History
The origins of the field have been traced to theories about a hypothetical Martian civilization based on observations of what were perceived as canals on Mars. These theories, of which Percival Lowell was the most famous exponent, were apparently inspired by a mistranslation of a quote by Giovanni Schiaparelli.
The 1997 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference featured a session on "archaeology and science fiction".
The 2004 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association featured a session Anthropology, Archaeology and Interstellar Communication.
Read more about this topic: Alien Archaeology
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)