Excavation

A question that has crossed my mind – that needs someone learned to explain to me – is, how come if we need to find details of former generations, do we need to always dig?

Sure in Pompeii where it was covered by a volcanic eruption, you need to did to locate the existing remnants of a “lost” city, but everywhere else, previous civilizations (if they even WERE civilized) you need to dig! From Egypt to the Andes, even in Britain, relics are discovered by digging! Where do the “experts” think that all of this soil came from?  There are heaps of digs that discover things like ancient boats, and it defeats me why the ancients took the effort to bury things like buildings or boats?

The desire to dig up history is fairly universal as I said from Ancient Britain through Egypt to the Incas of Peru.

I can see the “need” to dig up graves to find out history, as if civilized man actually “needs” to disturb the burial places of former populations. Does the quest for knowledge allow us to selectively desecrate graves or tombs? I know in Egypt there was great excitement at the discovery of tombs of ancient kings – mainly because of the wealth that people such as King Tutankhamen were buried alongside.

Another thing that astounds me is that the “learned” interpret what is uncovered, and expound their theories on what details are unveiled. It always amazes me that their theories are taken at face value by the general population to be absolute truth, and are taught as absolute fact in schools and universities!

This extends to such things like carbon dating of artifacts! They commonly show that bones etc are carbon dated to thousands or millions of years old. Surely THAT is a theory, maybe impossible to disprove, but the way I feel now, the absence of alternative explanations is hardly proof of a theory!