Beyond Pyramids: Why Ancient History is the Key to Understanding Ourselves

A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far Far Away.

I study Ancient History. When I tell people, they all usually have the same general response. It is an irrelevant, albeit interesting, field of study, and they are usually unsure as to why I am even undertaking to learn about such irrelevant things. 

So why do I, and why should we all, care about things that happened so long ago, in what seems like a different world? The answer, first and foremost, is simple. The study of Ancient History, or any other period of history, is the study of humanity and human behaviour. 

Why do we do what we do? 

The fact is, that the trials, tribulations, morals and priorities of those in the past are not that dissimilar than those that we have today, and developments in the humanities are providing us with new ways of looking at the past, and bringing these similarities to light. Concatenation of scientific and humanitarian disciplines is providing a more wholistic view of ancient empires, civilisations and cities, and the people who inhabited them.  

If hindsight is 20/20, imagine what our vision of the future could be if it were based on literally thousands of years of the shared human experience.  

Death To The Classics

Our grandparent, parents, and even some of us elder millennials, grew up with what was commonly referred to as The Classics. This is what was taught to us in schools and universities, and it was primarily focused on the Latin and Greek writings of Homer, Plato and Plutarch. You would be hard pressed to find any university student or academic who was not acutely  familiar with the tales of the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

So why did we decide that The Classics had to go? Well, the answer is actually quite simple. The history of the field of study lies deep within colonialisation, it was seen as a sign of elite those with privilege, and was subsequently weaponised. Who could study it, and where it could be studied became vetted, and restricted. What this restriction was doing was essentially enforcing, and reinforcing, colonial hegemony and rule. 

Archaeology and archaeological study were confined in scope to monuments and texts, and typically scholars were white European males from wealthy families. Their expeditions were lavishly financed by the upper class, whose patronage was repaid through the appropriation of precious treasures from exotic lands.  Essentially, all the wealthy private school Chads got paid vacations to go and dig up another cultures artifacts. Then, because apparently finders are keeps, they brought them home, often claiming they were 'saving them from destruction'. Bit rich when you consider they had been in their native lands for thousands of years before Chad came across them. 

However this limited access also brought with is a substantial drawback, that of cognitive bias. All the amazing findings were studies, examined, interpreted, and then published through narrow lenses. the individuals saw only what they could explain, often looking for items to support their preconceived notions of what they expected. Like Slaves in Egypt (there were none) or Men being the only people able to hold land titles. Basing historical findings on what was essentially  arrogance and elitism, peppered with racism and misogyny, was bound to lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. 

So... they were really good friends??

The Classics were also a separate field of study. One was an Egyptologist, looking at the archaeology of Egypt, and only Egypt. Problems lie in this as when texts and material culture are considered in isolation, without regard to human chronology, social dynamics, geographical fluctuations and features, some significant interpretations have been anachronistic and provided incomplete pictures of antiquity. 

What is excellent now is that fields of study are overlapping. Travel to a current archaeological site, and you will fine not only archaeologists, but also geologists, anthropologists and climatologists. 

By using evidence from a variety of scientific and humanities fields, we can establish a wholistic view of the world in which these civilisations rose and fell. We are able to consider worldwide environmental, biological, economic and social factors when reviewing the writings from ancient authors, rather than just their literary or philosophical prowess. 

Perhaps most importantly, the study of ancient history is no longer only for those who can speak or read Latin and Ancient Greek, but for the vox populi.  (See what I did there? That literally means ‘voice of the people’)

The Past is Never Dead, it's Not Even Really in The Past. 

Having this wider understanding of the entire culture closes the divide between us and them. It allows us to see just how similar we as people are, and likely, always will be. 

We need to continue research to discover what was missed, perhaps unconsciously, or perhaps on purpose, the first time around. We need to consider the remains of people, with the material culture, but also to look at the geography of where they lived, the weather patterns, and even tides. That is the only way we will discover exactly what happened to these ancient people. 

Were the physical and natural constraints in which the culture lived the reason for their collapse, was it something outside of their control? Or perhaps it was something they could have planned for, had they had the right information at the time. 

Reading Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian war becomes so much more when coupled with climate change and germ theory; and the dating and measurement of ancient bones presents a view much less glamorous than that which was written of the Roman Empire. The living conditions were so bad that the Romans literally shrunk.  

As human beings, we have not changed much in the last 12,000 years, if not longer. The changes we face are the same, democratic, social, and environmental. The study of ancient history gives us an understanding of the trends and cycles those past civilisations experienced. 

It has been noted that approximately every 200 to 300 years civilisations were subject to cycles of expansion, stagnation, crisis.  Whilst the era in which we currently live may appear more advanced, political and economic trends have been noted to also complete these similar cycles, and nothing really makes this clearer than when you compare the current political and economic unrest in America to Rome, or the Antonine plague to COVID. We are now living in a time that should make us feel closer than ever to our ancient ancestors, but could have we seen this coming? It is possible that a better understanding of our past can give us a better understanding of our present, and even our future. 

“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too" 

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations 

What We Do In Live, Echoes in Eternity

Speak to any historian and they can tell you that to study the ancients is to study ourselves. 

How were they able to achieve so much, and yet lose it completely, is something important that we need to understand. We are intrinsically linked to the radical changes in humanity that happened in antiquity, as what we recognize as society and democracy had its birth and adolescence in ancient times. 

Whilst we do not live in the past, we would be foolish to believe that we do not live with the decisions and actions that were made in antiquity. It stands to reason that we will have the same influence on our own futures, our ancestors. Egyptian, Greek and Roman iconography is used today to convey meaning. Consider the pyramid on a United States dollar bill, a spartan helmet as a sporting team logo, or Latin on your State Schools Motto. 

The stories we tell are important, and ongoing research into the truth and the meaning behind those stories is vital. If we do not understand what brought humanity to the place we are now, we can not hope to understand the gravity of our actions today, and the effect they will have upon our future.