Stephanie Guerin-Yodice

What type of methods are used to understand the events of the past?

What historians and scientists know about the ancient world comes from the evidence that remains:

• Anthropologists apply biological, cultural, and material aspects of migratory communities by studying the push-pull factors that influenced migratory patterns during the Neolithic Period.
• Biological anthropologists take a big-picture approach, using physical matter to infer the evolution of the human body and how it changed over time.
• Cultural anthropologists take a more humanistic approach by considering individuals as products of the society they lived in and thinking about how their experiences shaped both individuals and society.
• Archeologists look at the material culture through the use of tools, the written word, pottery, soil samples, found objects, and human remains.
• Geologists apply physics, chemistry, and biology to study how the earth’s surface changes.
• Paleoclimatology studies the geophysical changes in raw resources brought about by climate change.
• Epigraphy is the study of writing on a hard surface and it is a key tool in understanding events in the ancient world.