7 ms·
Buried tools and pigments tell a history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years
- aaron695 9y agoYou don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) So I'd bet against it. The article itself links to another article that seems to have evidence contradicting it - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/aboriginal-australians-dna-origins-australia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/aboriginal-austra... It'd be interesting to hear an expert opinion on it.
- ketralnis 9y ago> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) > So I'd bet against it. That argument would seem to imply that all published research is wrong
- aaron695 9y agoMost research(I'd guess) doesn't contradict other research/theory, it tells of discovery. No one has proven there's no 9th planet for instance. No one's proven drug X doesn't help with disease Y. Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link) Of course conformity with theory is also a problem, we think it's 50,000 years so we make our study on X (aka DNA) conform with this. But both articles are HN worthy and one is wrong. So if you're not skeptical then there's a problem with your world view.
- jamesrcole 9y agoPerhaps the 65000 years people didn't leave any descendants. Or perhaps that DNA research wasn't definitive. You say there are multiple things that contradict it. What are the others? It can't be evidence of people being there at more recent times -- that doesn't contradict evidence that they were there earlier.
- ak39 9y agoYou wrote: "Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link)" But that's obvious. The field of paleontology/archeology works with any evidence that suggests older. One confirmed finding of "older" is enough to redate and trump multiple newer findings. That makes perfect sense.
- Sharlin 9y agoIn other words, dating an archaeological finding gives you a lower bound of how long there has been human activity on the site. Finding something older does not contradict previous results - and there are good reasons why older things are more difficult to find so absence of evidence is not (strong) evidence of absence.
- aaron695 9y ago> older things are more difficult to find so absence of evidence is not (strong) evidence of absence. I agree but I'd expect some sort of logrithm though. But perhaps not. As per the article Australia had the extinctions which line up with an earlier time period. And as per the article evidently it's not PC to imply humans did it. There's more than science going on here. I just want a real independent expert to comment not someone with an agenda like PoP.
- ak39 9y agoYou wrote: "Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link)" But that's obvious. Paleontology and archeology works with any evidence that suggests older. One confirmed finding of "older" is enough to redate and trump multiple newer findings. That makes perfect sense.
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) Reproducing studies and publishing the results is a hallmark of science so I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to.
- oldandtired 9y agoWhat he is saying is that there are no kudo's for publishing work that just confirms something. Research grants are given for new work not for doing confirming followup work. This has become a problem in recent decades and has led to certain systemic problems that have been discussed in various places in recent months. If you say something like "I am submitting this grant request to replicate the experiments of X who have published results Y so that we can confirm X's results" then your grant application will most likely be refused.
- harry8 9y agoWhy is it so hard to get published when you attempt to reproduce a study and fail to do so? Papers rejected by the journals the published the original research is apparently the norm.
- threatofrain 9y agoI'd hesitate to generalize across fields which attack problems of different scopes of difficulties, but when I see authors follow a scientific dialogue, I see them publish twists of experiments which efficiently answer a few critical potential avenues of an argument, rather than simply replication vs. refutation.
- shakna 9y agoThe particular lead scientist in this case is a huge proponent of replication. They published the raw data along with their findings so that others can repeat the experiments.
- peatmoss 9y agoI'll note that one of the co-authors, Ben Marwick, has been very active in elevating reproducible computing practices in research. My understanding is that there's code and data available for this research. Also, here's a short bit about reproducibility from Marwick that is worth a read for anyone in academia: http://theconversation.com/how-computers-broke-science-and-what-we-can-do-to-fix-it-49938 http://theconversation.com/how-computers-broke-science-and-w...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sohkamyung 9y agoI prefer the version published in The Conversation [1] by the researches themselves. It contains more details including one part left out of the NYTimes version: that the work was done with the approval of the Aboriginal people who control the site: "To make new research possible, a landmark agreement was reached between the University of Queensland (and associated researchers) and the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation representing the Mirarr traditional owners of the site. The agreement gave ultimate control over the excavation to the Mirarr senior custodians, with oversight of the excavation and curation of the material. The Mirarr were interested to support new research into the age of the site and to know more about the early evidence of technologies thought to be present there." [1] [ https://theconversation.com/buried-tools-and-pigments-tell-a-new-history-of-humans-in-australia-for-65-000-years-81021 https://theconversation.com/buried-tools-and-pigments-tell-a... ]
- flukus 9y agoI really don't think they should have that level of control over something 65,000 which they may have no connection too. More worrying is that I read previously that they had veto rights over any published findings as well, which creates all sorts of integrity problems.
- ekianjo 9y ago> More worrying is that I read previously that they had veto rights over any published findings as well, which creates all sorts of integrity problems. Then it should definitely be captured in the story. As a potential conflict of interest.
- flukus 9y agoIt was in this one (http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-07-20/aboriginal-shelter-pushes-human-history-back-to-65,000-years/8719314 http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-07-20/aboriginal-she...) from the (Australian) ABC, which I assume is the nytimes source: > Under the agreement, the Mirarr people have had a right to veto the excavation at any time, control over the artefacts and final say about findings announced about the site. This leaves it open to abuse like we see in other fields where they can conduct an experiment 10 times and only publish the result that comes out how they want. For the record, I have no reason to believe the scientists involved are being dishonest, but imposing these conditions should not be acceptable.
- honestoHeminway 9y agoAustralian Megafauna decided that this is the moment to become suicidal? Also 65533 years, rounded down, that number sounds kind of fishy, i dont know why.
- grecy 9y agoThis is one of my favorite things about Australia, because science has absolutely no explanation for how humans arrived in Australia that long ago. It massively predates any boats, and there are no boats in the history of the Aboriginals. In fact nobody has even really bothered to try an explain it, because it's way, way, way outside the story that everyone came out of Africa.
- flukus 9y ago> This is one of my favorite things about Australia, because science has absolutely no explanation for how humans arrived in Australia that long ago. It's perfectly explainable, they arrived by boat. The exact time and migration path is still pretty open for interpretation and revision, but building boats is not beyond the capability of the people at the time. All they needed was a fairly simple raft. >In fact nobody has even really bothered to try an explain it, because it's way, way, way outside the story that everyone came out of Africa. No it isn't, it's perfectly consistent with the out of africa hypothesis.
- posterboy 9y agoI wouldn't expect proof from such a long time ago though
- fdej 9y agoWhy? Humans first migrated out of Africa at least 100,000 years ago, which would give plenty of time to reach Australia by 65,000 years ago. The technology to build boats or rafts could easily have been forgotten over thousands of years if seafaring was not crucial to surviving on the new continent.
- dalbasal 9y ago“It puts to bed the whole idea that humans wiped them (megafauna) out,” said Dr. Clarkson. “We’re talking 20,000 to 25,000 years of coexistence.” Does it? Is it not still possible that human populations increased, new (less mgafauna friendly) cultures emerged or subsequent migrations caused one of these? Humans co-existed with large animals in many places, before causing extinctions at later points.
- flukus 9y agoMultiple migration theories have been all but put to bed I think, but the current theory seems to be that the migration path was mostly coastal and only pushing inland later. That leaves plenty of room for humans to be the cause of extinction. I really don't understand why it's so hard to accept that humans are the cause, it seems to be a part of the noble savage myth.
- tray5 9y ago>I really don't understand why it's so hard to accept that humans are the cause, it seems to be a part of the noble savage myth. Because there's not enough evidence to make that claim. The structure of indigenous societies were nomadic hunter gatherers who were (as far as the evidence tells us) subsistence hunters. Truth is Indigenous Australians didn't have the population (or population density), nor the culture to hunt these creatures to extinction. Being largely nomadic within set ranges (i.e they travelled often but within their own nations land) it was suicidal to overhunt and deplete the resources, and this becomes a stronger point when you consider the timeframes on which the Aborigines existed on their land (again 20,000 years of overlap here). Also consider the sheer number of creatures that went extinct here, everything from Marsupial Lions to gigantic emus and echidnas, it doesn't match up with indigenous australians hunting behaviours that somehow they decided to overkill for this short period of time all these larger creatures, and then that behaviour suddenly stopped? (we have no evidence of Indigenous Australian's overhunting any other creatures to extinction). To go even further, there's nothing in their oral history or paintings which gives the slightest hint that overhunting or hunting for status was ever present in any Indigenous Australian culture. Considering the ice age ended around the same time as the death of the last megafauna in Australia, I think its fair to evaluate every conclusion you make about the death of the megafauna within that context. I'm not saying Indigenous Australians didn't have an effect on the death of the megafauna, anything being hunted in a time like a massive climate shift is going to affect population, but there's no direct evidence, nor indirect evidence about the behaviour and cultures of Indigenous Australia which point to mankind being the driver behind the numerous extinctions.
- teilo 9y agoWell, this will certainly bolster the "Out of Australia" theorists. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99257 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99257