Back in high school or earlier I read Michener's The Source and got fascinated with archeology, and the stories of distant times and foreign places. Digging through the centuries teaches us so much. Is this a field of knowledge that interests you? Do you have a particular era that you have learned about from archeology -- either on a dig yourself, or by following archeological reports? I've been particularly interested in the ongoing research at and about Stonehenge. I know Ancient-Origins.net isn't the most scholarly resource, but it's often accurate enough to encourage further investigation. https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/stonehenge-0014920 The BBC's long running archeology production called Time Team has amazing episodes on every historic period, and they do archeology, not just talk about it, so you can watch the process and tools used, learn what archeologists look for, and how they distinguish important data from the insignificant. Since I'm interested in vanished cultures, Their episode on Boudica the warrior queen who fought the Romans and her Celtic Iceni tribe, I thought was very interesting for both the history and the archeology. Are there sources on archeology that you follow?
One of my majors was anthropology. I love studying people's pasts, culture, ancient civilizations. Guess that is why I am a Conservative. Thanks for the video!
Hello @Mary Stetler . Time team ran for 20 seasons and are producing new shows without the active digs even now. Many episodes can be found on YouTube on many historical eras. One of the things that occurs to me is how much less archeologists learn from unearthing graves without grave goods. Of course, some things can be speculated about a culture from any textiles that haven't yet deteriorated, and from jewelry, but we've learned so much more from burials that included swords. shields, pottery, little sculptures, bone and metal hair pieces, burials with animals, how bodies were placed, what lined the graves, and so on.
I was on a tour of the parks of the south west US years ago. It included the allowance of those who could do some trekking (old people tour ; ) to go down to a restored pueblo! Like an apartment building built into mountain. The entrances were in the roofs that were overhung by the 'mountain'. ladders were the stairs and the aboriginals could just pull the ladders up in case of intruders or in-laws they did not like ; ) Tourists only had access into one chamber because of the wear and tear. But I was in heaven! There was a dig there of a foundation of a long house away from the cliffs. you could see the cooking and seating areas. Inside the visitor center there were 'finds' and explanations of the area and they put on a lunch that would have been typical of a feast in the time of the original occupants at a different spot. Squash, corn and turkey, like you would do in a crock pot. I keep trying to remember the park. I think green was in the name but it keeps flickering just out of range in my brain. The mystery was what happened to the ancient people. Where or why did they go?
I wonder if that was at Mesa Verde? Verde does mean "green". I remember going there as a child. We didn't get the special tour you did, @Mary Stetler, but it was still quite impressive. Yes, why did that culture stop living that way? Overpopulation? Migration of food sources? Climate change? A yearning for an easier dwelling place? I would have hated going up and down ladders all the time. LOL
For myself, I really don't know, but, have always been highly interested in the Old West and the Indian Wars.
What really intrigues me about the past are the beauty and elegance of some of the buildings of these bygone eras, some of which would be hard for us to duplicate today, with all of our modern machinery. There is a lot of interest in the possibility of our history not being what we were taught that it was, and that there was a very high functioning civilization (or civilizations) many years ago, when we are told that everything was very primitive. We are just now finding more of the old, old structures that have been buried for centuries, and finding them all over the world. This picture shows the grand theater at Ephesus, which was buried and only recently has been excavated out again. https://ephesusbreeze.com/ephesus/grand-theater
Wow, those are amazing photos, @Yvonne Smith. It mystifies me how such structures can get buried just by the dusts of time. That issue of our "received" history is something that really needs to be examined, I think. Most of "accepted" history is only the version of the conquerors, while the stories and perspectives of the conquered have been distorted, or completely deleted. History is anything but objective fact, especially now when politicians have agendas to maintain power. The veil over high functioning civilizations of long ago is an excellent example of that. What I still feel amazed by is how much very long distance travel there was in early times. Although the migration from Asia over the Bering Strait into North America is in question regarding the origins of Native Americans, it still would have been an amazing and no doubt multi-generational feat. Some contend that the earliest humans in North America arrived on the east coast, and even so, crossing the ocean in ancient times would have been amazing.
I sometimes wonder what will be learned of our culture with so many being cremated (and flushed down the sewer or whatever) as opposed to burial. We don't usually do grave goods per se, but some do and there are often clothing and jewelry buried with the deceased. I also wonder about documents, as I doubt electronic documents will survive the centuries. If the classical writers had used emails and Word, we would know nothing of their thoughts.
THANK YOU! It WAS Mesa Verde! I don't often think in other languages but do confuse things like thinking Potassium begins with a K but it doesn't. The symbol for it is K.
I am a cemetery nut. I cannot pass up a historical cemetery or an ancient burial ground. I like to wander around the graves, reading what is still legible and trying to imagine the lives of those people. Having lived in Turkey, chock-a-block with archeology, I was in my glory. The town we lived in was the 7th "version" of that town....the previous ones having been destroyed by earthquakes. If you went snorkeling in the Sea of Marmara off the town beach, you could see quite a bit of the previous towns under the water.
I use to study ancient Middle East and American excavations. I enjoyed the study of the Viking or Norse cultures and travels. First began these in Bible study decades ago. One of the Israelite Tribes 'Dan' was a seafarer. Never positivily identified them as being one and the same. Also studied the pyrimids,facinating that they were built on a scale pi 3.14 circumference of the earth.Also some of the windows point to the constilsations of Dracon and Orion if memory serves me. https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/usa-viking-ship-discovered-near-mississipi-river/ Memphis, TN | A group of volunteers cleaning up the shores of the Mississippi River near the biggest city in Tennessee have stumbled upon the remains of an ancient boat encrusted in mud. A team of archeologists from the University of Memphis that was rapidly called to the site, confirmed that the ship is most certainly a Viking Knarr, suggesting the Norse would have pushed their exploration of America a lot further than historians previously thought. The heavily damaged ship was found near the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers and lies on a private property.
https://themeltdowncontinues.blogspot.com/2014/05/history-of-vikingstribe-on-dan-israel.html I guess these digs were abandoned. https://themeltdowncontinues.blogspot.com/2014/05/history-of-vikingstribe-on-dan-israel.html