Digging down the past

Abstract

It is often stated that cosmology is an extreme form of archeology that deals with aeons of time extending back to thousands of millions of years. One talks, for instance, of relics of the early Universe, and phases in the history of the Universe that resemble the division of phases in human development used by archeologists to interpret the data they gather in the field. In this text we shall analyze these "linguistic" similarities, and the differences between these two scientific activities paying some attention on the role played by their theoretical guidelines.