories with current finds. Archaeology is often glorified, but its importance cannot be understated.
More Evidence Means A Better Map of Earth
Imagine for a moment if no one knew that Dinosaurs roamed our planet eons ago. Would that affect us today in any physical manner? No. But to understand our planet and its future, we wouldn’t know anything about the Jurassic, Triassic, or the Cretaceous eras, where animals that weren’t us roamed the earth, which links to the biological theory of Evolution, tying up many of the facts that science had left out during the era of enlightenment in Europe (the 1600s – 1800s). Due to these significant discoveries about civilizations, cultures, and other artifacts, we now have a better knowledge about the world and its history.
At the time of Darwin’s book’s distribution, paleontology was taking a gander at the development of culture and innovation. This is no greater exhibited than when two Scandinavian antiquaries, Worsaae and Thomse proposed the initial “three age” framework for the overall dating of ancient rarities and their stratigraphic connections. These they named Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, oversimplified assignments that we still, to a great extent, use today. Sir John Lubbock separated these stages further, for instance partitioning the Stone Age time frame into Paleolithic (old stone age), Mesolithic (center stone age), and Neolithic (new stone age). These social assignments were helpful just to societies from Europe to the Middle East and into western Asia, with little use in Africa, the Americas, the Far
East, or Australasia. In any case, today, they fashion the creative mind of the past, and both antiquarianism and human studies endeavor to produce human social sequence around these three significant ideas.
All of this was found by individuals with a superficial knowledge of history, or by accident, discovering brand new artifacts that could impact the world and our perception of it in so many ways.
A Waypoint To The Future
We understand the importance of keeping records, dates, and all else. Imagine if none of these records weren’t available to future generations? Imagine our future with no records of the past! It would be absolute madness. With only folklores and human anecdotes that get distorted over each age being the only source of information on the past, our assumptions about the history of our world would be pretty wrong. Still, with the information available to us that is accurate about our planet, Archeology would provide a means of study for the future.
