Excavations are the only means at our disposal to get to know anything of the previous history or prehistory. In prehistory people couldn’t read yet.
The story of history can be written thanks to excavations, texts, annotations and inscriptions preserved from the past. Excavations are the only means at our disposal to get to know anything of the previous history or prehistory. In prehistory people couldn’t read yet. Prehistory ends when writing comes into use. In our country this happened when the Romans arrived.
Reverend John Picardt (1600 - 1670) was one of the first to show an interest in the prehistory of our country. Picardt believed that the megalithic monuments had been built by giants.
Over the last eighty years our knowledge of prehistory has progressed by leaps and bounds. Modern research methods proved many earlier notions to be wrong. Into the twentieth century it was assumed that the prehistoric burial barrows had been built around wooden domes. In fact, ‘the people of cupola shaped tombs builders’ was a common expression. This notion turned out to be completely wrong. Cupola shaped tombs, as depicted to scale here, never existed.