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I believe the techniques being referred to generally fall under the "ancient DNA" camp, and from what I believe they haven't "shaken" up the field. Don't get me
by Ar-Curunir 4y ago
I believe the techniques being referred to generally fall under the "ancient DNA" camp, and from what I believe they haven't "shaken" up the field. Don't get me wrong, the results have been absolutely amazing, providing concrete genetic evidence for conjectures stemming from linguistic, anthropological, and archaeological evidence, but haven't, to my knowledge, changed our broad-strokes understanding of (pre-)history
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThere's a reason it's called the aDNA revolution. Archaeogenetics has transformed our understanding of the past on every level and opened up entirely new types of research. The kinds of stuff Hancock advocates like globespanning ancient civilizations obviously don't show up in the genetic record, but some ideas that used to be pretty far out like "widespread admixture between AMH and neanderthals" are widely accepted today on the strength of the genetic evidence and other research that was done to back them up.
- moloch-hai 4y agoHancock does not posit globespanning civilizations, but rather far-flung refugees. Any actual globe-spanning civilization would have left plentiful traces where they could still be seen, so that seems ruled out. Washing up in Iraq, India, Mexico, and Peru would be more consistent with a single origin in southeast Asia than in the Atlantic, but a global cataclysm ought to produce refugees from multiple places. Any genetic signal of scattered refugees would be faint.