Q: Why are archaeologists interested in simple things?

A: Many people believe that the field of archaeology is filled with people like Hollywood’s Indiana Jones, who perpetually search for spectacular treasure and magnificent statuary. Archaeologists do indeed make spectacular discoveries, but most of the time they work with humble artifacts and inconspicuous objects like broken food bones. Scientific methods have allowed archaeologists to make exciting discoveries from seemingly inconspicuous finds. They have used fossil beetles to find the locations of ancient houses, studied deer antlers to determine what season of the year a hunting camp was occupied, and scraped the powdery residue off ancient Egyptian pots and identified the wine that once filled them. Modern-day archaeologists are real scientific time detectives.

Q: When did humans first begin making cave art, and what purpose did it serve?

A: Paleolithic art in the form of cave paintings, drawings, and engravings, appeared in what is now southwestern France and probably in Australia, about 30,000 years ago. No one knows why people suddenly started painting and engraving cave and rockshelter walls, but it was certainly not art for art’s sake. Most likely, the art was connected with underground ceremonies, such as the initiation of the young, and with the activities of shamans, who recorded their visions seen in trances in paintings and signs on cave walls.

Q: What challenges in the field do archaeologists face?

A: The greatest challenge archaeologists face in the field is not making finds, but conserving the past for the future. Every time we dig a site, we effectively destroy it. This makes it vital to maintain accurate records of everything we find—the layers from which it came, its relationship to other finds, dwellings, and so on. These details comprise the record for future generations. Maintaining painstakingly accurate records is one part of conserving the past for the future.

We must also preserve what we dig up—finds, structures, and other features of archaeological sites—for the future. A site may be stabilized for tourists, or simply to preserve a structure. Preservation is a complex task that often involves high-tech methods. For example, the wooden tools found with the Ice Man from the Alps, who dates to the Bronze Age, can be preserved by deep freezing, or by replacing the water in them with chemicals. There are many high-tech methods used to preserve artifacts.

All archaeological excavation is destruction; it is our responsibility both to leave parts of sites for future generations to investigate, perhaps with better methods, and to preserve part of the finite archaeological record as an archive for the future. An enormous amount of damage has been done. It’s our responsibility not only to dig and find sites or artifacts, but also to preserve the past for future generations.

Q: When and where did civilization begin?

A: The world’s first literate civilizations developed in Mesopotamia, now southern Iraq, and in ancient Egypt, about 5,000 years ago. The process took many centuries and involved the development of complex cities, writing, metallurgy, and hierarchical societies led by powerful, charismatic leaders, who became divine kings. The Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia, with its wedge-shaped cuneiform script, was a patchwork of small city-states that quarreled constantly with one another. Egyptian civilization developed when a series of powerful leaders unified Upper and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom after centuries of diplomatic competition, fighting, and trade.

Q: Were Cro-Magnons and Neandertals compatible enough to mate and produce offspring?

A: No one really knows whether the Cro-Magnons and Neandertals were able to interbreed. The chances are against it, however. Recent DNA studies from Austria, using a sample of Neandertal DNA obtained from a bone, suggest that Neandertal DNA was totally incompatible with the DNA of Cro-Magnons, or modern humans.

Q: Does Egypt belong to Africa or the Middle East? It’s in Africa, but you always hear about it involved with Middle Eastern politics.

A: Actually, ancient Egypt straddled both worlds. The pharaohs maintained trading and diplomatic ties with the eastern Mediterranean states, because ancient Egypt obtained timber and other valuable raw materials from those states.

New Kingdom pharaohs, who ruled during the 2nd millennium bc, maintained diplomatic and trading ties with Mesopotamia and the Hittites of Turkey. At the same time, they relied on Africa for many products, among them gold, semiprecious stones, leopard skins, ivory, and slaves. They traded with, and later controlled, Nubia. Nubia comprised the Nile-based lands (now part of Sudan) that were ruled by African chiefdoms as early as 2000 bc. Some Nubian chiefs actually became pharaohs of Egypt in the 7th century bc, before the Assyrians chased them out in 633 bc.

However, Egyptian civilization was not founded from tropical Africa. It was an indigenous state developed from local roots, and it became increasingly cosmopolitan in the 2nd millennium bc. Throughout Egyptian history, many Nubians served in the Egyptian army, where they were famous as bowmen.

Modern-day Egypt has its roots in the world of Islam and has closer cultural and historical ties to the Near East than it does to tropical Africa.

Q: Why do anthropologists believe that humans first evolved in Africa?

A: Nineteenth-century naturalist Charles Darwin pointed out that tropical Africa held the greatest diversity of apes, including the chimpanzee, the closest living primate relative of humans. He argued that human evolution therefore had its origins in Africa. Since then, scientists have confirmed that the earliest hominid fossils come from Africa, including the first toolmakers 2.5 million years ago. Nowhere else does the fossil record go back so far, so Darwin was almost certainly correct.

Q: When did humans first use fire to cook food?

A: The earliest record of the use of fire is approximately 1.8 million years ago, in East Africa. Anthropologists believe fire was first tamed by Homo erectus, an ancient human species that was endowed with a larger brain and a more modern body than earlier hominines. Homo erectus also developed more sophisticated stone tools, including hand axes and handheld cleavers with sharp edges. The record for this first use of fire is slender, little more than burned soil. The earliest record after that appears about 500,000 years ago, in Europe.

Q: Why did the Inca practice mummification?

A: The Inca mummified their rulers because they believed that the rulers were immortal. After death, a mummified ruler still lived in his palace and retained his land, servants, and possessions. He visited other kings, was paraded through the streets at public ceremonies, and held conversations with his followers.

Royal mummies were vital icons of the state. On the dry, low-lying coast of western South America, mummified corpses wrapped in textiles last for centuries in near perfect condition thanks to the arid climate.

Q: Why did the ancient Native Americans of southern Peru construct large geometric ground drawings of animals and plants?

A: The famous Nazca lines of southern Peru have generated considerable controversy. Some way-out observers even claim these lines were the work of ancient astronauts, who built them as runways. No serious scholar accepts this theory. Most experts believe the huge drawings of animals and geometric shapes were ceremonial lines connected with ancestor and rainmaking rituals. These figures were apparently built to be viewed by the gods in the sky. Similar rituals are still practiced in modified form in the region today.

Q: How important to an archaeologist is the interpretation of their findings to the public? What forms do these interpretations take?

A: One eminent Briton once compared archaeology to a play that awaits performance before an audience.

Archaeology, like paleontology and astronomy, has a broad popular audience for its research. In recent decades, archaeology has become increasingly specialized, with an incomprehensible jargon of its own. This comes at a time when sites are being destroyed by looters and industrial development, as well as by mining and deep plowing.

Because of this destruction, communication with the public is imperative. This communication takes many forms—lectures, radio, TV, the Web, books, and articles, for example. Oddly enough, radio, with its short spots, is one of the most effective media. But the potential of the Web for such communication is just beginning to be tapped.