The origin and functioning of search activity in the ancient world: historical background

Search work as a special kind of professional activity is rooted in the deep past. Special services, carrying out covert operations, secret collection of information, involved in supplying information activities began to take shape during the formation of the first civilizations. Today we know a number of ways to collect and transmit information, which were used in the ancient world. Even brief and fragmentary historical data provide clear evidence that investigative, detective, intelligence activities (intelligence and counterintelligence) contributed to the establishment and improvement of the state and as state-legal phenomena are inseparable from the history of mankind.