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Ah yes, gatekeeping and name calling. The cornerstone of "established" science everywhere. There is no need to denigrate Graham Hancock's hypothesis as "crack
by tastyfreeze 4y ago
Ah yes, gatekeeping and name calling. The cornerstone of "established" science everywhere. There is no need to denigrate Graham Hancock's hypothesis as "crackpot" and it certainly isn't a proper theory. Science welcomes all ideas only to discard them with proof to the contrary. Unfortunately, much of archeology is inference not proven fact. The farther back we go the more inference and less fact we have. There is certainly a possibility that an advanced Pleistocene civilization existed and was destroyed by a cosmic impact. To dismiss these ideas as "crackpot" is one of the most unscientific claims I regularly encounter.
We know there are human built megalithic structures that are dated at the end of the Pleistocene. We know that the Pleistocene ended abruptly with all North American megafauna perishing and immense amounts of meltwater entering the oceans. We don't know if there were a bunch of distributed civilizations with similar technology levels or if there was a global civilization that shared knowledge before or after cataclysm. We also don't know what caused the end of the Pleistocene. This is the realm of hypothesis on all sides.
- browserman 4y agoThere’s certainly no harm in indulging in wild, unfounded recreational speculation, as long as one is clear that’s what’s happening. Usually that’s not what going on with people who allude darkly to “[unspecified] political motivations for controlling the narrative around evolution and the birth of civilization”
- Tor3 4y agoThere is a very recent analysis of Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series. Well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 by Stefan Milo. Case in point: Hancock presents _zero_ evidence.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoIt's worth noting that falsificationism really only applies to experimental sciences like physics and chemistry. The "historical sciences" like geology, paleontology, and archaeology don't work that way because of the arrow of time. I'd recommend Cleland's original [1] or most recent paper [2] on this topic. The upside is that we can differentiate between the quality of various competing hypotheses in a reasoned way. That's how we can say that the traditional academic narratives are epistemologically better than e.g. Tolkien's Silmarillion. [1] https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>2.0.CO;2 https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>2.0.C... [2] https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axq024 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axq024
- twobitshifter 4y agoYour second link is bad
- AlotOfReading 4y agoCorrected.
- moloch-hai 4y agoFalsification has happened plenty of times in historical and archaeological research. You could posit that Mohenjo Daro and Ur had no contact right up until trade goods showed up. In recent memory just about everyone was dead certain that monumental architecture happened only where there was agriculture. And, that once a people took up agriculture, they kept at it. And, that humans got to the Americas no more than 15,000 years ago.
- kevinpet 4y agoThat is not in fact how science works. Science only welcomes new ideas when they offer a possible solution to a problem with the existing paradigms. For this type of theory, if you had data showing the earliest known societies were unusually advanced, or if you had artifacts that suggest more wide spread early societies, these would be facts wanting an explanation. You can't just say something like "maybe all language was singing until 20,000 years ago" and claim it's scientific until proven false.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoYou cant say the contrary either. Theres not enough evidence either way due to the sands of time.
- zozbot234 4y agoOccam's razor is also a thing. If you can explain the exact same facts with a theory that involves fewer or more general assumptions, that also counts.