You would agree that this would be the first question you would have if you accidentally called a paleontologist who found a fossilized skeleton of an ancient fish an archaeologist, and he would correct you – I am a paleontologist. At first glance it seems that this is almost the same thing: both are looking for something in the ground, and this “something” clearly does not belong to our time.So what is the difference between paleontology and archeology?
What do paleontology and archaeology study?
Both archaeology and paleontology study the past of planet Earth, its history.
Some people are skeptical about a science like history. They believe that it is impossible to look back thousands, or even millions of years. Therefore, all the ancient historical events of those times when there was no written language, and, moreover, when there was no man, are nothing but a fiction of historians.
Indeed, historians do not have a time machine, in which they could look into the past and see – what and how actually happened. But there are many traces left by various living organisms, including people who lived in the distant past, they are real. They can be studied, and already on the basis of these studies we can reconstruct pictures of the past.
Both paleontology and archeology do exactly that: paleontologists find and study traces of ancient organisms, from bacteria and microorganisms inhabiting the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago to the very recent past of our Earth, and archeologists find and study traces of human life and activity.
Paleontology
This science studies the full diversity of life in past geological settings. It is the fossilized remains of animals and plants from a long time ago. And it’s not just the science of dinosaurs, as it may seem at first glance. In fact, paleontology is like a separate part of geology – the science of the earth’s interior. This is understandable: without the study of sedimentation
(accumulation of sedimentary rocks), geology, and fossilization (fossilization process), it is impossible to study paleontology in depth.
At the same time, paleontology is also of great importance to biology. In what ways? Paleontology has played a major role in reconstructing phylogeny (the historical development of fauna) and in creating a genetic classification of modern flora and fauna. This classification takes into account all the achievements of paleontologists; at the same time, it is able to improve under the influence of new paleontological discoveries.
What about biology? It is a science that studies living things as independent objects, as well as their interaction with the environment in which they live. And all aspects are studied: the structure of organisms, how they function, where they came from, their evolution, and their distribution on Earth. Without the application of paleontological research, this is virtually impossible. By and large, paleontology is the same as biology, only it does not study modern living things, but organisms that lived hundreds of centuries ago.
Archaeology
Unlike paleontology, archaeology studies the culture and remains of humans in their past. Archaeologists do not study fossilized remains from Earth’s distant past. The exception is fossils of animals that lived on Earth in parallel with early humans. For example, if an ancient human site is discovered where fossilized remains of animal bones are found along with artifacts related to humans, and even with drawings carved on these bones, then, of course, archaeologists will be interested in such a find.
So, archaeology is the study of all artifacts related to man. It is conducted by analyzing the artifacts found and then reconstructing the chain of historical events. Thus, archaeology, as a field of study, falls into the category of social and human sciences rather than physical or chemical sciences.
Difference of interests
Both archaeologists and paleontologists study the past. But the boundaries of research for both do not practically overlap:
Paleontology studies animal and plant fossils, that is, it is interested only in ancient forms of life, everything that occurred later than 10 thousand years BC is of no interest to paleontologists. Archaeology studies human culture and the way of life of mankind in the past, looking for and studying the remains of ancient architecture, burials, individual artifacts. Of the entire time of the existence of the planet Earth (about 4.5 billion years), archaeology is only interested in the last 2.5 million years.
