50 ‘Ancient Marvels’ That Make Modern Technology Look Like Child’s Play (New Pics)

The word archeology can conjure up all sorts of images, from dusty excavation sights to whip-bearing professors who insist that everything needs to be in a museum, but one thing these tend to have in common is that it’s modern people excavating the creations of less-modern folks.

However, like so many other human endeavors, archeology has a very old history. After all, humans have always wanted to know what was going on before them. For example, there is evidence that over 2500 years ago, Babylonian kings were establishing dig sites to uncover roughly four thousand year old history, namely, in this case, archaeological remnants of the Akkadian empire.

Other ancient nations were so old that they had their own archaeologists. In Ancient Egypt, a nation with over three thousand years of history, archeologist was an entire profession, as many of the sites and wonders we think of were already quite old to them. In other words, an ancient Egyptian could also look at the great pyramids of Giza and think of them as very old.

Similarly, Medieval China had court-sponsored positions where a person’s job was to document and explore the past. As modern as it seems, humans have always been curious about what came before them. So when you are looking at a list of interesting artifacts, you are just engaging with a hobby thousands of years old.