Experimental Archaeologists Test Past by Making It Real

Of all the scientific disciplines, archaeology lends itself most to the imagination. It's the scholarly embodiment of the impulse to imagine oneself as a Mongol raider or Roman slave, tracking gazelle across the Great Rift Valley or navigating by stars across the Pacific.

For a few lucky researchers, these dreams become hypotheses. Experimental archaeologists test ancient tools and techniques, determining how they worked and whether modern interpretations are correct. Sometimes the studies look more like play than research — but why shouldn't research be fun?

From ancient noodle recipes to spear throwing, here are a few of our favorite studies.

Kon-Tiki

In the annals of experimental archaeology, no experiment is more famous than a 4,300 mile trip taken by six men in a raft called the Kon-Tiki. Led by Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, the voyage was supposed to show that pre-Columbian South Americans could have reached the South Pacific by floating across on rafts made of balsa wood.

Heyerdahl's journey was memorialized in a bestselling book and Academy Award-winning documentary, but the settlement hypothesis was discredited by further anthropological research. In June of this year, however, genetic tests of Polynesian islanders identified scattered DNA markers typically found among South Americans. Maybe a few ancient sailors indeed made the Kon-Tiki's epic voyage.

Read more at Wired Science