bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37624943
Interesting but, the story said Greeks would have been teachers not the actual creators. Archaeologists are really still necessary. Makes me wonder if that particular study will ever fade to just history books.
Greeks had a very large central Asian empire at the time, and there have been a lot of studies on Greek influence on Indian Art, especially Buddhist.
I don’t think this is gonna fade, especially given the trade propaganda available to China’s Silk Road new railroad network, shipping goods across Asia. Chinese Nationalists will hate this story, but historians and diplomatic efforts to establish comparative art and history museums will like it.
China was quite integrated in the ancient world. My work on King Zhou of the Shang and Sardanapulas is just the tip of it, a lot of chinese myths and their very organization around the fabled “yellow emperor” is largely a western influence, and they in turn originated the Zoroastrian faith. This is going to matter a lot in philosophy in the next two to three centuries as we increasingly realize China and the West have very similar roots. That’s really going to matter, even though currently most don’t care. They still have temples in China to essentially Mesopotamian gods, some who resemble the theriomorphs (human headed snake gods) touched upon in the old testament.
Uum, I was talking about Archeology in general fading.
No, it isn’t fading, still very much around. Perhaps Mississippi Chicken Farmers don’t pay much attention? Doesn’t mean it is either increasing or decreasing from that singular point of view.
Not a clue what chicken farmers pay attention to. In the future all the past will have been uncovered. The archeologist profession will fade to perhaps just a few. No discoveries left and no pay checks.
Doubt it. As time goes by, more history is created. Disasters and abandonment force modern communities into abandonment, and exposes old ones. Newly established community museums in the future might take a keen interest in your property 400 years for one. On one dig, I was at Fort Steuben, Ohio- supposedly excavating the fort that mapped the Seven Wages. Turns out it was a 19th century pig shed, and I was in the particular square that has the latrine. I was effectively digging in 100 year old human poop. But joke was on everyone else, they dumped their trash in there, including a music box I found (I was so kicked out of that square upon finding it, taken over by a assistant professor). Every aspect was taken down, including accidently reexcavating portions of squares excavated 30 years prior, documenting all the trash they threw in before covering it up.
Why do this? People have a deep fascination. They want to fund it, we can’t dig at the same rate we make and forget history. Businesses need archaeologists to examine terrain before excavation. Public works need to know not just where ancient battles are, but also where long forgotten sewers are. Think about our infrastructure today, how much will just be left in the ground, like cables and pipes, oil and gas wells, mines, water mines, etc. A guy digging 50 years from now in a very different technological age (500 years even) might not know what we have down there, and public records on paper went to shit along time ago. I can’t find some geological survey guides we had available in the 90s, printed decades before that, here now. I’m the only person apparently ever to look at them in years, so I’m that sole knowledge base that tells people “this is here, that is over there”. A archeologist from the future will say “hmm, records are gone, but there was a logic to the system” and try to reconstruct it. Might save a neighborhood some natural gas explosions discovering their newly built neighborhood is on old gas wells plugged in the early 20th century in the 22nd century because some guy (me) wrote about it, museum remembered, local archaeologist reads it, solves the weird fire outbreaks, fire department stunned a brand new miden neighborhood is a ticking time bomb.
That has shit to do with Indians, or colonial this or that. My knowledge base us useful in colonial era boundaries, in asserting what property was then, therefore now.
A lot of different ways. Even when history is completely harvested, like the Draper Papers (my towns old history, it’s absurdly large, I am not exaggeating, like, absurdly large) it takes forever to read (I will need finish, PHDs study these particular papers all their lives.) and you gotta go about relocating everything because the town’s layout isn’t the same anymore. I found a old fort by tracing the 19th century remains of it’s road in a pic to a 21st century access road. Was a pain in the ass, do stantly getting stabbed by thorns. Had to figure out just where they stood, and that particular spot wasn’t there anymore due to erosion and construction. I eventually got it. Grave of people massacred too from the 20th century there as well from a Steel Strike. We had perfect files, and those files had perfect neglect, but the town took interest later on. Meanwhile, only professors read such matters in the gap between.
History constantly rejuvenates, because we are so probe for disregard it. Only later does it spark out interest.
Archeology is more than just excavation and cataloging.
Ok , you made good points.