Archaeology | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

- [David] Hello, Wordsmiths, David here,

You've caught me at a dig
site, excavating a rare find.

Hold on just a moment, here
we are. (David grunting)

The word for this video is archeology.

It's a noun and it means

the study of ancient human cultures.

The word origin, the
etymology is fun, it's Greek.

Arche means old in Greek,
ancient, first, long ago,

and logy means science or the study of.

You might also see it in
its combining form as ology,

so it's the study of things from long ago.

A person who practices this
science, an archeologist,

goes on trips to the place they study,

and there they carefully dig up artifacts

and then they take those
artifacts to a museum

or a university and they study them,

and they try to learn
things about the culture

that produced those artifacts, right?

I could find ancient pottery
from a dig in Turkey,

and then take it back
to a museum in Istanbul,

or Antalya, or wherever,

and scrape off residue
from the inside of a pot,

and say, "Okay, what were people drinking

5,000 years ago?"

Anyway, looking at arche, logy, or ology,

the word parts meaning old,

and a science or study of something.

What other words can you think of

that Use those word parts?

I'm gonna put on some music

and you've got 10 seconds
to shout out some words.

Let's do it.

(upbeat playful music)

Here's what I came up with, an archive,

which is like a place for documents,

a place where you keep all
the old papers and books.

Think of a newspaper archive,
all the old editions.

Archaic, it's another way of saying

old-fashioned or ancient,

and biology, the study of life, right?

Bios in Greek, life,

let's use archeology in some sentences.

"I never label my leftover,

so investigating the mystery
containers in my fridge

feels a little like archeology."

You don't know what's in there,

in my parents' house growing up,

it was always tubs of cottage cheese,

but they never had cottage cheese in them.

That's sentence Number
1, sentence Number 2,

"If I were an archeologist,
I I'd study ancient pie.

Now, if you'll excuse me,

I think it's time to
dig into my latest find.

Hm, I do believe that's
eighth-century blueberry,

huh, still good.

For now, take heart,

you can learn anything, David out.