4 ms·

As more and more evidence piles on, I wonder how long it will take for mainstream archaeology to accept these ideas.

AlotOfReading 5y ago
Mainstream archeologists have already integrated many of the "suggestions" the article makes. It's bad enough that were I less charitable, I'd think the author was putting up strawmen that have been outdated for decades. Instead, I think they just read the wrong books, probably from some stodgy British academic that hasn't left the country since there was a British empire. Take this concluding sentence as an example: > The old paradigm of agriculture and civilization beginning after the last ice age, and proceeding on a materially overdetermined set course of progress, seems to rest on increasingly shaky theoretical grounds If you find an archaeologist arguing that, you've found a time traveler from the 60s at the latest. Archaeology isn't easy and it's gotten a lot of things wrong over the years. However, methodologies are constantly improving and the best info is the stuff we have today rather than the stuff we had 50 years ago. That's what these sorts of articles should be calling for improvements in.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Those archaic archaeologists are not just holed up in department basements, ignoring recent discoveries. From their basements they are curating Wikipedia articles, defending them tooth and nail against unwelcome hints of currency.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Wikipedia's a bit of a mixed bag, especially around the early neolithic stuff. If you look at the east Asian articles, some of them are still using antiquated terms like mongoloid and caucasoid. The southwest asian stuff is theoretically underdeveloped and last time I checked reflects an 80-90s bent, citing people like Hodder. Other regions have very underdeveloped articles. NA is probably the best with the rather excellent chronologies, but not much besides.
    - ido 5y ago
      What's the best resource to read online instead?
      - Kye 5y ago
        I don't know of a best resource, but good information usually comes from reading different takes on the same thing. Encyclopedia Britannica is still around. https://www.britannica.com/event/Neolithic/additional-info#full_index https://www.britannica.com/event/Neolithic/additional-info#f...
      - tfghjnkm 5y ago
        I'm struggling to think of a great unified resource, but with regards to Gobekli Tepe specifically (which is the a major focus in this thread) the blog maintained by the actual archaeologists who work at the site is fantastic: https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/ https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    The problem with Wikipedia is unlikely to be geriatric archeologists, but rather wikipeidas policy to disallow citation of all primary scientific research [1]. As long as pop science articles are the gold standard, quality will be low in niche topics with low media coverage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_and_using_primary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_and_usin...
    - jjk166 5y ago
      Wikipedia most certainly does not disallow citation of all primary scientific research. Wikipedia's rule is against original (ie unpublished) research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary,_secondary_and_tertiary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...
      - ekianjo 5y ago
        The citation system is broken since most publications in various fields are pure junk. Having a link to a biased or poorly researched source does not prove anything.
        denton-scratch 5y ago
        That's exactly why wikipedia prefers secondary sources. You can 'prove' almost anything by citing junk articles in journals.
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        IT looks like you are correct. Unfortunately, I have seen simple reiteration of primary research findings removed with such frequency that there appears to a great amount of confusion on this topic >In science, data is primary, and the first publication of any idea or experimental result is always a primary source. These publications, which may be in peer-reviewed journal articles or in some other form, are often called the primary literature to differentiate them from unpublished sources. >All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.
- darkhorse13 5y ago
  And yet, this is what Google serves up as one of the first results when searching for ancient civilizations during/before the last Ice Age: (No, There Wasn't an Advanced Civilization 12,000 Years Ago)[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-there-wasnt-an-advanced-civilization-12-000-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-there-wasnt-an...] The dude clearly has a bone to pick with Graham Hancock, and honestly I'm not a fan of some of his crazy ideas either. But it seems like he is missing the bigger picture by making this is a personal battle.
  - tfghjnkm 5y ago
    Since when is it wrong to debunk pseudoscience. That takedown on Graham Hancock's wacko ideas is very thorough, and it's great that it's appearing in such a prominent forum. You're interpreting it as a personal attack, but it is not. It is a great intellectual argumentative piece. edit: why was this flagged?
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Neither Michael Shermer nor Graham Hancock are archaeologists, so I'm not sure where you're going with that. If you're asking me which one to trust without critical reading (neither), I'm certainly not going to recommend the ancient aliens dude who's been repeatedly called out by multiple archaeological associations for publishing pseudoscience. Anyway, part of the issue here is that archaeology doesn't have answers to every question you could ask and the farther back you go, the harder it is to answer even basic questions. And ultimately, the archaeological community as a whole is still coming to grips with trying to understand how the people we do see in the archaeological record conceived of the world, which is a necessary prerequisite to start talking about how concepts in it relate to concepts in our own. Take this 2019 paper trying to survey how we understand the term 'home' [1] or Maher's Hunter-Gatherer Home-Making? as examples of some of how primitive our current working vocabulary and methodologies are on this topic. Our understanding of paleolithic lifeways is still very much in its infancy. Nevertheless, suggestions like the presence of a industrialized society much like our own before the LGM is something I've seen no evidence to even hint at yet. [1] https://doi.org/10.1086/701523 https://doi.org/10.1086/701523
  - 5y ago
- tfghjnkm 5y ago
  I want to second this, as another archaeologist. Most attacks on 'archaeological orthodoxy' come from a very misinformed and outdated perspective of contemporary archaeological views. Moreover, in general, archaeologists tend to be extremely aware of the limitations of our methods and theories, to the point where we are often unwilling to make universalizing claims. Perhaps this is why many confident 'facts' that were established in the 1960s, and which have since been reconsidered and problematized, still linger. Archaeologists now rarely talk in terms of absolutes, but those kinds of claims grab more public attention than nuanced and tentative discourse.
  - VortexDream 5y ago
    So, out of curiosity, where should I go or what should I read if I'd like to find out what the modern archeological views are?
    - tfghjnkm 5y ago
      Every once in a while someone (typically a senior PhD student) will write a brilliant review article of relevant work related to a given field, method or theory. These papers may be difficult to identify and are not really assembled under a single journal or collection, but you'll know it when you see it. One great example is this one: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00708.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00708.x

Mainstream archeologists have already integrated many of the "suggestions" the article makes. It's bad enough that were I less charitable, I'd think the author was putting up strawmen that have been outdated for decades. Instead, I think they just read the wrong books, probably from some stodgy British academic that hasn't left the country since there was a British empire. Take this concluding sentence as an example: > The old paradigm of agriculture and civilization beginning after the last ice age, and proceeding on a materially overdetermined set course of progress, seems to rest on increasingly shaky theoretical grounds If you find an archaeologist arguing that, you've found a time traveler from the 60s at the latest. Archaeology isn't easy and it's gotten a lot of things wrong over the years. However, methodologies are constantly improving and the best info is the stuff we have today rather than the stuff we had 50 years ago. That's what these sorts of articles should be calling for improvements in.

ncmncm 5y ago
Those archaic archaeologists are not just holed up in department basements, ignoring recent discoveries. From their basements they are curating Wikipedia articles, defending them tooth and nail against unwelcome hints of currency.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Wikipedia's a bit of a mixed bag, especially around the early neolithic stuff. If you look at the east Asian articles, some of them are still using antiquated terms like mongoloid and caucasoid. The southwest asian stuff is theoretically underdeveloped and last time I checked reflects an 80-90s bent, citing people like Hodder. Other regions have very underdeveloped articles. NA is probably the best with the rather excellent chronologies, but not much besides.
  - ido 5y ago
    What's the best resource to read online instead?
    - Kye 5y ago
      I don't know of a best resource, but good information usually comes from reading different takes on the same thing. Encyclopedia Britannica is still around. https://www.britannica.com/event/Neolithic/additional-info#full_index https://www.britannica.com/event/Neolithic/additional-info#f...
    - tfghjnkm 5y ago
      I'm struggling to think of a great unified resource, but with regards to Gobekli Tepe specifically (which is the a major focus in this thread) the blog maintained by the actual archaeologists who work at the site is fantastic: https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/ https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  The problem with Wikipedia is unlikely to be geriatric archeologists, but rather wikipeidas policy to disallow citation of all primary scientific research [1]. As long as pop science articles are the gold standard, quality will be low in niche topics with low media coverage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_and_using_primary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_and_usin...
  - jjk166 5y ago
    Wikipedia most certainly does not disallow citation of all primary scientific research. Wikipedia's rule is against original (ie unpublished) research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary,_secondary_and_tertiary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      The citation system is broken since most publications in various fields are pure junk. Having a link to a biased or poorly researched source does not prove anything.
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        That's exactly why wikipedia prefers secondary sources. You can 'prove' almost anything by citing junk articles in journals.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      IT looks like you are correct. Unfortunately, I have seen simple reiteration of primary research findings removed with such frequency that there appears to a great amount of confusion on this topic >In science, data is primary, and the first publication of any idea or experimental result is always a primary source. These publications, which may be in peer-reviewed journal articles or in some other form, are often called the primary literature to differentiate them from unpublished sources. >All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.
darkhorse13 5y ago
And yet, this is what Google serves up as one of the first results when searching for ancient civilizations during/before the last Ice Age: (No, There Wasn't an Advanced Civilization 12,000 Years Ago)[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-there-wasnt-an-advanced-civilization-12-000-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-there-wasnt-an...] The dude clearly has a bone to pick with Graham Hancock, and honestly I'm not a fan of some of his crazy ideas either. But it seems like he is missing the bigger picture by making this is a personal battle.
- tfghjnkm 5y ago
  Since when is it wrong to debunk pseudoscience. That takedown on Graham Hancock's wacko ideas is very thorough, and it's great that it's appearing in such a prominent forum. You're interpreting it as a personal attack, but it is not. It is a great intellectual argumentative piece. edit: why was this flagged?
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Neither Michael Shermer nor Graham Hancock are archaeologists, so I'm not sure where you're going with that. If you're asking me which one to trust without critical reading (neither), I'm certainly not going to recommend the ancient aliens dude who's been repeatedly called out by multiple archaeological associations for publishing pseudoscience. Anyway, part of the issue here is that archaeology doesn't have answers to every question you could ask and the farther back you go, the harder it is to answer even basic questions. And ultimately, the archaeological community as a whole is still coming to grips with trying to understand how the people we do see in the archaeological record conceived of the world, which is a necessary prerequisite to start talking about how concepts in it relate to concepts in our own. Take this 2019 paper trying to survey how we understand the term 'home' [1] or Maher's Hunter-Gatherer Home-Making? as examples of some of how primitive our current working vocabulary and methodologies are on this topic. Our understanding of paleolithic lifeways is still very much in its infancy. Nevertheless, suggestions like the presence of a industrialized society much like our own before the LGM is something I've seen no evidence to even hint at yet. [1] https://doi.org/10.1086/701523 https://doi.org/10.1086/701523
- 5y ago
tfghjnkm 5y ago
I want to second this, as another archaeologist. Most attacks on 'archaeological orthodoxy' come from a very misinformed and outdated perspective of contemporary archaeological views. Moreover, in general, archaeologists tend to be extremely aware of the limitations of our methods and theories, to the point where we are often unwilling to make universalizing claims. Perhaps this is why many confident 'facts' that were established in the 1960s, and which have since been reconsidered and problematized, still linger. Archaeologists now rarely talk in terms of absolutes, but those kinds of claims grab more public attention than nuanced and tentative discourse.
- VortexDream 5y ago
  So, out of curiosity, where should I go or what should I read if I'd like to find out what the modern archeological views are?
  - tfghjnkm 5y ago
    Every once in a while someone (typically a senior PhD student) will write a brilliant review article of relevant work related to a given field, method or theory. These papers may be difficult to identify and are not really assembled under a single journal or collection, but you'll know it when you see it. One great example is this one: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00708.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00708.x