ELi5 : Why does it seem a lot of archeology began so recently in the 20th and 19th centuries? Why weren’t we digging up stuff much earlier?

Question

It seems many of the most important archeological findings were in the 20th and 19th century. Why did humans wait so long to start digging stuff up?

In: 961

Answer 1

Apart from the great answers already here: Nationalism and Colonialism.

When modern states came up, stories of the past became standardized and there was demand to understand it better – and with it funding for archeology. National-archeology was quite prominent. Added to that, colonialism created unforeseen access to historical sites of foreign areas – with British, French, German archeologists taking huge amounts of artifacts. Which would have been impossible both politically and logistically prior to the 19th century.