by Michael G. Lamoureux, March/April 2009
Simply put, archaeology is the only discipline that can investigate events in pre-history; the origin of human-kind; the origins of agriculture and the domestication of animals; the development of writing, religion, art, and technology; the evolution of complex societies; and the process of urbanization. Without archaeology, we'd be ignorant of over 99% of our existence as writing only came into existence in the last six thousand years, and captured very little of daily life in most early societies where writing was often restricted to a privileged class, and recent evidence indicates that homo sapiens may have evolved as far back as 400,000 years ago.
Furthermore, while parts of Western Europe, like Britain, didn't acquire written language until a mere 2,000 years ago, archaeologists have discovered that early hunter gather societies appeared almost 100,000 years ago in the middle Paleolithic with the development of modern homo sapiens sapiens. Although they were primitive hunter-gather societies that were nomadic by nature and tended to follow the migration of the herd with their seasonal camps, they lived as a society. And while they were technologically unsophisticated by modern standards they did use chipped stone tools, animal hides for garments, animal stomachs for sacks, and other organic materials.
We know that our ancestors took advantage of the environment for their survival. They exploited the dense rainforests of Africa for food and shelter, the endless herds of reindeer and buffalo on the plains of Europe for food and hides, and the fish and shellfish of the lakes, rivers, and oceans they encountered. When they could find them, they used natural caves and rock shelters. The Abri Patand rock shelter in France has yielded at least six layers of human occupation from as far back as 40,000 years ago to as recent as 9,000 years ago. And we know that our ancestors watched their cousins, homo sapiens neanderthalensis (who died out about 30,000 years ago), bury their dead with material objects, which eventually led them to develop their own burial customs.
We know that our ancestors also shared our capability for learning and technological advancement, even though it happened at a much slower pace then it does today. In the upper and late Paleolithic, which began about 35,000 years ago, our ancestors started to line their hearts with stone, invented the spear and boomerang, invented the bow and arrow, and even discovered the oil lamp (which used animal fat at the time).
They learned to store food and defer the consumption of killed animals, by way of the drying, smoking, and storage of filleted carcasses. And they started to create art, which at first consisted mostly of cave and rock paintings and simple wood carvings.
At the end of the last ice-age, and the beginning of the Mesolithic, our ancestors continued to march forward in their technological and societal advancement. Chipped stone technology advanced with the introduction of Levallois-type cores that produced triangular (or parallel) sided flakes, ostrich eggshells and tortoise shells were used as bowls, and our ancestors started to actively manage the landscape and domesticate animals, like goats and dogs, for the first time.
Then, about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors, who had replaced chipped stone technology with ground stone technology that could produce better microlithic blades and tools, started to cultivate crops, domesticate animals for a variety of tasks, and form permanent settlements for the first time. This ushered in a new stone age, the Neolithic, that saw the rise of the first great civilizations of Sumeria and Egypt. Pottery, a big step up from hide sacks and animal stomachs, was developed and used to store and transport food, water, and other goods. Pottery also became the prime medium of art which progressed from simple geometric forms that included triangles, spirals, and wavy lines to complex engravings that depicted temples, shrines, gods, and religious rituals in ancient Egypt.
In modern day northern Iraq, our ancestors learned to cultivate wheat and barley for the first time, possibly near Jarmo where the remains of an ancient city that dates back to approximately 8,000 BC has been found. Within 3,000 years, agriculture, which was already common in Mesopotamia and independently discovered in southwest Asia, parts of North, Central, and South America, China, and Africa, spread to Western Europe (and reached Britain by 4,000 BC). This not only allowed for the formation of complex societies across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America, but allowed world population to rise to a new level that was previously unsustainable (and estimated to be over 5,000,000).
Agriculture led to the invention of beer, which was probably a core part of the Neolithic diet of agricultural communities as it was originally made from bread that was crumbled into water, mixed with yeast and perhaps a few other substances, and then simply allowed to ferment before being strained. Beer making was an efficient way to use stale bread and surplus grain and preserve food.
And with agriculture, came organized warfare, as farmers had to band together to protect their food stores from nomads and raiders, who, in turn, had to become more organized if they were to stand any hope of taking the food and supplies they wanted from the sedentary communities that revolved around agriculture.
Warfare became more organized, and capable of being conducted on a larger scale, with the introduction of the Bronze Age following the discovery of Bronze near Ban Chiang, Thailand, around 4500 BC. Replacing (cold-hammered) copper and stone as the material of choice for tools, weapons, and art, bronze ushered in the early great civilizations, which included the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, the Egyptians, the Minoans of Crete, the Hittites of Asia Minor, and the Mycenaean civilization of ancient mainland Greece.
Archaeological evidence tells us that that bronze had spread to Minoan Crete by 2500 BC and Mycenaean Greece around 2000 BC. By 1500 BC, bronze was in heavy use as the metal of choice for swords and spear-points and by 1400 BC, Mycenaean metalsmiths had mastered the art of casting bronze plates which they then hammered into helmets and body armor. The Mycenaean's also used bronze for plowshares, sickles, ornaments, and vessels for drinking and cooking. Other societies used bronze similarly.
During the bronze age, societies developed new, and elaborate, burial customs. The Minoans buried their dead in large tombs that included furniture, bronze artifacts, and beauty articles. The Greeks developed an elaborate custom that revolved around their belief that the sight of a dead body would offend the Olympian gods and that the dead person's ghost would not be allowed to enter the underworld until the body had been covered. The "Beaker Culture" of Britain started to buy their dead with gold jewelry and copper daggers.
Then, about 3,000 years after the discovery of bronze, our ancestors discovered iron around 1500 BC in Northern Turkey in what is now known as Armenia. Since iron, which was easier to acquire, could make stronger tools and weapons than bronze, it quickly spread through Mesopotamia, Europe, and Egypt.
It was during this iron age that art reached its peak in the ancient Greek civilization when artisans learned how to produce high quality marble and bronze sculptures that, by 400 BC, would attain a realism in their portrayal of the human form that would not be equaled until the Renaissance 200 years later.
The iron age also saw the development of the beginnings of modern architecture. Until the introduction of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian "orders" that developed between 700 BC and 300 BC, the most advanced structures were the great pyramids of Egypt or the mortice and tenon joints that joined the lintels of Stonehenge. In the new Greek orders, which are still applied today in neoclassical public buildings such as banks, museums, libraries, and city halls, a solid upper structure (entablature) is supported by vertical columns.
And without archaeologists studying, cataloguing, and interpreting the past, we would have no knowledge of any of this as it lies entirely in pre-history. And that's why archaeology is so important, as we'd have no knowledge of our beginnings otherwise. Our first tools, our first shelters, our first garments, our first weapons, our first artistic expressions, our first pets, our first crops, our first settlements, our first monuments, our first records … all would be permanently lost to the sands of time without archaeology.