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| Prehistory as a science distinct from history was born in the middle of the XIX century. The date of 1859 is often mentioned to set the event in time. Of course, it is only a reference point, a “T” moment where one considers that the scholars' community recognized “the early antiquity of man”, freeing more or less itself from the biblical restriction which was imposing later dates. Man could then be conceived as contemporary of antediluvian animals, those long time disappeared species already well known at the time. |
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 Romanesque basilica of La Canonica in Mariana at the foot of which is located one of the few roman towns of the island. |
This last third of century thus opens the scope of possibilities and it is a real revolution in a scientific universe which once considered that nothing existed prior to the Celts (the most ancient people mentioned in the texts for our regions). And Corsica just as a good many regions where traces of “great ancient civilizations of the Antiquity” (and particularly the Roman civilization) are few could not draw the scholars' attention before this revolution. As prehistory progressively acquires means for tackling history without turning to texts, the island's past comes out of the haze. Indeed, mentions of Corsica are sparse and often contradictory in the classical texts. The classical myths of the Antiquity connected to Corsica have the merit of making us perceive the mysterious nature that this “mountain in the sea” takes on for the “ancient ones”. However, most of the mentions about Corsica all through Antiquity predominantly deal with military or trade aspects and rarely ethnographic ones. If it is already difficult to reach the populations of the classical age through the texts, archaeology alone makes it possible to go further back in the past. |
