Monday, November 7, 2011

Today Archaeology



As the technology available to archaeologists improves our understanding of the past becomes clearer. Using modern technology, experts are now able to determine the nature and age of the artifacts more accurately. The artifacts, buildings and even entire villages have been recreated to give us a glimpse of what it was like to live hundreds or even thousands of years ago. With the help of the skull and 3D reconstructions of computer imaging, we can even look into the faces of our ancestors.

Early archaeologists were not interested in skeletons, but the forensic archeology opened the new and exciting line of investigation. By examining the human bones, osteo-archaeologists can determine how much muscle a person has been, and then what kind of work they have done. Researchers can identify which diseases affect a person's life, what is dead, and in some cases, even what they ate their last meal.

Extraction of DNA from the remains of the dead hundreds of years can be traced to our ancestors. The archaeologists took DNA samples from the remains of the Vikings who invaded Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries and, by comparison with modern DNA, were able to determine the extent of Viking ancestry in the United Kingdom. DNA testing has also been used to identify the bodies of Czar Nicholas II and his family, who were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

Every living thing contains carbon, and when he dies, the carbon begins to deteriorate. Through radiocarbon dating, scientists can determine how old an animal person or an object that contains organic matter, to determine the amount of carbon it is rotting.

Dendrochronology to measure the age of the tree by counting the number of rings. By understanding how growth rate varies in different climates and conditions, experts can determine the age of the tree, and when he was shot. Assuming that the wood was used almost immediately to build a house or a boat, for example, experts can determine when it was built.

Aerial Archaeology offers a breathtaking view, often pointing out formations such as the outline of the burial mounds, ancient walls and paths, which are invisible at ground level. Remote sensing offers the opportunity for archaeologists to examine the archaeology excavation sites, even before the start. Geophysics is a new and exciting way to see what is under the earth, and magnetometry and resistivity are used to analyze and map buried walls, ditches and trenches. This gives a guide to archaeologists where to start digging and find points of interest that are not visible to the naked eye.

By combining knowledge from texts with archaeological evidence to solve mysteries and confuse the established theories. Recent studies have uncovered evidence that in Egypt the plague or Black Death, may have been born here there are over 3000 years and not in Asia as previously thought. Medical texts from this period describes the symptoms of the plague-like, and archaeologists have recently found evidence of plague-carrying fleas that attacked the cattle of the Egyptians. "

For more interesting topics related to archaeology, visit archaeology excavations.

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