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Not to be excessively cynical or downright insulting, (also, my knowledge of archaeology is feeble) but is there any way to verify that they found the bones the
by warent 9y ago
Not to be excessively cynical or downright insulting, (also, my knowledge of archaeology is feeble) but is there any way to verify that they found the bones there in the desert?
> The discovery is “a dream come true, because it supports arguments that our teams have been making for more than 10 years,”
Ten years of debate could be motive enough for some people to fabricate the finding.
EDIT: All that aside, assuming it is legitimate and we can trust the discovery, I definitely agree an absolutely phenomenal discovery
- make3 9y ago"Finding a human bone in the Nefud Desert—a windswept oval patch of sand dunes the size of Kentucky—is perhaps the world’s most impressive example of an unlikely find" I wonder how you can test that a fossil wasn't just discovered elsewhere and moved to a convenient place, if the ground composition is sufficiently similar
- stevenwoo 9y agoCan't they do destructive testing of a part of the fossil using some isotope with a longer half life than carbon 14? It's described as being in a field of bones sticking out of sand so it's the only possible way it could have been accurately dated - no surrounding sedimentary rock formation to do additional testing upon.
- make3 9y agoDoes this address the problem of knowing if the bones were moved?
- jonhendry18 9y agoA nearby hippo bone was also tested. It seems rather unlikely that a human bone and a hippo bone of similar age would have been stumbled across somewhere else compared to this site which appears to be a dried up body of water.
- jonhendry18 9y agoThey didn't use carbon-14. "Groucutt and the rest of the team used a number of dating methods to confirm the likely age of the Al Wusta finger. For the finger itself and the tooth of an ancient hippopotamus found nearby, they applied U-series dating. Like radiocarbon dating, the method works by looking at radioactive decay in the preserved materials. The age of the sediments around the bones was calculated using optically stimulated luminescence—a technique that reveals the last time rocks and sand were exposed to sunlight."
- shard972 9y agoI'm not an expert in archeology but from my understanding, we can gain alot of information from bones that could lead such a finding. For instance, carbon dating and analysing the ethnic origins of the skeleton could lead you to say that you have an Australian (Australoid) fossil from 20,000 years ago. If you found that in Northern America that would raise serious questions about where exactly it was found and if it was moved since it doesn't fit within any of our current understandings of migration patterns.
- jonhendry18 9y agoUm, why wouldn't it have been useful to describe it as being found in the original location, in that case? It'd still be noteworthy.
- scottie_m 9y agoThe odds that you could perfectly pull off such a stunt are very low, approaching zero asymptotically as time passes and scrutiny grows. For the thing to work everyone involved would need to be perfectly able to keep a secret and consistent with their stories. All of the forensic evidence down to carbon dating of dust particles would need to be consistent, and you’d need to foresee decades of developments in archeological techniques which might uncover your plot. The moment your scam is uncovered your reputation is irreparably destroyed, you become a pariah and your professional life ends. Given that it seems wildly unlikely to be an outright scam, although anything is possible.
- braythwayt 9y agoYou would think that kind of thing would be such a strong disincentive that nobody would try it, but then again... Andrew Wakefield: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy That being said, it is extremely improbable.
- scottie_m 9y agoOoh, good point with Wakefield, what a piece of work! The harm he did will almost certainly outlive him, so I guess that’s a legacy?!
- Steko 9y agoAnother example from archaeology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Paleolithic_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Paleolithic_hoax
- provost 9y agoAnother example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man