Arabs
Arabs are a population inhabiting the Arab world. They live in the Arab states in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and western Indian Ocean islands, they form a significant diaspora, with Arab communities established around the world. The first mention of Arabs is from the mid-ninth century BCE as a tribal people in eastern and southern Syria and the north of the Arabian Peninsula; the Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the succeeding Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid and Parthian empires. Arab tribes, most notably the Ghassanids and Lakhmids, begin to appear in the southern Syrian Desert from the mid 3rd century CE onward, during the mid to stages of the Roman and Sasanian empires. Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate, "Arab" referred to any of the nomadic and settled Semitic people from the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert, North and Lower Mesopotamia. Today, "Arab" refers to a large number of people whose native regions form the Arab world due to the spread of Arabs and the Arabic language throughout the region during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries and the subsequent Arabisation of indigenous populations.
The Arabs forged the Rashidun, Umayyad and the Fatimid caliphates, whose borders reached southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, the Sudan in the south. This was one of the largest land empires in history. In the early 20th century, the First World War signalled the end of the Ottoman Empire; this resulted in the defeat and dissolution of the empire and the partition of its territories, forming the modern Arab states. Following the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945; the Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland whilst respecting the individual sovereignty of its member states. Today, Arabs inhabit the 22 Arab states within the Arab League: Algeria, Comoros, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen; the Arab world stretches around 13 million km2, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast.
Beyond the boundaries of the League of Arab States, Arabs can be found in the global diaspora. The ties that bind Arabs are ethnic, cultural, identical, nationalist and political; the Arabs have their own customs, architecture, literature, dance, cuisine, society and mythology. The total number of Arabs are an estimated 450 million. Arabs are a diverse group in terms of religious practices. In the pre-Islamic era, most Arabs followed polytheistic religions; some tribes had adopted Christianity or Judaism, a few individuals, the hanifs observed monotheism. Today, about 93% of Arabs are adherents of Islam, there are sizable Christian minorities. Arab Muslims belong to the Sunni, Shiite and Alawite denominations. Arab Christians follow one of the Eastern Christian Churches, such as the Greek Orthodox or Greek Catholic churches. Other smaller minority religions are followed, such as the Bahá'í Faith and Druze. Arabs have influenced and contributed to diverse fields, notably the arts and architecture, philosophy, ethics, politics, music, cinema, medicine and technology in the ancient and modern history.
The earliest documented use of the word "Arab" to refer to a people appears in the Kurkh Monoliths, an Akkadian language record of the ninth century BCE Assyrian conquest of Aram, which referred to Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula under King Gindibu, who fought as part of a coalition opposed to Assyria. Listed among the booty captured by the army of king Shalmaneser III of Assyria in the Battle of Qarqar are 1000 camels of "Gi-in-di-bu'u the ar-ba-a-a" or " Gindibu belonging to the Arab; the related word ʾaʿrāb is used to refer to Bedouins today, in contrast to ʿarab which refers to Arabs in general. The term Arab and ʾaʿrāb are mentioned around 40 times in pre-Islamic Sabaean inscriptions; the term Arab occurs in the titles of the Himyarite kings from the time of'Abu Karab Asad until MadiKarib Ya'fur. The term ʾaʿrāb is driven from the term Arab according to Sabaean grammar; the term is mentioned in Quranic verses referring to people who were living in Madina and it might be a south Arabian loan-word into Quranic language.
The oldest surviving indication of an Arab national identity is an inscription made in an archaic form of Arabic in 328 using the Nabataean alphabet, which refers to Imru' al-Qays ibn'Amr as "King of all the Arabs". Herodotus refers to the Arabs in the Sinai, southern Palestine, the frankincense region. Other ancient Greek historians like Agatharchides, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo mention Arabs living in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, southern Jordan, the Syrian steppe and in eastern Arabia. Inscriptions dating to the 6th century BCE in Yemen include the term "Arab"; the most popular Arab account holds that the word "Arab" came from an eponymous father called Ya'rub, the first to speak Arabic. A
Atlanta
Atlanta is the capital of, the most populous city in, the U. S. state of Georgia. With an estimated 2017 population of 486,290, it is the 38th most-populous city in the United States; the city serves as the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, home to 5.8 million people and the ninth-largest metropolitan area in the nation. Atlanta is the seat of the most populous county in Georgia. A small portion of the city extends eastward into neighboring DeKalb County. Atlanta was founded as the terminating stop of a major state-sponsored railroad. With rapid expansion, however, it soon became the convergence point between multiple railroads, spurring its rapid growth; the city's name derives from that of the Western and Atlantic Railroad's local depot, signifying the town's growing reputation as a transportation hub. During the American Civil War, the city was entirely burned to the ground in General William T. Sherman's famous March to the Sea. However, the city rose from its ashes and became a national center of commerce and the unofficial capital of the "New South".
During the 1950s and 1960s, Atlanta became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ralph David Abernathy, many other locals playing major roles in the movement's leadership. During the modern era, Atlanta has attained international prominence as a major air transportation hub, with Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport being the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic since 1998. Atlanta is rated as a "beta" world city that exerts a moderate impact on global commerce, research, education, media and entertainment, it ranks in the top twenty among world cities and 10th in the nation with a gross domestic product of $385 billion. Atlanta's economy is considered diverse, with dominant sectors that include transportation, logistics and business services, media operations, medical services, information technology. Atlanta has topographic features that include rolling hills and dense tree coverage, earning it the nickname of "the city in a forest."
Revitalization of Atlanta's neighborhoods spurred by the 1996 Summer Olympics, has intensified in the 21st century, altering the city's demographics, politics and culture. Prior to the arrival of European settlers in north Georgia, Creek Indians inhabited the area. Standing Peachtree, a Creek village where Peachtree Creek flows into the Chattahoochee River, was the closest Indian settlement to what is now Atlanta; as part of the systematic removal of Native Americans from northern Georgia from 1802 to 1825, the Creek were forced to leave the area in 1821, white settlers arrived the following year. In 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western and Atlantic Railroad in order to provide a link between the port of Savannah and the Midwest; the initial route was to run southward from Chattanooga to a terminus east of the Chattahoochee River, which would be linked to Savannah. After engineers surveyed various possible locations for the terminus, the "zero milepost" was driven into the ground in what is now Five Points.
A year the area around the milepost had developed into a settlement, first known as "Terminus", as "Thrasherville" after a local merchant who built homes and a general store in the area. By 1842, the town had six buildings and 30 residents and was renamed "Marthasville" to honor the Governor's daughter. J. Edgar Thomson, Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, suggested the town be renamed Atlanta; the residents approved, the town was incorporated as Atlanta on December 29, 1847. By 1860, Atlanta's population had grown to 9,554. During the American Civil War, the nexus of multiple railroads in Atlanta made the city a hub for the distribution of military supplies. In 1864, the Union Army moved southward following the capture of Chattanooga and began its invasion of north Georgia; the region surrounding Atlanta was the location of several major army battles, culminating with the Battle of Atlanta and a four-month-long siege of the city by the Union Army under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman.
On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood made the decision to retreat from Atlanta, he ordered the destruction of all public buildings and possible assets that could be of use to the Union Army. On the next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to the Union Army, on September 7, Sherman ordered the city's civilian population to evacuate. On November 11, 1864, Sherman prepared for the Union Army's March to the Sea by ordering the destruction of Atlanta's remaining military assets. After the Civil War ended in 1865, Atlanta was rebuilt. Due to the city's superior rail transportation network, the state capital was moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1868. In the 1880 Census, Atlanta surpassed Savannah as Georgia's largest city. Beginning in the 1880s, Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, promoted Atlanta to potential investors as a city of the "New South" that would be based upon a modern economy and less reliant on agriculture. By 1885, the founding of the Georgia School of Technology and the Atlanta University Center had established Atlanta as a center for higher education.
In 1895, Atlanta hosted the Cotton States and International Exposition, which attracted nearly 800,000 attendees and promoted the New South's development to the world. During the first decades of the 20th century, Atlanta experienced a period of unprecedented growth. In three decades' time, Atlanta's population tripled as the city limits expanded to include nearby streetcar suburbs; the city's skyline emerged with the construction of the
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts the Talmud and the Torah. The studying is done through daily shiurim as well as in study pairs called chavrutas. Chavrusa-style learning is one of the unique features of the yeshiva. In the United States and Israel, the different levels of yeshiva education have different names. In the United States, elementary-school students are enrolled in a yeshiva, post-bar mitzvah-age students learn in a metivta, undergraduate-level students learn in a beit midrash or yeshiva gedola. In Israel, elementary-school students are enrolled in a Talmud Torah or cheder, post-bar mitzvah-age students learn in a yeshiva ketana, high-school-age students learn in a yeshiva gedola. A kollel is a yeshiva for married men, it is common for a kollel to pay a token stipend to its students. Students of Lithuanian and Hasidic yeshiva gedolas learn in yeshiva until they get married. Yeshivas were attended by males only. Today, a few Modern Orthodox yeshivas are open to females.
Although there are separate schools for Orthodox women and girls, yeshivas for women do not follow the same structure or curriculum as the traditional yeshiva for boys and men. Alternate spellings and names include yeshivah (; the word yeshiva, lit. "sitting", is applied to the activity of learning in class, hence to a learning "session."The transference in meaning of the term from the learning session to the institution itself appears to have occurred by the time of the great Talmudic Academies in Babylonia and Pumbedita, which were known as shte ha-yeshivot, "the two colleges." The Mishnah tractate Megillah mentions the law that a town can only be called a "city" if it supports ten men to make up the required quorum for communal prayers. Every beth din was attended by a number of pupils up to three times the size of the court; these might be indications of the historicity of the classical yeshiva. As indicated by the Talmud, adults took off two months a year and Adar, the months preceding the pilgrimage festivals of Sukkot and Pesach, called Yarḥei Kalla to study.
The rest of the year, they worked. The Geonic period takes its name from Gaon, the title bestowed on the heads of the three yeshivas in existence from the third to the thirteenth century; the Geonim acted as the principals of their individual yeshivot, as spiritual leaders and high judges for the wider communities tied to them. The yeshiva conducted all official business in the name of its Gaon, all correspondence to or from the yeshiva was addressed directly to the Gaon. Throughout the Geonic Period there were three yeshivot; these were named for the cities in which they were located: Jerusalem and Pumbedita. Each Jewish community would associate itself with one of the three yeshivot. There was however, no requirement for this, each community could choose to associate with any of the yeshivot; the yeshiva served as the highest educational institution for the Rabbis of this period. In addition to this, the yeshiva wielded immense power as the principal body for interpreting Jewish law. In this regard, the community saw the Gaon of a yeshiva as the highest judge on all matters of Jewish law.
Each yeshiva ruled differently on matters of law. The yeshiva served as an administrative authority, in conjunction with local communities, by appointing members to serve as the head of local congregations; those appointed as the head of a congregation would serve as a go-between for the local congregation and the larger yeshiva it was attached to. These local leaders would submit questions to the yeshiva to obtain final rulings on issues of dogma, ritual, or law; each congregation was expected to follow only one yeshiva to prevent conflict with different rulings issued by different yeshivot. The yeshivot were financially supported through a number of means. There were fixed. Private gifts and donations from individuals were common during holidays, could consist of money or goods; the yeshiva of Jerusalem was forced into exile in Cairo in 1127, dispersed entirely. The yeshivot of Sura and Pumbedita were dispersed following the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. After the scattering of the yeshiva, education in Jewish religious studies became the responsibility of individual synagogues.
No organization came to replace the three great yeshivot of Jerusalem and Pumbedita. After the Geonic Period Jews went on to establishing more Yeshiva academies in Europe and in Northern Africa. One of these include the Kairuan yeshiva in Spain, established by Chushiel Ben Elchanan
Exact sciences
The exact sciences, sometimes called the exact mathematical sciences are those sciences "which admit of absolute precision in their results". Examples of the exact sciences are mathematics, optics and physics, which many philosophers from Descartes and Kant to the logical positivists took as paradigms of rational and objective knowledge; these sciences have been practiced in many cultures from Antiquity to modern times. Given their ties to mathematics, the exact sciences are characterized by accurate quantitative expression, precise predictions and/or rigorous methods of testing hypotheses involving quantifiable predictions and measurements; the distinction between the quantitative exact sciences and those sciences which deal with the causes of things is due to Aristotle, who distinguished mathematics from natural philosophy and considered the exact sciences to be the "more natural of the branches of mathematics." Thomas Aquinas employed this distinction when he pointed out that astronomy explains the spherical shape of the Earth by mathematical reasoning while physics explains it by material causes.
This distinction was but not universally, accepted until the scientific revolution of the Seventeenth Century. Edward Grant has proposed that a fundamental change leading to the new sciences was the unification of the exact sciences and physics by Kepler and others, which resulted in a quantitative investigation of the physical causes of natural phenomena. Hard and soft science Fundamental science Demarcation problem
Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern Haskalah and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves. Medieval re-discovery of ancient Greek philosophy among the Geonim of 10th century Babylonian academies brought rationalist philosophy into Biblical-Talmudic Judaism; the philosophy was in competition with Kabbalah. Both schools would become part of classic Rabbinic literature, though the decline of scholastic rationalism coincided with historical events which drew Jews to the Kabbalistic approach. For Ashkenazi Jews and encounter with secular thought from the 18th century onwards altered how philosophy was viewed.
Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities had more ambivalent interaction with secular culture than in Western Europe. In the varied responses to modernity, Jewish philosophical ideas were developed across the range of emerging religious movements; these developments could be seen as either continuations of or breaks from the canon of Rabbinic philosophy of the Middle Ages, as well as the other historical dialectic aspects of Jewish thought, resulted in diverse contemporary Jewish attitudes to philosophical methods. Rabbinic literature sometimes views Abraham as a philosopher; some have suggested. A midrash describes how Abraham understood this world to have a creator and director by comparing this world to "a house with a light in it", what is now called the argument from design. Psalms contains invitations to admire the wisdom of God through his works. Ecclesiastes is considered to be the only genuine philosophical work in the Hebrew Bible. Philo attempted to fuse and harmonize Greek and Jewish philosophy through allegory, which he learned from Jewish exegesis and Stoicism.
Philo attempted to make his philosophy the means of defending and justifying Jewish religious truths. These truths he regarded as fixed and determinate, philosophy was used as an aid to truth, a means of arriving at it. To this end Philo chose from philosophical tenets of Greeks, refusing those that did not harmonize with Judaism such as Aristotle's doctrine of the eternity and indestructibility of the world. Dr. Bernard Revel, in dissertation on Karaite halakha, points to writings of a 10th-century Karaite, Jacob Qirqisani, who quotes Philo, illustrating how Karaites made use of Philo's works in development of Karaite Judaism. Philo's works became important to Medieval Christian scholars who leveraged the work of Karaites to lend credence to their claims that "these are the beliefs of Jews" - a technically correct, yet deceptive, attribution. With the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Second Temple Judaism was in disarray, but Jewish traditions were preserved thanks to the shrewd maneuvers of Johanan ben Zakai, who saved the Sanhedrin and moved it to Yavne.
Philosophical speculation was not a central part of Rabbinic Judaism, although some have seen the Mishnah as a philosophical work. Rabbi Akiva has been viewed as a philosophical figure: his statements include 1.) "How favored is man, for he was created after an image "for in an image, Elokim made man"", 2.) "Everything is foreseen. "The world is governed by mercy... but the divine decision is made by the preponderance of the good or bad in one's actions". After the Bar Kokhba revolt, Rabbinic scholars gathered in Tiberias and Safed to re-assemble and re-assess Judaism, its laws, liturgy and leadership structure. In 219 CE, the Sura Academy was founded by Abba Arika. For the next five centuries, Talmudic academies focused upon reconstituting Judaism and little, if any, philosophic investigation was pursued. Rabbinic Judaism had limited philosophical activity until it was challenged by Islam, Karaite Judaism, Christianity—with Tanach and Talmud, there was no need for a philosophic framework. From an economic viewpoint, Radhanite trade dominance was being usurped by coordinated Christian and Islamic forced-conversions, torture, compelling Jewish scholars to understand nascent economic threats.
These investigations triggered new ideas and intellectual exchange among Jewish and Islamic scholars in the areas of jurisprudence, astronomy and philosophy. Jewish scholars influenced Islamic scholars influenced Jewish scholars. Contemporary scholars continue to debate, Muslim and, Jew—some "Islamic scholars" were "Jewish scholars" prior to forced conversion to Islam, some Jewish scholars willingly converted to Islam, such as Abdullah ibn Salam, while others reverted to Judaism, still others and raised as Jews, were ambiguous in their religious beliefs such as ibn al-Rawandi, although they lived according to the customs of their neighbors. Around 700 CE, ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd Abu ʿUthman al-Basri introduces two streams of thought that influence Jewish and Christian scholars: Qadariyah Bahshamiyya MuʿtazilaThe story of the Bahshamiyya Muʿtazila
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin was an Israeli politician and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995. Rabin was born in Jerusalem to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants and was raised in a Labor Zionist household, he excelled as a student. He led a 27-year career as a soldier; as a teenager he joined the commando force of the Yishuv. He rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during Israel's War of Independence, he joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces in late 1948 and continued to rise as a promising officer. He helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF in the early 1950s, led the IDF's Operations Directorate from 1959 to 1963, he was appointed Chief of the General Staff in 1964 and oversaw Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. Rabin served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973, during a period of deepening U. S.–Israel ties. He was appointed Prime Minister of Israel after the resignation of Golda Meir.
In his first term, Rabin ordered the Entebbe raid. He resigned in 1977 in the wake of a financial scandal. Rabin was Israel's minister of defense for much of the 1980s, including during the outbreak of the First Intifada. In 1992, Rabin was re-elected as prime minister on a platform embracing the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, he signed several historic agreements with the Palestinian leadership as part of the Oslo Accords. In 1994, Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with long-time political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Rabin signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. In November 1995, he was assassinated by an extremist named Yigal Amir, who opposed the terms of the Oslo Accords. Amir was convicted of Rabin's murder. Rabin was the first native-born prime minister of Israel, the only prime minister to be assassinated and the second to die in office after Levi Eshkol. Rabin has become a symbol of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Rabin was born at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem on 1 March 1922, Mandatory Palestine, to Nehemiah and Rosa Rabin, immigrants of the Third Aliyah, the third wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe.
Nehemiah was born Nehemiah Rubitzov in the shtetl Sydorovychi near Ivankiv in the southern Pale of Settlement. His father Menachem died when he was a boy, Nehemiah worked to support his family from an early age. At the age of 18, he emigrated to the United States, where he joined the Poale Zion party and changed his surname to Rabin. In 1917, Nehemiah Rabin went to Mandatory Palestine with a group of volunteers from the Jewish Legion. Yitzhak's mother, Rosa Cohen, was born in 1890 in Mogilev in Belarus, her father, a rabbi, opposed the Zionist movement and sent Rosa to a Christian high school for girls in Gomel, which gave her a broad general education. Early on, Rosa took an interest in social causes. In 1919, she traveled to Palestine on the steamship Ruslan. After working on a kibbutz on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, she moved to Jerusalem. Rabin's parents met in Jerusalem during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, they moved to Tel Aviv's Chlenov Street near Jaffa in 1923. Nehemiah became a worker for the Palestine Electric Corporation and Rosa was an accountant and local activist.
She became a member of the Tel Aviv City Council. The family moved again in 1931 to a two-room apartment on Hamagid Street in Tel Aviv. Rabin grew up in Tel Aviv, he enrolled in the Tel Aviv Beit Hinuch Leyaldei Ovdim in 1928 and completed his studies there in 1935. The school taught the children agriculture as well as Zionism. Rabin received good marks in school, but he was so shy that few people knew he was intelligent. In 1935, Rabin enrolled at an agricultural school on kibbutz Givat Hashlosha that his mother founded, it was here in 1936 at the age of 14 that Rabin joined the Haganah and received his first military training, learning how to use a pistol and stand guard. He joined HaNoar HaOved. In 1937, he enrolled at the two-year Kadoorie Agricultural High School, he excelled in a number of agriculture-related subjects but disliked studying English language—the language of the British "enemy." He aspired to be an irrigation engineer, but his interest in military affairs intensified in 1938, when the ongoing Arab revolt worsened.
A young Haganah sergeant named Yigal Allon a general in the IDF and prominent politician, trained Rabin and others at Kadoorie. Rabin finished at Kadoorie in August 1940. For part of 1939, the British closed Kadoorie, Rabin joined Allon as a military policeman at Kibbutz Ginosar until the school re-opened; when he finished school, Rabin considered studying irrigation engineering on scholarship at the University of California, although he decided to stay and fight in Palestine. Rabin married Leah Schlossberg during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Leah Rabin was working at the time as a reporter for a Palmach newspaper, they had two children and Yuval. Rabin was non-religious. In 1941, during his practical training at kibbutz Ramat Yohanan, Rabin joined the newly formed Palmach section of the Haganah, under the influence of Yigal Allon. Rabin could not yet operate a machine gun, drive a ca
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, biofacts or ecofacts and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered a branch of the humanities. In North America archaeology is a sub-field of anthropology, while in Europe it is viewed as either a discipline in its own right or a sub-field of other disciplines. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, the study of fossil remains, it is important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world. Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.
The discipline involves surveying and analysis of data collected to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research, it draws upon anthropology, art history, ethnology, geology, literary history, semiology, textual criticism, information sciences, statistics, paleography, paleontology and paleobotany. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, has since become a discipline practiced across the world. Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Since its early development, various specific sub-disciplines of archaeology have developed, including maritime archaeology, feminist archaeology and archaeoastronomy, numerous different scientific techniques have been developed to aid archaeological investigation. Nonetheless, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, opposition to the excavation of human remains.
The science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with particular attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts, as well as historical sites. Antiquarianism focused on the empirical evidence that existed for the understanding of the past, encapsulated in the motto of the 18th-century antiquary, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "We speak from facts not theory". Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Flavio Biondo, an Italian Renaissance humanist historian, created a systematic guide to the ruins and topography of ancient Rome in the early 15th century, for which he has been called an early founder of archaeology. Antiquarians of the 16th century, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, drawing and interpreting the monuments that they encountered.
One of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England, he was ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings. He attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture and shield-shapes. Excavations were carried out by the Spanish military engineer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, both of, covered by ash during the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79; these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and human shapes, as well the unearthing of frescos, had a big impact throughout Europe. However, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard; the father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington. He undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798.
Cunnington made meticulous recordings of Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, the terms he used to categorize and describe them are still used by archaeologists today. One of the major achievements of 19th-century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy; the idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton and Charles Lyell. The application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites. In the third and fourth decades of the 19th-century, archaeologists like Jacques Boucher de Perthes and Christian Jürgensen Thomsen began to put the artifacts they had found in chronological order. A major figure in the development of archaeology into a rigorous science was the army officer and ethnologist, Augustus Pitt Rivers, who began excavations on his land in England in the 1880s, his approach was methodical by the standards of the time, he is regarded as the first scientific archaeologist.
He arranged his artifacts by type or "typologically, within types by date or "chronologically"
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