There was a recent article somewhere on line about a little cosmetic pot that was found in England and how after testing it, it was found to be pretty sophisticated to todays face cream.
And this made me wonder.
Did the Romans ( or any other culture) have archeologists that found ancient wonders and what not? Did they ever find dinosaur bones? Cosmetic pots from the Egyptians?
The Greeks of classical period found the older Mycenaean underground dome or beehive shaped tombs (tholoi – very impressive actually). They thought it were the burial grounds for the Homeric heroes, not entirely mistaken either since the Homeric verses are supposed to take place around the Mycenaean period.
I think I read that the Romans knew about frozen mammoths.
It depends on how you define archaeologist. They didn’t exist as they do today, that is to say they weren’t interested in cataloging artifacts and studying sites. However even before the Romans people were interested in collecting and showing old stuff.
Not sure if Mycenae would count, Rune–it had been inhabited from the Bronze Age into the fifth century B.C. (right into classical times, then), so it didn’t have to be rediscovered. The fifth-century Greeks living in Mycenae did speculate about the original founders of the city, though, and they assumed that Agamemnon once lived there (since Homer refers to the city as his home).
But I think it was Heinrich Schliemann, not the classical Greeks, who (mis)identified the tholoi as belonging to particular heroes, including Atreus (Agamemnon’s dad) and Clytemnestra. On the other hand, the Greeks did believe that Cyclops had built the walls of the Mycenaean city of Tiryns, but their evidence for this was based on firsthand observation of the city’s thick walls–not on truly archaeological investigation.
I think this would be the case for most classical accounts of ancient sites or objects–a little firsthand observation mixed with a large dose of fantasy. This would include folks like Herodotus, for instance. While the ancients were just as fascinated as we are with older civilizations, they did not have the same methods or tools for exploring them. It’s not until the Renaissance that we see anything that really resembles modern archaeology, and it’s not until the nineteenth century that the discipline really takes form.
(President) Thomas Jefferson is generally regarded as having been the first archeologist/archaeologist.
The Romans did have a fascination with the Etruscans, an earlier culture that lived in peninsular Italy. Some Roman patricians studied Etruscan history and artifacts but there was never any kind of scientific effort.
Did the Romans have anything like the modern notion of progress?
Medival art depicting ancient scenes looked basically the same as contemporary scenes, with the same clothing and technology. They seemed to lack the nothion of advancement, and thought of history as being more or less static—or in decline, humanity having been at its peak in the Garden of Eden, with the age of Greek philosphers representing a temperory golden era of learning and discovery, and everthing basically being on a rocket train to Armageddon since then.
The Renaissance marked a breaking of this mindset. People decided that the human condition could be improved by new technology and ideas, and that this improvement was as important as, or more important than, the previous emphasis on individual spiritual improvement (disregarding secular woes, and instead focusing on preparing one’s self for the afterlife.)
What about the Romans? They were certainly responsible for a great deal of innovation in government, and technology. Did they feel that they were marching forward toward a better society? Did they look upon other societies (either the older societies, or the peoples they warred with) as primitive rather than simply inferior?
Actually, they viewed the past as a heroic Golden Age, and considered their own time to be inferior.
Recently the History Channel did a story on ancient Greek “archaeology”. Apparently, many Greek temples displayed “giant bones” or “cyclops bones”. Many of these turn out to be mammoth or mastadon bones.
If you look at a tuskless mammoth skull, but have never seen any kind of elephant, you might misinterpret the geometry, because the proportions are not what you are used to. The eye sockets are tiny, and placed where you would expect to see ears. The nasal cavity is huge, and round, and placed where you would expect to see eyes. So you might easily look at it and say “cyclops”.