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> People might have tripped over thousands of them Obviously not, because when these guys tripped over them, they were struck enough to then spend years lookin
by gwern 2y ago
> People might have tripped over thousands of them
Obviously not, because when these guys tripped over them, they were struck enough to then spend years looking for explanations.
> unlike the unknown but huge number that were not.
The more that are not documented, the more plausible it becomes that vaguely similar rituals which yield the same residue may exist in many times and places, and enter into the sum total of rituals available for birthday-paradox collision. Arguing that it must be the same with zero intervening evidence is like arguing that that because an Aboriginal word for dog is 'dog' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbabaram_language#Word_for_%22dog%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbabaram_language#Word_for_%22...) both Mbararam and English must be descended from the same language which existed hundreds of thousands of years ago and have remarkably preserved one word for all that time. What are the odds?!
- stubish 2y agoIts a stick they found in an area being actively examined, next to megafauna bones giving the age, that on inspection would have shown burn marks and probably not the megafauna lunch they thought it might be. Birthday paradox? I guess it might originate from a similar but now extinct ritual, rather than the modern documented one. But given the near infinite number of potential rituals, it seems reasonable to suggest that because of the similarities it has been passed down over the 12,000 years. Even if the original ritual would be completely unrecognizable apart from the remaining similarities and performed by a different tribal group. Or maybe that is like claiming modern druidic rituals have been passed down for thousands of years.