NationStates Jolt Archive

Survive as a discipline?

It's a common joke or idea that archaeologists from the future finding iMacs or such stuff and pondering it's use, but, in the modern age of information technology, we are more and more better documenting the present; at some point, most, if not all archaeology sites from before this time will have been found, dated, and studied.

It seems, to me at least, that it will be nearly impossible to lose the modern information, baring some sort of worldwide disaster, because we know were, say, all our cities are, and are likely to say, note if New Orleans or whatever gets completely destroyed. Seeing as these records will likely be available in future, can Archaeology survive, or will it collapse into an endless debate over the details of ancient life which are unlikely to be solved?

Archaeology will be fine.

It seems, to me at least, that it will be nearly impossible to lose the modern information

The information will be "lost" in the sense that the file formats become obsolete. No-one will have the necessary software to read them.

Can Archaeology survive as a discipline?

Yes. At the very least, there are those nigh unanswerable questions, and they will be debated and re-debated until:

A) The world is destroyed by the expansion of the sun in its death-throws, killing the insufficiently progressed humans that failed to make it off the planet, or

B) Humanity does make it off the planet, and this endless set of questions continues until:

B, 1) We find a new planet where life once existed but no longer does, giving Archaeologists a new venue of questioning, and more opportunity to find some awe-inspiring, insanely powerful object that can not pass a certain seal or be looked upon, or

B, 2) We simply keep debating these questions until entropy consumes everything that there is.

sooooo you think that .....5000 years from now there will be no loss in understanding of the civilizations of today?

Survive as a discipline?

It's a common joke or idea that archaeologists from the future finding iMacs or such stuff and pondering it's use, but, in the modern age of information technology, we are more and more better documenting the present; at some point, most, if not all archaeology sites from before this time will have been found, dated, and studied.

It seems, to me at least, that it will be nearly impossible to lose the modern information, baring some sort of worldwide disaster, because we know were, say, all our cities are, and are likely to say, note if New Orleans or whatever gets completely destroyed. Seeing as these records will likely be available in future, can Archaeology survive, or will it collapse into an endless debate over the details of ancient life which are unlikely to be solved?

I'm a computer engineer. I'm doing COBOL archeology right now.

Survive as a discipline?

It's a common joke or idea that archaeologists from the future finding iMacs or such stuff and pondering it's use, but, in the modern age of information technology, we are more and more better documenting the present; at some point, most, if not all archaeology sites from before this time will have been found, dated, and studied.

It seems, to me at least, that it will be nearly impossible to lose the modern information, baring some sort of worldwide disaster, because we know were, say, all our cities are, and are likely to say, note if New Orleans or whatever gets completely destroyed. Seeing as these records will likely be available in future, can Archaeology survive, or will it collapse into an endless debate over the details of ancient life which are unlikely to be solved?

better documentation? and just how are those documents kept?

imagine in just 150 years from now, some group uncovers a settlement and finds a box of LP's... would they know what they were? would they be able to get the information off of it?

Archeology would be just fine.

I wanna be there when they uncover Disneyland...
"Obviously... these people... worshipped giant mice..."

The ancient Egyptians were GREAT at documentation, and now we have an entire archeological discipline JUST for THEM, (Egyptology).
I think archaeology will be O.K., for a while. :tongue:

The ancient Egyptians were GREAT at documentation, and now we have an entire archeological discipline JUST for THEM, (Egyptology).
I think archaeology will be O.K., for a while. :tongue:

Mmm... interesting... maybe I should found COBOLogy.

Well, we are simply not capable of keeping track of everything that happens around the world at any time, so there are a lot of potential things for future archaeologists to investigate. For example, climatic shifts and natural disasters might force some cities to be abandoned as has occurred in the past, while others might be lost due to wars or economic changes. Don't forget the more distant future, where offworld settlement will certainly produce dramatic changes in population as the Earth's growth rate slows and people leave for other places, producing abandoned settlements and other relics that might be places of interest for tourists and archaeologists alike. The differences in technology, language, and culture of future humanity will likely be so far removed from our own that modern technology will look like the ancient structures and devices of past civilizations.

The thing is, we're talking timescales that are huge by our standards; the pyramids and the Great Wall were new at one point, just like our cities and monuments today. I don't think people living only a few hundred years after their construction could perceive of them as future archaeological sites, nor could they imagine their cities and towns one day abandoned or left in ruins. However, I do think the rapid growth in our ability to record and interpret past data and to preserve historical sites will pressure the field, but if anything humans are quite good at building, destroying, and rebuilding our civilizations so it's not hard to imagine plenty of things will fall through the cracks of history in to the realm of archaeology.

After all, what is archaeology but filling in the gaps in the historical record?

They're still digging up stuff in China, even though there are records of it. Besides, who do you think is going to research the long-lost Martian civilizations once we colonize our neighbor to the...uh...outward...side. Thing. :p

well considering all our book and buildings are not built to survive like ancient stone monuments I guess archeologists are going to be rather busy trying to find anything about us

I mean its not like the people the great library did too well :p

Mmm... interesting... maybe I should found COBOLogy.


...maybe so, just remember to keep the initial coursework "BASIC". :D

sooooo you think that .....5000 years from now there will be no loss in understanding of the civilizations of today?

Yes, of course he thinks that. You see, our civilization will never collapse. Old civilizations collapsed, but it's clear that we are in every respect superior to the empires of the past. It is impossible that humanity will do anything that will jeopardize the continuation of our advanced societies. We're just that perfect.

Yes, of course he thinks that. You see, our civilization will never collapse. Old civilizations collapsed, but it's clear that we are in every respect superior to the empires of the past. It is impossible that humanity will do anything that will jeopardize the continuation of our advanced societies. We're just that perfect.

We rarely see the complete collaspe of cultures in the modern world, even when a nation falls we still have information on them. The USSR collapsed, but we still have lots of information on them, and Russia hasn't been erased from the map, for example.

Even if all historical data from the modern age on is kept and is usable for the remainder of human civilisation archaeology will still have everything from before the modern age to investigate and try to understand. And if human civilisation does collapse then post-human or non-human archaeologists will probably be able to find some artefacts.

Archaeology will be there as long as there is stuff in the ground...

You cant document what you havent found...

...and all that digging is bound to leave a mound that is round on the ground, gravity bound, with a shovelling sound.
(I can haz poetree, 2!) :D

We rarely see the complete collaspe of cultures in the modern world, even when a nation falls we still have information on them. The USSR collapsed, but we still have lots of information on them, and Russia hasn't been erased from the map, for example.
Yeah, but how much of that information is correct? Hell, people barely have accurate information about things that happened 50 years ago, let alone thousands of years ago.

Archeology is not just about trying to figure out what cavemen and ancient Egyptians did all day.

A lot of archeology is about relatively recent finds, often discoveries that shed light on recorded history. For instance, in cities like New York, sections of which have been restructured many times, it is not at all uncommon for regular construction and street work to uncover previously unknown ruins of buildings, burial grounds, etc. Archeologists step in and their work can either confirm or correct information in the historical records from that time. For example, historical records mentioned a Public Alms House in NY from the early British period, but not where it was or what happened to it. Utility line work behind city hall in the 1980s discovered ruins under the lawn. Archeologists excavated the ruins and found artifacts that eventually let them identify them as the Alms House, as well as structural damage and human remains that indicated the building had been destroyed by a collapse, possibly with fire, which may have been widespread. This information clarified the information about the Alms House itself and also shed more light on the early configuration and some major events/changes in the city's development.

Records exist. Records are never exhaustively complete. Records are often inaccurate. Records get misplaced. And records get destroyed by things like flood, fire, bugs, war, and carelessness.

Archeologists will always have a job as long as people keep digging holes in the ground and purging their files periodically.

Yeah, but how much of that information is correct? Hell, people barely have accurate information about things that happened 50 years ago, let alone thousands of years ago.

Archeology is not just about trying to figure out what cavemen and ancient Egyptians did all day.

A lot of archeology is about relatively recent finds, often discoveries that shed light on recorded history. For instance, in cities like New York, sections of which have been restructured many times, it is not at all uncommon for regular construction and street work to uncover previously unknown ruins of buildings, burial grounds, etc. Archeologists step in and their work can either confirm or correct information in the historical records from that time. For example, historical records mentioned a Public Alms House in NY from the early British period, but not where it was or what happened to it. Utility line work behind city hall in the 1980s discovered ruins under the lawn. Archeologists excavated the ruins and found artifacts that eventually let them identify them as the Alms House, as well as structural damage and human remains that indicated the building had been destroyed by a collapse, possibly with fire, which may have been widespread. This information clarified the information about the Alms House itself and also shed more light on the early configuration and some major events/changes in the city's development.

Records exist. Records are never exhaustively complete. Records are often inaccurate. Records get misplaced. And records get destroyed by things like flood, fire, bugs, war, and carelessness.

Archeologists will always have a job as long as people keep digging holes in the ground and purging their files periodically.

This, precisely. (thank you).

This, precisely. (thank you).
You're welcome, and thank you in return.

I'll take this chance to add:

> Archeologists also clear up things like how long remains have been in the ground, which can be vitally important to modern people. For instance, there is the famous story of one of the first "bog people" ever discovered. In the 1930s, workers cutting peat out of a bog -- I don't remember, somewhere in northern Europe -- discovered a woman's body and called the police. A murder investigation began because the woman had clearly been strangled to death. Her face and body were contorted in a way indicative of death by strangulation and the rope was even still around her neck. Very soon, a man stepped forward and confessed that he had killed his wife and dumped her body in the bog a few years before. He should have kept his mouth shut, because not long after he was sent to prison, archeologists confirmed that the discovered bog body was, in fact, over 3000 years old.

> Also, digging stuff out of the ground is actually only a small part of what archeologists do. A large part of their work is preservation. You know, keeping the pyramids up and all that. Imagine how many of these whiz-bang nifty new records could be lost to future generations, if we did not have archeologists to dote over them as they age.

You're welcome, and thank you in return.

I'll take this chance to add:

> Archeologists also clear up things like how long remains have been in the ground, which can be vitally important to modern people. For instance, there is the famous story of one of the first "bog people" ever discovered. In the 1930s, workers cutting peat out of a bog -- I don't remember, somewhere in northern Europe -- discovered a woman's body and called the police. A murder investigation began because the woman had clearly been strangled to death. Her face and body were contorted in a way indicative of death by strangulation and the rope was even still around her neck. Very soon, a man stepped forward and confessed that he had killed his wife and dumped her body in the bog a few years before. He should have kept his mouth shut, because not long after he was sent to prison, archeologists confirmed that the discovered bog body was, in fact, over 3000 years old.

> Also, digging stuff out of the ground is actually only a small part of what archeologists do. A large part of their work is preservation. You know, keeping the pyramids up and all that. Imagine how many of these whiz-bang nifty new records could be lost to future generations, if we did not have archeologists to dote over them as they age.

You're probably right, I just can't see someone from the future uncovering a harddrive and not knowing what it is, for example, or wondering the function of a ipod.

You're probably right, I just can't see someone from the future uncovering a harddrive and not knowing what it is, for example, or wondering the function of a ipod.
I'd bet you a nickel (if it were possible ever to collect) that 2500 years ago, there were Egyptians saying, "I just can't see someone from the future not being able to read heiroglyphs. I mean, they're on the frikkin' walls of every temple, for crying out loud."

Go take a look at your hard drive and your ipod. I mean, just look at them as objects, and ask yourself, would it really be that obvious to someone who hadn't read the manual and/or taken a class and/or seen the advertising to know what those things are for and how they work?

Now imagine if that person was born into a society that stored its data and listened to its music and powered its devices in a completely different way than we do.

I'd bet you a nickel (if it were possible ever to collect) that 2500 years ago, there were Egyptians saying, "I just can't see someone from the future not being able to read heiroglyphs. I mean, they're on the frikkin' walls of every temple, for crying out loud."

Go take a look at your hard drive and your ipod. I mean, just look at them as objects, and ask yourself, would it really be that obvious to someone who hadn't read the manual and/or taken a class and/or seen the advertising to know what those things are for and how they work?

Now imagine if that person was born into a society that stored its data and listened to its music and powered its devices in a completely different way than we do.

Actually, the ancient Egyptians DID forsee the obsolescence of their heiroglyphs, as evidenced by the existance of the "rosetta stone".

Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper" was about a guy from the 1960s/1970s being brought of cryogenic freezing hundreds of years into the future. Throughout the movie, there is the constant contrast of his 20th century expectations against the technologically advanced future society he is thrust into. When they first wake him up, the scientists are eager to learn about history, so they show him some ancient artifacts and ask him to explain them. I found a rough transcript of the script somewhere. It's kind of on point:

The scientists talking about him as they are dethawing him:
DO WE HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON HIM ?

JUST THE USUAL DATA CARD INSIDE THE CAPSULE AND THE PERSONAL ARTIFACTS HERE.

HMM. THE SUBJECT WAS YEARS OLD AT TIME OF INITIAL CRYOGENIC EMERGENT. HIS NAME... MILES MONROE. UNDER OCCUPATION IT SAYS
HE WAS PART OWNER...OF THE HAPPY CARROT HEALTH FOOD RESTAURANT ON BLEECKER STREET, WHEREVER THAT WAS.

The next morning, the scientists still discussing the subject:
HAS HE ASKED FOR ANYTHING SPECIAL ?

YES, THIS MORNING FOR BREAKFAST, HE REQUESTED SOMETHING CALLED WHEAT GERM, ORGANIC HONEY AND TIGER'S MILK.

[ Laughs ] OH, YES. THOSE WERE THE CHARMED SUBSTANCES THAT SOME YEARS AGO WERE FELT TO CONTAIN LIFE-PRESERVING PROPERTIES.

YOU MEAN THERE WAS NO DEEP FAT ? NO STEAK OR CREAM PIES OR HOT FUDGE ?

THOSE WERE THOUGHT TO BE UNHEALTHY, PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE NOW KNOW TO BE TRUE.

Bringing the man from the past up to speed:
NOW THIS IS THE CENTRAL PARALLEL OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION. THIS DISTRICT IS WHAT YOU'D PROBABLY CALL THE SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES. THAT WAS BEFORE IT WAS DESTROYED BY THE WAR.

- WAR ?

- YES. ACCORDING TO HISTORY, OVER YEARS AGO, A MAN NAMED ALBERT SHANKER GOT A HOLD OF A NUCLEAR WARHEAD.
Albert Shanker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Shanker

The scientists ask the man from the past to explain some artifacts they have been studying:
NOW WE HAVE CERTAIN ARTIFACTS HERE...

WE'D LIKE ANY INFORMATION YOU CAN GIVE US ON THEM. VERY LITTLE EXISTS. FOR INSTANCE. (they show him historical photos)

UH, THIS WAS JOSEPH STALIN. HE WAS A COMMUNIST. I WAS NOT TOO CRAZY ABOUT HIM. HE HAD A BAD MOUSTACHE, A LOT OF BAD HABITS.

THIS IS BELA LUGOSI. HE WAS THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY FOR A WHILE. YOU CAN SEE WHAT IT DID TO HIM THERE.

UH, CHARLES DE GAULLE. HE WAS A VERY FAMOUS FRENCH CHEF. HAD HIS OWN TV SHOW. SHOWED YOU HOW TO MAKE SOUFFLES AND OMELETS AND EVERYTHING.

THIS IS, UH, SCOTT FITZGERALD OVER HERE. A VERY ROMANTIC WRITER. BIG WITH ENGLISH MAJORS, COLLEGE GIRLS, YOU KNOW, NYMPHOMANIACS.

THIS IS BILLY GRAHAM-- VERY BIG IN THE RELIGION BUSINESS. YOU KNOW ? HE KNEW GOD PERSONALLY.

THIS IS SOME GIRLS BURNING A BRASSIERE. YOU NOTICE IT'S A VERY SMALL FIRE.

(They show him video of a famous talk show host from tv)

SOME OF US HAVE A THEORY THAT HE MIGHT ONCE HAVE BEEN A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, BUT THAT HE DID SOMETHING HORRENDOUS... SO THAT ALL RECORDS, EVERYTHING WAS WIPED OUT ABOUT HIM. THERE IS NOTHING IN HISTORY BOOKS. THERE ARE NO PICTURES ON STAMPS OR MONEY.

YES, HE ACTUALLY WAS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, BUT WHENEVER HE USED TO LEAVE THE WHITE HOUSE, THE SECRET SERVICE USED TO COUNT THE SILVERWARE.

(Then they show him an actual tv)
AT FIRST WE DIDN'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THIS WAS, BUT WE'VE DEVELOPED A THEORY. WE FEEL THAT WHEN CITIZENS
IN YOUR SOCIETY WERE GUILTY OF A CRIME AGAINST THE STATE, THEY WERE FORCED TO WATCH THIS.
And so on. That's pretty much how history goes. The future doesn't know what the hell it's looking at, and the past lies about everything anyway.

Actually, the ancient Egyptians DID forsee the obsolescence of their heiroglyphs, as evidenced by the existance of the "rosetta stone".
Do you know that for certain? It couldn't possibly be that the Rosetta Stone was just a multi-lingual sign or document for use in place with a lot of people from different countries passing through. I mean, English documents get translated into just about every other language every day. Does that mean we are anticipating the obsolescence of English?

And so on. That's pretty much how history goes. The future doesn't know what the hell it's looking at, and the past lies about everything anyway.

Good ol' Ramesses II, eh? :P

Actually, the ancient Egyptians DID forsee the obsolescence of their heiroglyphs, as evidenced by the existance of the "rosetta stone".

It's a bit like putting our signs into Spanish, English, and Vietnamese (at least where I live). We don't forsee the imminent take over of the Vietnamese language of the US, we simply are translating our signs into the way most people can understand it.

The rosetta stone was actually a decree issued by the then Greek ruler of Egypt to his Egyptian subjects.

To say that all of our information will be preserved is crazy. However the fact that we produce a large quantity of recorded information and it's wide geographic spread favours a degree of preservation. However the fact that our most secure storage facilities like libraries and secure archives are the first places to get ransacked when a culture dies jeopardizes this somewhat.

Also, if (and that's a big "if") successor civilizations to our own use computer technology it's feasible they may be able to recover data from our electronic sources. optical disks potentially could last for some number of centuries in the right atmosphere, and recovery of the data for a people with computer technology would be a matter of taking the time to correctly understand our method of creating individual data files and the encoding methods we use for the data, just as we can read the Egyptian language, even though we don't use it ourselves.

Field archeology would still be absolutely essential, to recover these information sources in the first place. Just as we excavate to find stela, ostraca and papyri, so future cultures will dig in the hope of finding long life paper and, perhaps, optical discs, as well as artifacts to give a physical impression of the things we write and draw.

However, bear in mind that only a tiny fraction of what Egypt, Greece or Rome produced has survived. Similarly, whilst the future will probably know of our existence and will likely be able to recover some of our written record, it would only be fragmentary and would only hint at the things we actually did and what we held to be good and bad, true and false. And like past civilizations, the bigger the jump in time, the more fragmentary the evidence becomes. Someone digging in 200 years time will have far more chance of understanding the fragmented remains of our culture than someone digging in 2,000 years time.

One example is our cult of celebrity. Without first hand knowledge of our culture it would be hard to determine in exactly what light we saw non-political celebrities and exactly what their roles were, what power they held, and in what way they were revered.

Actually, the ancient Egyptians DID forsee the obsolescence of their heiroglyphs, as evidenced by the existance of the "rosetta stone".

The Rosetta stone was in two languages (and three scripts) not because the Egyptians believed hieroglyphs to be becomiong obsolete, but because the rulers of the time were Marcedonian, and spoke Greek, whilst Egyptians themselves used multiple alphabets, hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic.

Survive as a discipline?
Yes, yes it can.

> Archeologists also clear up things like how long remains have been in the ground, which can be vitally important to modern people. For instance, there is the famous story of one of the first "bog people" ever discovered. In the 1930s, workers cutting peat out of a bog -- I don't remember, somewhere in northern Europe -- discovered a woman's body and called the police. A murder investigation began because the woman had clearly been strangled to death. Her face and body were contorted in a way indicative of death by strangulation and the rope was even still around her neck. Very soon, a man stepped forward and confessed that he had killed his wife and dumped her body in the bog a few years before. He should have kept his mouth shut, because not long after he was sent to prison, archeologists confirmed that the discovered bog body was, in fact, over 3000 years old.

As far as I could find out, in northern Europe two female bog bodies have been found, none of them were over 3000 years old:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yde_Girl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haraldsk%C3%A6r_Woman


> Also, digging stuff out of the ground is actually only a small part of what archeologists do. A large part of their work is preservation. You know, keeping the pyramids up and all that. Imagine how many of these whiz-bang nifty new records could be lost to future generations, if we did not have archeologists to dote over them as they age.

A large part of archeology consists of categorizing and archiving. Archives are also places of discovery for the professional archeologist. Often information is filed away and forgotten, only to be rediscovered decades or centuries later.

As far as I could find out, in northern Europe two female bog bodies have been found, none of them were over 3000 years old:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yde_Girl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haraldsk%C3%A6r_Woman
I gave that story from memory. It is probable that I got the date of discovery and the age of the body wrong, remembered from another story. In fact, there have been many bog bodies found, more than two of them women, ranging in approximate ages from around the 16th century (most modern) to about 5500 years old (a female, though it is not certain that one was a deliberate bog burial).
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/bog/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body


A large part of archeology consists of categorizing and archiving. Archives are also places of discovery for the professional archeologist. Often information is filed away and forgotten, only to be rediscovered decades or centuries later.
Very true.