4 ms·

Damn some of the comments here are really depressing. I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wr

Damn some of the comments here are really depressing. I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Way too much regurgitation of long-since debunked pseudo-scientific nonsense. Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron. If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing ~11KYA we'd have found at least one single piece of their material culture by now, but we haven't. We have however found innumerable pieces of archaeological evidence of contemporary hunter-gatherer neolithic societies in and around all of the places Atlantis was supposed to have "Conquered" and yet not once have we found a single Atlantean trade good, pot sherd, metal working, etc. Atlantis supposedly had a bronze-age or greater level of technology and a globe-spanning empire, and we literally haven't found a single shred of physical evidence to support its existence, despite having literal mountains of physical evidence for pretty much every other major empire that's existed throughout history. Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory. Real empires have people and crops that move around within the empire and leave genetic evidence of the mixing of populations and breeding of crops, yet we find nothing, not even the faintest echo of Atlantis. Again, we have mountains of hard physical evidence that shows how empires like the Summerians in the fertile crescent or the Norte Chico in meso-america spread through genetic evidence in current local populations and crops, yet we find absolutely no genetic evidence to support the existence of Atlantis. Let alone the fact the bloody story of Atlantis references how the Atlanteans went to war with Athens some 9000 years before the Athenian city-state was even founded. Just utter, complete brain-dead nonsense. Honestly, belief in Atlantis has become something a litmus-test for critical thinking and research ability these days, as anyone that believes in Atlantis despite the overwhelming volume of evidence that firmly proves it never existed is basically saying "I'm too lazy to do my own research (Based on peer-reviewed primary sources) and / or too stupid to understand actual science." Also f*ck Graham Hancock (And Joe Rogan via extension). MFer is the worst kind of charlatan and is broadly responsible for how many Americans believe in Atlantis.

krapp 1y ago
>I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Stay away from any thread about physics, astronomy or anywhere vaccines are mentioned if you value your mental health.
FloorEgg 1y ago
"If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing ~11KYA we'd have found at least one single piece of their material culture by now, but we haven't." What about Gobekli Tepe? "Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory." Wouldn't Europe have been mostly tundra/ice that long ago? Also, what about this article (not Europe, but other global implications), do you dispute it specifically? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9629774/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9629774/ You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet. There is a very wide gap between believing a theory is true or being certain its not true, and that gap is the humility to accept we aren't sure yet and there is room to be surprised. Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth? Is this really about scientific rigor, or do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
- jcranmer 1y ago
  > What about Gobekli Tepe? What about it? It's one of the oldest Neolithic settlements we've identified, but otherwise, it's not particularly unusual within our understanding of Neolithic Mesopotamia. When GP is talking about "material culture", they're (probably) referring to the archaeological definition of culture, which means you need to give an explanation as to what makes an artifact indicative of belonging to a culture. The shape of an arrowhead perhaps, or maybe the kind of style used in painting pottery. Something that lets an archaeologist dig something up and go "aha, this is culture X!" Age isn't one of those characteristics. But of course the province of pseudoarchaeology is to come up with a theory and work everything into evidence for that theory. Atlantis is old, Göbleki Tepe is old, therefore Göbleki Tepe is Atlantean! > Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Most of the people that tend to propose these theories aren't interested in searching for evidence. See for example, Graham Hancock, who has been peddling the same theory for 30 years and has done nothing to actually produce better evidence for it except to whine that mainstream archaeologists don't want to listen to him because they're stuck in their own stupid ways. (Of course, in that same time, mainstream archaeology has thoroughly demolished the Clovis-First hypothesis which was previously disfavored, precisely because the pre-Clovis adherents actually did the legwork to produce better evidence to make it more accepted!) You can also see this with archaeoastronomy, which is borderline fringe--its better practitioners have made some success by listening to the criticisms and persevering in efforts to get better, stronger evidence to buttress their claims. As a basic rule of thumb, if someone's response to criticism is to chide scientists for being rigid in their thinking rather than going out to try to get better evidence, then that's a strong sign they're engaged in pseudoscience and not science. As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization."

krapp 1y ago

>I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Stay away from any thread about physics, astronomy or anywhere vaccines are mentioned if you value your mental health.

FloorEgg 1y ago

"If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing ~11KYA we'd have found at least one single piece of their material culture by now, but we haven't." What about Gobekli Tepe? "Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory." Wouldn't Europe have been mostly tundra/ice that long ago? Also, what about this article (not Europe, but other global implications), do you dispute it specifically? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9629774/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9629774/ You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet. There is a very wide gap between believing a theory is true or being certain its not true, and that gap is the humility to accept we aren't sure yet and there is room to be surprised. Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth? Is this really about scientific rigor, or do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?

jcranmer 1y ago
> What about Gobekli Tepe? What about it? It's one of the oldest Neolithic settlements we've identified, but otherwise, it's not particularly unusual within our understanding of Neolithic Mesopotamia. When GP is talking about "material culture", they're (probably) referring to the archaeological definition of culture, which means you need to give an explanation as to what makes an artifact indicative of belonging to a culture. The shape of an arrowhead perhaps, or maybe the kind of style used in painting pottery. Something that lets an archaeologist dig something up and go "aha, this is culture X!" Age isn't one of those characteristics. But of course the province of pseudoarchaeology is to come up with a theory and work everything into evidence for that theory. Atlantis is old, Göbleki Tepe is old, therefore Göbleki Tepe is Atlantean! > Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Most of the people that tend to propose these theories aren't interested in searching for evidence. See for example, Graham Hancock, who has been peddling the same theory for 30 years and has done nothing to actually produce better evidence for it except to whine that mainstream archaeologists don't want to listen to him because they're stuck in their own stupid ways. (Of course, in that same time, mainstream archaeology has thoroughly demolished the Clovis-First hypothesis which was previously disfavored, precisely because the pre-Clovis adherents actually did the legwork to produce better evidence to make it more accepted!) You can also see this with archaeoastronomy, which is borderline fringe--its better practitioners have made some success by listening to the criticisms and persevering in efforts to get better, stronger evidence to buttress their claims. As a basic rule of thumb, if someone's response to criticism is to chide scientists for being rigid in their thinking rather than going out to try to get better evidence, then that's a strong sign they're engaged in pseudoscience and not science. As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization."