4 ms·
A few moments reading the article reveals that the chief and only evidence for the headline is the overwhelming evidence that they ate a lot of meat. Too much,
by puffoflogic 4y ago
A few moments reading the article reveals that the chief and only evidence for the headline is the overwhelming evidence that they ate a lot of meat. Too much, you see. So clearly all the evidence for meat-eating is really talking about special occasions. And since this leaves no evidence of meat-eating on other occasions, they must have been mostly vegetarian.
This study is a truly fascinating case of motivated reasoning.
Sure, if one believed that these kings were going around feasting every night of the week, maybe this evidence came as a shock big enough to motivate a sensationalized headline. But no one coming from a more moderate previous position could possibly reach the headline conclusion without motivated reasoning.
- lolinder 4y agoThe article is very poorly written, but the study it's about was a chemical analysis which seemed to contradict the documents that had previously been studied. The reinterpretation of those documents as referencing special occasions was their attempt to bring them into alignment with this new evidence. I'm not saying they came to the right conclusion, but it's far from as bad as you say. From the article: > Cambridge University bioarchaeologist Sam Leggett drew her conclusions after analysing chemical signatures of diets preserved in the bones of 2,023 people buried in England from the 5th to 11th Centuries. > She then cross-referenced these with evidence for social status such as grave goods, body position and grave orientation and found no correlation between social status and high protein diets.