Write a 5 pages paper on development of understanding of the past by the early antiquarians up to the eighteenth.

Write a 5 pages paper on development of understanding of the past by the early antiquarians up to the eighteenth. The antiquarians possessed an interest in death decay and the unfashionable. They focused on obscure and arcane details in their perceptions, a factor that lacked awareness of the realities and practicalities of modernism and the wider currents of history. Thus, from this aspect, they found themselves in the middle of ridicule later after the establishment of elaborate disciplines of studying history (Ferguson 2009, p 27). Nonetheless, the antiquarians facilitated a significant development to the understanding of the past unto the 18th century when other disciplines emerged

In view of the critiques of the antiquarian’s work, they accused them of lacking taste and aesthetics, urging them to include such motivations in their interest of the primitive past. However, the antiquarians retaliated to the ridicule from the critiques by stating that they made informed findings from facts not theories. Thus, in this view, they contributed to the development of an understanding of the past by collecting such artifacts, analyzing them, and providing their findings to the public. This initiated the understanding of the past from the study of such historical relics such as ancient documents, artifacts, and monuments (Levine 2002, p. 45). The antiquarians were the first discipline of study to focus on understanding the culture and existence of the past, unlike historians of the time whose studies had little effect on understanding the past. Their study focused on empirical evidence of their findings. hence, they made a significant breakthrough in the understanding of the past. For instance, in Europe, with antiquarians such as Flavio Biondo, whose interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization provided the rediscovery of classical culture (Levine 2002, p. 67). John Leland and William Camden provided surveys of the English countryside, providing the drawings and descriptions and interpretations of the monuments they encountered. Thus, from such antiquarian establishments, people get an understanding of the past.