Ancient civilizations always had, in any place and in any time, an attention towards the past, because, in the most different ways, they saw in the past the roots for the present, and thus, the reasons for the present condition of any civilization. The Greek world may be considered a good example in this sense, because, since the archaic age, an impressive mythical interpretation of the past of humankind can be found, in a sense, which can be considered evolutionistic on the contrary: there is evidence that in the archaic Greek world, there was a widespread idea of a past conceived in a way which is the exact contrary of the modern reconstruction of the humankind's prehistory. In fact, in our modern reconstruction, we imagine our ancestors engaged in a very long, difficult, and tiring path, from the darkness of a savage and barbarian condition towards the light of civilization. As observed by Glynn Daniel, ancient Greeks, on the other hand, who are often considered the first known people to take interest in the origin and development of humankind, thought humankind was doomed to a reverse path from a happy condition of the origins to a state of crime and violence. Hesiod, in the years around 700 BC, correctly acknowledged, like Homer, that the bronze using civilization preceded the iron cultures, and presented in his poem, Works and Days, his theory of the five stages. The most ancient one is the “Age of Gold”, or of the Immortals, who “dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods”. Then the “Age of Silver” follows, when man was less noble by far. Thirdly, the “Age of Bronze”, when the world was peopled by “a bronze race, sprung from ash-trees, who delighted in war and were the first to eat animal food… their armour was of bronze and their houses of bronze, and of bronze where the implements, black iron was not yet”. Fourthly, the “Age of the Epic Heroes”, were an improvement on the brazen race, and lastly, the “Age of Iron and Dread Sorrow”, when “men never rest from labour and sorrow by day and from perishing by night”. But this last almost philosophical reconstruction by Hesiod of the past of humankind marked by definite pessimism, who deplores that his own time was cast in the fifth age, and forecasts, worse to come, even an age when “men will be born with grey hair on the temples” was perhaps largely shared mostly in philosophical milieus: Plato, in fact, argued that “the ancients were better than ourselves and nearer to the Gods”. From this ancient concept descends the idea, quite widespread in the Western World, particularly in the 18th century, the century of Enlightenment, that the most ancient man was the best, and that he became corrupt in the passage of time: this is the idea of the superiority of the state of nature as compared with the state of culture. Yet, in the classical world there was also quite a widespread perception that humankind had followed a path similar to what is reconstructed by modern archaeology. Just to mention a few examples, particularly meaningful: Aristotle had an idea of a development of ancient societies, as he argued that the shepherd preceded the farmer. This awareness of the great philosopher was shared also at lesser cultural levels in the ancient world. as is proved by Pausanias' statement, who wrote a kind of tourist guide of Greece in the first century AD: he described the progress of humankind from a diet of acorns and dwellings in huts, to the knowledge of agriculture and other techniques. In a not different perspective, according to the Latin poet and philosopher Lucretius, who wrote at the time of Emperor Augustus, wood and fire preceded the use of copper, and copper was older than iron. Thinking about humankind's past one may, in very general terms, think that there were two main ways to face the past. The first way was dictated by a kind of a natural curiosity by humans, who, in the present, saw everywhere traces, even mysterious, and not immediately understandable, of something coming from the past, and not made in the present: in this first instance, any question about the past was detached, because no continuity with the present was acknowledged. On the other hand, the second way was dictated by the awareness every culture has, that a not mysterious, and not incomprehensible past exists, which is felt as the origin of the present, in which the roots of the present were acknowledged: in the second instance, any question about the past was concerned because a continuity with the present was acknowledged. As regards knowledge, or rather natural curiosity, even the most ancient humankind, two different questions, according to Glynn Daniel, were at the origin of reflections about humankind’s past, and about the attempt at reconstructing a detached memory. On the one hand, which was the origin of savage and barbarian folks who, also in the perception of ancient peoples coexisted with the civilized human kind? Were they degraded remnants of former civilizations or were they survivals of very ancient pre-literate stages of life? On the other hand, which were the mechanics of the development of civilized world and of the changes through which the gap between those pre-civilized folks and the literate and civilized humankind of the classical times was bridged? These questions led to two astonishing examples in the classical world of ethnographic description written by two of the most authoritative historians of the Latin literature, about Britons and Gauls by Julius Caesar in De Bello Gallico, and about the Germans by Tacitus in Germania. Centuries before, when the oldest great historian of Greek literature, Herodotus, faced the Egyptian world, whose great civilization was rooted in very ancient times and was highly renowned, his reaction was at the same time a wonder and admiration for the great antiquity, the deep otherness and the impressive strength of that civilization. Meditation about the very ancient roots is at the origin itself of the world “Archaiologia”, which is found for first time in a dialogue by Plato (the dialogue Hippias Major). There Socrates, and a famous sophist (Hippias) argue, and it is recalled that sophist’s success descended from the fact that he was engaged in one sector of learning only: “the genealogies of heroes and men, the foundations, the knowledge of how towns were born in antiquity, and, in general, everything about the knowledge of the past”. Here the knowledge of the past is precisely called “Archaiologia”. It has been maintained by Arnaldo Momigliano that precisely in this period, by the middle of fifth century BC, two different ways of writing history may be singled out. One follows Herodotus' researches and analysis, and deals with the most recent past; through Thucydides’ masterly work, it tries and explains human behavior, and sets the foundations for a science of politics: it is the historians’ history of the contemporary world. The other was the one taught by sophists, and followed by historians like Hecataeus and Ellanicos: it deals with a more distant past, and tries and reconstructs the history of towns, of customs and traditions on the base of meticulous scholarship, by means of the examination and the accumulation of analysis of documents, and traditions: this is the antiquarians’ history of the ancient world, precisely Archaiologia. Yet modern Archaeology overcome this dichotomy. Modern Archaeology is centrally founded on the systematic collection of evidence, somehow like antiquarians did in the ancient times, but like the historians of the ancient times, it places the results of this collection in a chronological and geographical order. Most of all, as regards the data collected and placed in order according to the time and the space, modern Archaeology, by means of interpretation, looks for an explanation for the facts, situations, changes, the evidence systematically collected makes available to it. Modern Archaeology, beyond the difference outlined in the classical Greek world, is a fully historical discipline, and wishes to be a science of the past.
