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Yeah, the final line seems to be far from any kind of "gotcha": > What Ben-Yosef has produced isn’t an argument for or against the historical accuracy of the B

Yeah, the final line seems to be far from any kind of "gotcha": > What Ben-Yosef has produced isn’t an argument for or against the historical accuracy of the Bible but a critique of his own profession. Archaeology, he argues, has overstated its authority. Entire kingdoms could exist under our noses, and archaeologists would never find a trace. Timna is an anomaly that throws into relief the limits of what we can know. The treasure of the ancient mines, it turns out, is humility.

Spooky23 5y ago
A lot of the status quo understanding of the past is filtered through British Imperial Era historians and archaeologists who in turn interpreted through the eyes of the world order they lived in. Every once in awhile there’s a headline to the effect of “Breaking: Scientists discover that Bronze Age/medieval/not European people were total idiots in <year>“
User23 5y ago
It raises questions that anatomically modern homo sapiens existed for at least 200,000 years, but supposedly only developed civilization in the past five thousand years or so. Perhaps human civilization is considerably older than the mainstream view, but 5,000 years is about how long it takes for all traces to disappear? It does appear the great pyramid will probably be extant for longer than 5,000 years, but such artifacts appear to be rare. My very limited understanding is that traditional Hindu teaching is that human civilization is orders of magnitude older than 5,000 years. If anyone who knows more about that wants to reply I’d be interested.
- UperSpaceGuru 5y ago
  David Graber’s new book leans onto this: the dawn of everything
- int_19h 5y ago
  We do find traces of human habitation from much older, though, including dwellings and cultural artifacts. So traces didn't disappear - they're there, and the picture that they paint is of a very primitive society. It would be very strange indeed if the only things that disappeared were the ones necessarily to demonstrate that society was actually highly developed, no?
  - User23 5y ago
    > It would be very strange indeed if the only things that disappeared were the ones necessarily to demonstrate that society was actually highly developed, no? I’m no expert, but highly developed artifacts strike me as the ones most likely to be fragile to entropy and erosion. In any event I’m only curious. Questioning an absence of evidence implying evidence of absence is just basic reasoning.
- twofornone 5y ago
  I don't think 'anatomically modern' necessarily implies that their brains were evolved to the same level of modern humans; I don't believe there is any hard evidence, genetic or otherwise. But even if so, that 200k years could have been the time it took to develop the software (i.e. knowledge and culture) necessary to fully apply the hardware (brain) toward building more modern civilizations.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Doesn't "anatomically modern" humans include neanderthals, denizovans and so on? Those people don't seem to have left any cities. I keep coming across the claim that humans have been around for 300,000 years. Based on no knowledge or expertise at all, I'm sceptical. It seems fairly clear that there exist remains of cities 12,000 years old (e.g. Troy); the classical Greeks regarded the stories of the Trojan war as something close to mythology, but then Schliemann found the place. But there don't seem to be stories of ancient civilisations that go back much further than that. I find it difficult to believe that people able to build a civilisation would have existed for tens of thousands of years, without actually building one. But evidence for ancient civilisations is hard to find, so perhaps we just haven't found it yet. So I'm open to the view that humans capable of civilisation-building have been around for (say) 50,000 years. But without evidence, I find it hard to credit the claim that humans from 300,000 years ago were at all like us. I'm ignorant about these matters, and my sketchy opinions are based on stuff I read decades ago. Is there something written for the layman that I could read to inform myself?
- tsol 5y ago
  I believe the number to look at would be 10,000 BC. That's around the time humans settled down, and there have been various human settlements and pottery found since then. I believe the number of ~5,000 years ago is just based on the records we have-- that's when the Sumerians come into the archeological record with complex artifacts. And of course that's when we have records of large civilizations like Akkad. But humans were certainly sophisticated long before then, even if they didn't have complex writing and government. One of the strangest pieces of archeology to me is the Löwenmensch figurine or Lion-Man, an ivory figure dating to 40,000 bc. So humans definitely had some complex culture for a long time. One theory I heard about why civilization developed so recently, is that it's in the past 10,000 years that the planet warmed up enough that farming became practical. I don't know enough about geological history to confirm that, but it seems like an appealing theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man
treis 5y ago
I don't see why a mine is an indication of a local kingdom. It seems reasonable that it would be an outpost specific to resource extraction. All of the stuff they found could be the modern equivalent of finding a Rolex at an oil derrick in Oklahoma.
- mcphage 5y ago
  The presence of an oil derrick would imply a certain level of technological sophistication. This mine might also.
  - labster 5y ago
    This structure of steel is a monument to the god Exxon, a chthonic deity whom the ancients believed was responsible for mineral wealth and the underworld. Like similar such monuments, it includes a deep well, whereupon sacrifices could be made to the ancestors or Exxon himself, or his mole men servants. Of course nowadays, we know there is no hidden world underground.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > This structure of steel is a monument to the god Exxon, a chthonic deity whom the ancients believed was responsible for mineral wealth and the underworld. Like similar such monuments, it includes a deep well, whereupon sacrifices could be made to the ancestors or Exxon himself, or his mole men servants. Of course nowadays, we know there is no hidden world underground. What point is that supposed to make? No one's making that error here. They know these ancient mines were mines; they're not going "dunno what this is, must be a temple."
      - number6 5y ago
        So maybe in this case these mines are indeed a temple!
    - mcphage 5y ago
      Did you ever read David Macaulay's "Motel of the Mysteries"?

Spooky23 5y ago

A lot of the status quo understanding of the past is filtered through British Imperial Era historians and archaeologists who in turn interpreted through the eyes of the world order they lived in. Every once in awhile there’s a headline to the effect of “Breaking: Scientists discover that Bronze Age/medieval/not European people were total idiots in <year>“

User23 5y ago

It raises questions that anatomically modern homo sapiens existed for at least 200,000 years, but supposedly only developed civilization in the past five thousand years or so. Perhaps human civilization is considerably older than the mainstream view, but 5,000 years is about how long it takes for all traces to disappear? It does appear the great pyramid will probably be extant for longer than 5,000 years, but such artifacts appear to be rare. My very limited understanding is that traditional Hindu teaching is that human civilization is orders of magnitude older than 5,000 years. If anyone who knows more about that wants to reply I’d be interested.

UperSpaceGuru 5y ago
David Graber’s new book leans onto this: the dawn of everything
int_19h 5y ago
We do find traces of human habitation from much older, though, including dwellings and cultural artifacts. So traces didn't disappear - they're there, and the picture that they paint is of a very primitive society. It would be very strange indeed if the only things that disappeared were the ones necessarily to demonstrate that society was actually highly developed, no?
- User23 5y ago
  > It would be very strange indeed if the only things that disappeared were the ones necessarily to demonstrate that society was actually highly developed, no? I’m no expert, but highly developed artifacts strike me as the ones most likely to be fragile to entropy and erosion. In any event I’m only curious. Questioning an absence of evidence implying evidence of absence is just basic reasoning.
twofornone 5y ago
I don't think 'anatomically modern' necessarily implies that their brains were evolved to the same level of modern humans; I don't believe there is any hard evidence, genetic or otherwise. But even if so, that 200k years could have been the time it took to develop the software (i.e. knowledge and culture) necessary to fully apply the hardware (brain) toward building more modern civilizations.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Doesn't "anatomically modern" humans include neanderthals, denizovans and so on? Those people don't seem to have left any cities. I keep coming across the claim that humans have been around for 300,000 years. Based on no knowledge or expertise at all, I'm sceptical. It seems fairly clear that there exist remains of cities 12,000 years old (e.g. Troy); the classical Greeks regarded the stories of the Trojan war as something close to mythology, but then Schliemann found the place. But there don't seem to be stories of ancient civilisations that go back much further than that. I find it difficult to believe that people able to build a civilisation would have existed for tens of thousands of years, without actually building one. But evidence for ancient civilisations is hard to find, so perhaps we just haven't found it yet. So I'm open to the view that humans capable of civilisation-building have been around for (say) 50,000 years. But without evidence, I find it hard to credit the claim that humans from 300,000 years ago were at all like us. I'm ignorant about these matters, and my sketchy opinions are based on stuff I read decades ago. Is there something written for the layman that I could read to inform myself?
tsol 5y ago
I believe the number to look at would be 10,000 BC. That's around the time humans settled down, and there have been various human settlements and pottery found since then. I believe the number of ~5,000 years ago is just based on the records we have-- that's when the Sumerians come into the archeological record with complex artifacts. And of course that's when we have records of large civilizations like Akkad. But humans were certainly sophisticated long before then, even if they didn't have complex writing and government. One of the strangest pieces of archeology to me is the Löwenmensch figurine or Lion-Man, an ivory figure dating to 40,000 bc. So humans definitely had some complex culture for a long time. One theory I heard about why civilization developed so recently, is that it's in the past 10,000 years that the planet warmed up enough that farming became practical. I don't know enough about geological history to confirm that, but it seems like an appealing theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man

treis 5y ago

I don't see why a mine is an indication of a local kingdom. It seems reasonable that it would be an outpost specific to resource extraction. All of the stuff they found could be the modern equivalent of finding a Rolex at an oil derrick in Oklahoma.

mcphage 5y ago
The presence of an oil derrick would imply a certain level of technological sophistication. This mine might also.
- labster 5y ago
  This structure of steel is a monument to the god Exxon, a chthonic deity whom the ancients believed was responsible for mineral wealth and the underworld. Like similar such monuments, it includes a deep well, whereupon sacrifices could be made to the ancestors or Exxon himself, or his mole men servants. Of course nowadays, we know there is no hidden world underground.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > This structure of steel is a monument to the god Exxon, a chthonic deity whom the ancients believed was responsible for mineral wealth and the underworld. Like similar such monuments, it includes a deep well, whereupon sacrifices could be made to the ancestors or Exxon himself, or his mole men servants. Of course nowadays, we know there is no hidden world underground. What point is that supposed to make? No one's making that error here. They know these ancient mines were mines; they're not going "dunno what this is, must be a temple."
    - number6 5y ago
      So maybe in this case these mines are indeed a temple!
  - mcphage 5y ago
    Did you ever read David Macaulay's "Motel of the Mysteries"?