Over the past 250 years archaeologists have completely changed our view of human history. Before archaeology became a scientific discipline, most people thought that the Bible, which has been interpreted as saying that God put Adam and Eve on Earth one day in 4004BC, was literally true. Now, archaeologists have proved that hominids – that is, human beings and their immediate ancestors – have been around for about five million years. From the beginning, archaeologists have grappled with ways of answering the big question: where does the human race come from? Unlike other historians, they have had few documents to go on – instead, they have had to find answers through digging into the earth. The following sections trace the development of archaeology from its early beginnings at Herculaneum.
	1736 VENUTI AND HERCULANEUM In southern Italy, which is divided into several independent states, a new king, Charles, begins his rule by buying a small estate on the Bay of Naples. He wants to have a large area on which to hunt. He is told that the farm is famous for its deep well, in which many ancient Roman statues have been found. The king sends his royal antiquary, Count Marcello Venuti, to take a look inside the well. He’s been told that an ancient temple is buried there, but he discovers a curving set of stone steps that look like theatre seats. Then he finds an ancient Roman inscription which tells him that it was a theatre and gives him the name of the city in which it had been built: Herculaneum. Venuti tells Charles that he has an ancient city buried under his estate. It had been covered in lava and ash when the volcano Vesuvius, which still exists, erupted on 24 August 79AD. People had known from manuscripts and books that this had happened, but no one knew exactly where the buried city was. Thirteen years later, Venuti discovers another buried city nearby. It is the now legendary Pompeii, which was covered by volcanic ash so rapidly that most of its buildings and all the everyday objects of its citizens were preserved. These discoveries illustrate the birth of archaeology because they show that remains of the past life of our ancestors are always with us – they are buried under the accumulated layers of time and can be found by excavation.
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	1816 THOMSEN and COPENHAGEN In Copenhagen, Denmark, Christian Thomsen – a pioneering coin-collector – is appointed keeper of the national archaeological collection. He discovers that although all the objects have been labelled, they have not been classified or arranged in any order. Thomsen decides that because early humans probably used the most advanced materials for weapons, he should organise these ancient objects according to what they were made out of. He arranges the artefacts into Stone Age objects, Bronze Age objects and Iron Age objects. By doing so, he invents a way of grouping what we find in the earth into a story, a history of progress from stone, through bronze and on to iron. His system of three ages is still used by museum curators.
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	1840s-1860s WORSAAE and DENMARK Christian Thomsen’s assistant at the national museum is Jens Jacob Worsaae. He’s been excavating since the age of 15 and he realises that by looking in Denmark’s ancient mound burials, he always finds the Stone Age burials below the Bronze Age burials and the Iron Age are always on top. From this fact, he concludes that the Stone Age is the most ancient and the Iron Age the most recent, with the Bronze Age in between. From now on, archaeologists can argue that artefacts found in different layers of the earth can be dated to different historical ages. Worsaae is appointed archaeologist royal, becoming the first professional archaeologist, and influencing scholars all over Europe.
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	1879 De SAUTUOLA and ALTAMIRA In the cave of Altamira, on the north coast of Spain, an amateur archaeologist Marcelino de Sautuola excavates the entrance in the company of his daughter Maria. She wanders inside the cave, looks up at the ceiling and exclaims: ‘Papa, papa, there are painted bulls.’ At first, professional archaeologists don’t believe that such wonderful images could have been painted in the Stone Age, because they assume that early humans were barbarians. It is even suggested that de Sautuola faked them. However, similar paintings are soon found in French caves which have been sealed since ancient times, so their authenticity cannot be doubted. Altamira is dubbed ‘the Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age’.
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	1881 PITT-RIVERS and THEBES Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers travels up the Nile to the ancient city of Thebes, modern-day Luxor. He finds ancient flints embedded in cemetery walls that are known to be 4,000 years old. The flints had been scraped up when the ancient Egyptians took excavated earth to build these walls. From this, Pitt-Rivers deduces that the flints are much older than the walls, and thus that the history of human beings goes back beyond the 4,000 years suggested by Biblical sources. These flints, he concludes, are older than the pharaohs. As well as making beautiful drawings of the tombs at Thebes, Pitt-Rivers also organises archaeological digs at his estate in Cranbourne Chase in the West Country in 1885.
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	1927 LAMBERT and MOUNT CARMEL The British administration in Palestine, which ruled the country in the days of Empire, decides to quarry rock from the biblical mountain of Carmel, which lies south of Haifa. Charles Lambert, a professional archaeologist, is sent to see if such work will damage any ancient remains. Digging in some shepherds’ caves, Lambert finds a broken sickle handle which is carved with the image of an animal. It is the first piece of Stone Age art to be found outside Europe and proof that agriculture was being practised in ancient Palestine. Lambert also finds ancient flint tools. His expedition is soon followed by that of Dorothy Garrod, the first female professor at Cambridge University, who finds skeletons preserved in lime, at the time the most complete remains of early humans ever found.
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	1976 LEAKEY and LAETOLI Gradually, over the decades, archaeologists seek the origins of human beings outside Europe. Slowly, Africa emerges as the cradle of humanity. At Laetoli in Tanzania, archaeologist Mary Leakey discovers a trail left by three people walking across a flat expanse of volcanic ash 3,500,000 years ago. They are by far the earliest human footprints known to science. Dating them is made possible by the discovery of carbon dating, devised by Willard F Libby, a former atom bomb scientist, in 1946. He discovers that all organic materials have a tiny amount of naturally occurring radioactivity. One of these materials, called Carbon 14, loses its radioactivity at a constant rate from the moment the organism dies. By measuring the level of radioactivity remaining, the age of many objects can be established. Since the 1960s, such scientific dating methods have been developed and are now more accurate than ever. From being a hobby for rich mavericks, archaeology has grown into a fully-fledged science, able to answer questions about how long ago our ancestors walked the earth.
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