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I would think that everything old is older than we think. Because we're almost certainly not correct about how old anything is - and it certainly can't be any y
by plasticeagle 2y ago
I would think that everything old is older than we think. Because we're almost certainly not correct about how old anything is - and it certainly can't be any younger.
So headlines like this always make me smile a bit.
But still, new evidence is always super interesting.
- bazoom42 2y agoWhy can’t something be younger than we think?
- buovjaga 2y agoIndeed, as the authors of the article write: > While Grimm believed that many folktales were likely to be thousands of years old, only a tiny minority can be traced back to before the emergence of the literary fairy tale in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The "reconstructions" of the authors are based on fantasy. They try to sidestep the massive problem of possible literary origins by manufacturing data with their magical phylogenetic device. It's garbage in, garbage out.
- fsckboy 2y agohe meant that any evidence we have puts a ... "floor" on how old something is, but it doesn't rule out it being even older. He wasn't using "we think" to mean "we imagine", he was using it to mean "we believe from evidence"