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

It’s more that we adopted a scientific and methodical approach to archaeology. *Everyone* in our lineage has been digging up stuff from our ancestors, even Neanderthals reworked stone tools their predecessors used and left behind, but it was in the last century or two that a scientific approach was applied at a large scale to the discipline.