Traditional Problems and New Ways of Solving Them

Abstract

1. The final, "ideal" goal of the historical sciences is to understand humanity's past, its many aspects and interrelationships, with maximum completeness. The further we go back in time, the narrower is the range of historical sources and the more the structure of our knowledge changes. On occasion, it is possible to notice certain critical moments (or epochs) in this sequence, when written historical evidence first comes into the historian's view, although the primary sources of historical information will continue to be archeology, comparative linguistics, and the paleological sections of the natural sciences. It must be granted that the study of these epochs holds a certain fascination for the scholar, consisting in the quick and sudden enlargement of the accessible subject without having either the necessary data or the experience in working with an unusual type of source. It is easy to imagine the impatience of the paleoarcheologist, when a "mere step" separates him from connecting the silent archeological evidence with the living, resonating word. How difficult is this step and how potentially illusory are the solutions and conclusions based on "common sense" (largely consisting of generally received prejudices), as witnessed by the present discussion on the pages of Sovetskaia arkheologiia.