7 ms·

My dad used to make this argument: of all the millions of footprints that humans made, after arriving in North America, what is the likelihood that we found the

My dad used to make this argument: of all the millions of footprints that humans made, after arriving in North America, what is the likelihood that we found the very first of those footprints? The point is, whatever evidence we find, it's unreasonable to think that evidence we've found is the first evidence that existed, so we have to assume the real arrival was a bit before that. When we had evidence of humans arriving 17,000 years ago, it was reasonable to assume humans really arrived 21,000 years ago. When we have evidence of people arriving 23,000 years ago, you have to assume people really arrived 25,000 years ago. There may come a point, centuries from now, when our evidence feels comprehensive, at which point the error estimate can shrink. But modern archeology is barely 100 years old and most subject areas are still under-studied, so error estimates need to remain large, for now, especially for the prehistoric era. (Obviously error estimates are much smaller for the historic era, where we have a relative abundance of evidence.)

kwonkicker 5y ago
Technically true but wrong. If your oldest Facebook post is from 2015, how likely is it that you've been using the internet before 2005?! Archeologists are very smart people in their own right, some are much smarter than we are. They do consider everything that we think they haven't. Let's give some benefit of the doubt to our fellow researchers.
- neffy 5y ago
  Some background on this, there is a long standing back to the late 20th century - and to those of us outside the field darkly funny - controversy within this particular scientific community on when the first humans arrived, which can be broadly googled by searches for "Clovis man controversy". Sure archeologists are very smart people, and like all other very smart people, can still be caught on the wrong side of history as new evidence piles up against existing theories.
- User23 5y ago
  > If your oldest Facebook post is from 2015, how likely is it that you've been using the internet before 2005?! Who knows. It could be that person has been using the Internet for a very long time and is thus a late adopter of Facebook due to preferring to do things the old way. It could also be a person who started using the Internet in 2015. GP's point that we really can't conclude anything beyond a lower bound isn't falsified by your example
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  >They do consider everything that we think they haven't. This can be said of almost any observation made about a particular field of research. Outsiders aren't familiar enough with the current state of research and they often assume experts haven't considered some rather obvious things. That's not to say that outsiders shouldn't participate in the discussion, but they should acknowledge that there is a good chance their ideas have already been considered.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- haroldp 5y ago
  I first joined facebook in 2009, but have been on the internet since 1991. You might counter that facebook only started in 2004, and didn't get much traction until 2006. But I was invited before that and simply didn't care to join, preferring to occupy other parts of the `net. Likewise, Clovis artifacts all date from after the peak of the last ice age, when glaciers were melting, land routes were opening, and sea levels were rising to obliterate any coastal artifacts from any previous waves of migration. Clovis-first has been debunked for decades. This is just another - particularly solid - nail in that theory's coffin. It is worth asking why it has persisted so doggedly. I don't think it is because archeologists aren't very smart people.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    you were using what network protocol stack in 1991 ? Banyan "vines" or token-ring ?
    - Kostchei 5y ago
      direct dial to BBS, at least that was the "internet" for me at that stage. The disparate nodes of bulletin boards wasn't what I would call an internet. And it was very cliquish.
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      I was running a full TCP/IP stack (ka9q[0]) across over single-mode fiber via a 10MB/Sec ethernet interface on my IBM PC/XT clone in 1990. I also used some higher-level stuff like telnet, FTP (sites mostly found via anonymous FTP lists), nntp, smtp, gopher, archie and veronica. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA9Q https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA9Q
      - mistrial9 5y ago
        sure, but I was a network engineer at the time and your TCP/IP was very, very niche.. you know very well that there was no "Internet" in 1990
- SECProto 5y ago
  > If your oldest Facebook post is from 2015, how likely is it that you've been using the internet before 2005?! My Facebook account dates back to 2015, but I have been using the internet since the mid 90s. (As far as I'm aware, there's no evidence of the previous account I had from 2006-2010ish) > Let's give some benefit of the doubt to our fellow researchers. Agree here
- njacobs5074 5y ago
  Facebook usage isn’t a good metric. My first post was in 2008 but had been using the internet since the early 1980s. There were these early internet tribes called researchers ;)
AlotOfReading 5y ago
This is actually how archeologists estimate their ranges for human habitation in an area, just with math instead of guesses. This paper isn't about that (try timing papers like [1] instead), it's about the actual radioisotope boundary dates for an actual site. Part of the problem these LGM dates keep running into is that it's not obvious how people got here in the first place. After about 48kya, the ice free corridors close up and the ice sheets encompass most of the coastal islands as well until about 22kya when humans can get to Alaska again and 18kya when humans can easily get down the coastal routes. What would have been possible in the middle is very much still in the ??? grey area. [1] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2491-6 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2491-6
- irrational 5y ago
  I assume they built boats. It isn't exactly surprising after 20k years that we can't find any proof of these boats, but how else would then have come across? Fly?
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    We know that humans had boats by that point due to their presence in Australia and the current dominance of the coastal migration hypothesis. The problem is that our current understanding of the climate is that the coast was too ice-locked by glaciers for coastal foraging. If there's something this old, either they were doing some very impressive and unexpectedly long distance nautical journeys, or there are gaps in the details of our paleoclimate models. It's not that either is impossible or even improbable, it's just that it forces us to revisit everything again to try and work out the routes if these (and other similarly early dates that have been proposed in the last couple years) hold up under review.
    - irrational 5y ago
      Coastal foraging? Why can't they just fish? There are lots of fish in those northern reaches today, I assume there would have been even more back then. And fish doesn't necessarily have to be cooked, so no requirement to stop to make fires.
Stevvo 5y ago
Clovis first persisted for almost the entirety of that 100 years despite large and ever growing amounts evidence to the contrary. There is no need for "error estimates to remain large". The field just needs to acknowledge the actual numbers the evidence gives, instead of ignoring things when the show up because they are older than expected and don't fit with the existing narrative.
lenzm 5y ago
This is similar to the German Tank Problem - given you have found N numbered tanks, how many total tanks are there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
- tpmx 5y ago
  Variation: given you found N numbered C64s, how many were really sold? https://www.pagetable.com/?p=547 https://www.pagetable.com/?p=547

kwonkicker 5y ago

Technically true but wrong. If your oldest Facebook post is from 2015, how likely is it that you've been using the internet before 2005?! Archeologists are very smart people in their own right, some are much smarter than we are. They do consider everything that we think they haven't. Let's give some benefit of the doubt to our fellow researchers.

neffy 5y ago
Some background on this, there is a long standing back to the late 20th century - and to those of us outside the field darkly funny - controversy within this particular scientific community on when the first humans arrived, which can be broadly googled by searches for "Clovis man controversy". Sure archeologists are very smart people, and like all other very smart people, can still be caught on the wrong side of history as new evidence piles up against existing theories.
User23 5y ago
> If your oldest Facebook post is from 2015, how likely is it that you've been using the internet before 2005?! Who knows. It could be that person has been using the Internet for a very long time and is thus a late adopter of Facebook due to preferring to do things the old way. It could also be a person who started using the Internet in 2015. GP's point that we really can't conclude anything beyond a lower bound isn't falsified by your example
SantalBlush 5y ago
>They do consider everything that we think they haven't. This can be said of almost any observation made about a particular field of research. Outsiders aren't familiar enough with the current state of research and they often assume experts haven't considered some rather obvious things. That's not to say that outsiders shouldn't participate in the discussion, but they should acknowledge that there is a good chance their ideas have already been considered.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
haroldp 5y ago
I first joined facebook in 2009, but have been on the internet since 1991. You might counter that facebook only started in 2004, and didn't get much traction until 2006. But I was invited before that and simply didn't care to join, preferring to occupy other parts of the `net. Likewise, Clovis artifacts all date from after the peak of the last ice age, when glaciers were melting, land routes were opening, and sea levels were rising to obliterate any coastal artifacts from any previous waves of migration. Clovis-first has been debunked for decades. This is just another - particularly solid - nail in that theory's coffin. It is worth asking why it has persisted so doggedly. I don't think it is because archeologists aren't very smart people.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  you were using what network protocol stack in 1991 ? Banyan "vines" or token-ring ?
  - Kostchei 5y ago
    direct dial to BBS, at least that was the "internet" for me at that stage. The disparate nodes of bulletin boards wasn't what I would call an internet. And it was very cliquish.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    I was running a full TCP/IP stack (ka9q[0]) across over single-mode fiber via a 10MB/Sec ethernet interface on my IBM PC/XT clone in 1990. I also used some higher-level stuff like telnet, FTP (sites mostly found via anonymous FTP lists), nntp, smtp, gopher, archie and veronica. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA9Q https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA9Q
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      sure, but I was a network engineer at the time and your TCP/IP was very, very niche.. you know very well that there was no "Internet" in 1990
SECProto 5y ago
> If your oldest Facebook post is from 2015, how likely is it that you've been using the internet before 2005?! My Facebook account dates back to 2015, but I have been using the internet since the mid 90s. (As far as I'm aware, there's no evidence of the previous account I had from 2006-2010ish) > Let's give some benefit of the doubt to our fellow researchers. Agree here
njacobs5074 5y ago
Facebook usage isn’t a good metric. My first post was in 2008 but had been using the internet since the early 1980s. There were these early internet tribes called researchers ;)

AlotOfReading 5y ago

This is actually how archeologists estimate their ranges for human habitation in an area, just with math instead of guesses. This paper isn't about that (try timing papers like [1] instead), it's about the actual radioisotope boundary dates for an actual site. Part of the problem these LGM dates keep running into is that it's not obvious how people got here in the first place. After about 48kya, the ice free corridors close up and the ice sheets encompass most of the coastal islands as well until about 22kya when humans can get to Alaska again and 18kya when humans can easily get down the coastal routes. What would have been possible in the middle is very much still in the ??? grey area. [1] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2491-6 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2491-6

irrational 5y ago
I assume they built boats. It isn't exactly surprising after 20k years that we can't find any proof of these boats, but how else would then have come across? Fly?
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  We know that humans had boats by that point due to their presence in Australia and the current dominance of the coastal migration hypothesis. The problem is that our current understanding of the climate is that the coast was too ice-locked by glaciers for coastal foraging. If there's something this old, either they were doing some very impressive and unexpectedly long distance nautical journeys, or there are gaps in the details of our paleoclimate models. It's not that either is impossible or even improbable, it's just that it forces us to revisit everything again to try and work out the routes if these (and other similarly early dates that have been proposed in the last couple years) hold up under review.
  - irrational 5y ago
    Coastal foraging? Why can't they just fish? There are lots of fish in those northern reaches today, I assume there would have been even more back then. And fish doesn't necessarily have to be cooked, so no requirement to stop to make fires.

Stevvo 5y ago

Clovis first persisted for almost the entirety of that 100 years despite large and ever growing amounts evidence to the contrary. There is no need for "error estimates to remain large". The field just needs to acknowledge the actual numbers the evidence gives, instead of ignoring things when the show up because they are older than expected and don't fit with the existing narrative.

lenzm 5y ago

This is similar to the German Tank Problem - given you have found N numbered tanks, how many total tanks are there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

tpmx 5y ago
Variation: given you found N numbered C64s, how many were really sold? https://www.pagetable.com/?p=547 https://www.pagetable.com/?p=547