My sister refuses to believe those ancient artifacts found from Roman times are real, she thinks scientists or archeologists just made it up to sell them. Help me prove her wrong.
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The Romans have been continuously mentioned in literature and in academic study of them for over a thousand years. Their ruins and artifacts have been featured in paintings in art continuously as well; there are paintings from before archaeology became a discipline which feature Roman buildings in them. We have literature from figures such as Eusebius and Josephus and many others (including Roman authors) that reference the Romans. If “scientists and archaeologists just made it up” how come this thing that they made up keeps getting referenced pervasively before they even existed?
Limestone objects slowly develop a calcite shell on the outer surface in a way that is impossible to fake. Old quarried rocks that are sculpted or shaped into ancient monuments can be dated by estimating how long it would take for the surface of the rocks to weather to a certain extent. But we don’t need to do that with Roman monuments. (Where the heck would they get all the resources to cover Europe with the monuments and artifacts of a huge empire that lasted over a thousand years?) We have extensive records about these things. Only the most mysterious objects whose date-able context is missing requires direct attempts to date the item. For everything else, there is such a web of history and art and art history, with the art recording things like aesthetic trends and styles and motifs etc. that things can be dated that way. If I found an object whose aesthetics matched a particular era, that alone can roughly date the object, as long as the object can be examined and found not to be a replica. Archaeologists aren’t master forgers; forgers have to rely on authentic samples to even have anything to reference for their forgeries.
How old is your sister? This sounds too cynical to be from a young kid, but too dumb to not be from a young kid.
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