[HN Gopher] Europe's now-drowned 'lost world' and the 25m-high t...
___________________________________________________________________
Europe's now-drowned 'lost world' and the 25m-high tsunami that
finished it off
Author : bandibus
Score : 187 points
Date : 2022-04-18 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (everythingisamazing.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (everythingisamazing.substack.com)
| rurban wrote:
| Turns out it was about 2.5m. Off by factor 10. And only a wild
| theory for the disappearance of Doggerland.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide
| greatpostman wrote:
| I think it's pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed
| long before recorded history. They may not have had the tools of
| working with metal, but they definitely had sophisticated
| philosophical views and moral frameworks. I would bet this goes
| back even 30-50 thousand years. This idea that humanity sprang up
| out of nothing in Sumerian/Babylon is very contrived. There was
| an ice age ten thousand years ago, the cessation of which caused
| the floods, which destroyed large swaths of human "civilization"
| drewcoo wrote:
| Civilization means people living in cities. To do that,
| agriculture is probably needed. There's also probably some
| level of specialization and accompanying social stratification.
|
| History is written records.
|
| There were many prehistoric societies, but because civilization
| tended to have some form of written records, the prehistoric
| societies are not considered civilizations.
|
| No scholars would clai that humanity sprang out of nothing in
| those places. I mostly hear that from bible literalists. But if
| some of their people weren't in cities, the society was not
| civilized. And if there was nobody to write about them they
| were prehistoric.
| Swizec wrote:
| > if there was nobody to write about them they were
| prehistoric
|
| A comment from a documentary about Rome stuck in my mind, it
| goes something like : _" There is no history of Europe before
| Rome because for most of Europe, history starts with Rome
| conquering that region. They were the first to write anything
| down."_
|
| Similarly, we know how slavic peoples migrated into Europe
| because those regions stopped sending written updates back to
| Rome. Did they then revert back to pre-history? Or does a
| region continue to "have history" even if for a few centuries
| nobody in that area writes anything down?
| sorokod wrote:
| How about ancient Greece? Also Europe as something that has
| a cultural identity is relatively new, difinitley postdates
| Rome.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| or Egypt
| sorokod wrote:
| Yes, except that is not Europe but the distinction is
| anachronistic hence my comment.
| habosa wrote:
| You might be interested to read "The Dawn of Everything"
| which discusses all of this. Cities and agriculture are far
| from requirements to have civilization.
|
| https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314/314162/the-dawn-of-
| every...
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Under these terms, all 400+ tribes north of the deserts of
| North America were prehistoric until the arrival of the
| European and some paper.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Yes. This is absolutely correct. The generally accepted
| view is that prehistory ended and history started on the
| North American continent roughly mid 1490's.
|
| This only sounds prepostrous if you don't understand what
| the terms mean.
|
| This is also roughly the timeframe when the last stone-age
| society near Europe finally got subjugated by Europeans and
| stone age finally ended in the old world, when the Spanish
| crushed the Guanches in the Canaries.
| kibwen wrote:
| There were plenty of urban centers in the Americas prior to
| European arrival, e.g. Cahokia:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
| anonAndOn wrote:
| That addresses civilization but not prehistory as there
| is no known record of written language north of the
| desert barrier.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Genuine question, how much evidence of agriculture would
| survive an ice age, being crushed under the weight of 2 mile
| thick ice sheets and then washed away or engulfed by bodies
| of water once they've melted?
| [deleted]
| MisterTea wrote:
| > There were many prehistoric societies, but because
| civilization tended to have some form of written records, the
| prehistoric societies are not considered civilizations.
|
| What about cave paintings?
| pas wrote:
| That's archeology or something, not real history :)
| jl6 wrote:
| I personally find cave paintings to be compelling evidence
| for a behaviourally modern mind. They demonstrate great
| skill. The artists did not live in cities or have
| agriculture or writing, but I have little doubt that they
| perceived the world as we do, and were capable of
| essentially the same speech and thought patterns as we are.
| It's an awe-inspiring tragedy and mystery that those lives
| were lived in a manner so unknown to us, and yet
| potentially so relatable to us.
|
| They absolutely would have had conversations around
| campfires. Talking about what, I wonder?
| dleslie wrote:
| There are known city sites that predate agriculture in their
| regions.
| pmlnr wrote:
| Example, source, etc?
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| A comprehensive evidence around the world with sites and
| prehistoric periods are well outlined in the last David
| Grabaur's book "The Dawn of Everything".
| jcranmer wrote:
| I assume you're referring to Catalhoyuk
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk)?
| ge96 wrote:
| Interesting the sand bags, I do see a concrete wall
| around the whole thing.
|
| It's great people care enough to set that
| up/preserve/study it.
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| This fits a pattern in science: the further we look, the more
| we find.
|
| First we thought the Earth was the center of the universe. Then
| we thought it was just our solar system. Then we thought the
| Milky Way Galaxy was the whole of the universe. Some
| astronomers persisted in this belief all the way up to the
| 1920s. Now...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field#Hubble...
|
| ... and we've just launched the JWST which will be able to see
| a lot further than Hubble.
|
| Gobekli Tepe pushed the date for civilization back a few
| thousand years:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe
|
| It'll probably get pushed back some more. Also I've always
| thought there are too many flood myths around the world for it
| to be chance. No I don't think there was a true global flood
| since it makes no sense, but the end of the ice age would have
| brought sea level rise and enormous regional floods due to
| things like the bursting of glacial dams. This would have
| occurred over the same period of time across the world, leaving
| behind traces in myth and legend but also physically destroying
| a lot of evidence of civilizations in the path of these
| disasters.
| HuShifang wrote:
| On the flip side, let's also not forget that the earliest
| civilizations (so to speak) were also rather different from
| later ones in some striking ways. Put simply, they were a lot
| more literal-minded, and didn't engage in as much abstraction
| as did their descendents. Ancient fertility statues (even as
| late as classical Greece and Rome) are grotesquely over-
| endowed; ritual sacrifices of food and symbolic objects have in
| many places taken the place of sacrificed slaves or wives.
| Mesopotamian city states would fight wars because, like a frat
| prank, one would steal a statue of a god like Marduk from the
| other's temple -- only, there was no notion that it was a
| statue, rather it _was_ the god. Early Egyptian murals speak to
| the power of kings by showing piles of dicks their soldiers had
| cut off of defeated enemies (unlike Egyptians they were
| uncircumcised). And there 's the whole mummification thing,
| which betrays a certain literal-mindedness about immortality.
| So yeah, it's a spectrum - but both before and after the "rise
| of civilization"
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| This seems like unjustified speculation; people could look at
| e.g. people leaving cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve as
| an example of how modern Americans are poor at abstraction
| and have to give literal offerings to their god Santa Claus.
|
| AFAWK there has been no significant change in the anatomy of
| humans in the past 200k years, and similarly nothing to
| indicate that we've had major changes in things like our
| ability to abstract. The bicameral theory of mind has been
| thoroughly discredited.
| HuShifang wrote:
| You can _always_ find examples of irrational behavior, but
| the difference is scale. Today a major state isn 't
| spending inordinate resources to ensure that the cookies
| left for Santa are prepared using the finest ingredients
| (say, a few million dollars' worth of gold) by the most
| accomplished bakers, and then placed on a dish so large
| that it can be seen from space (and hundreds or thousands
| of people died making it).
|
| If you can show me the tomb of a prominent world leader
| from the last, let's say, 500 years that's decorated with
| images of his/her enemies' severed genitalia, I'll concede
| the point.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I feel that the problem with your claim is that within
| 500 years all humans everywhere have suddenly become
| abstracters extraordinaire, which just seems terribly
| unrealistic.
|
| Generally every theory which talks about these great
| leaps in human cognition, and ties these to human
| "development" while ascribing diminished intellectual
| capabilities to our ancestors, seems to fall apart after
| scrutiny (e.g., Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, bicameral theory
| of mind).
|
| Also, we've seen plenty of "undoing" of abstraction in
| long-continuing cultures. E.g., in Hinduism, idol worship
| wasn't really a thing in Vedic times, and only became
| popular in Puranic times (over a 1000 years later). Many
| Hindus do believe that some idols contain portions of
| gods, especially those idols that reside ones in "big"
| temples. I would not say that these folks have lost their
| ability to abstract. As another example, post-Vedic
| religion underwent a large amount of abstraction in the
| Upanishads, but then reverted to personification of
| deities via the bhakti movement and in Puranic religion.
| Again, I wouldn't say that Hindus lost their ability to
| think abstractly.
| ativzzz wrote:
| > grotesquely over-endowed
|
| Download almost any anime-style game off the Google Play
| store and you'll see the exact same thing
| HuShifang wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I hesitated to include it on the list, but
| I don't think such representations are very common in
| religious contexts today (and these statues do seem to have
| been religiously significant, e.g. all the Venus statues
| from prehistoric Europe and the Middle East)
| thechao wrote:
| I'm not sure I've ever seen "literal mindedness" argued like
| this in recent works? Do you have any papers or books you
| could point to where an archeologist or historian argues
| this?
|
| Most of the recent academic work I'm familiar with tends to
| emphasize the opposite case, tempered by the fact that
| ancient _religion_ and _culture_ tend to be very alien. Take,
| for instance, popular reviews by Irving Finkel in his "Noah"
| book, or Ed Barnhart's work on the Moche, etc.
| HuShifang wrote:
| Well, I _am_ a working professional historian of the
| premodern world, and this is certainly my impression from
| years of reading Chinese-language primary sources about
| China during the Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties. Spend
| some time with the literature, and you 'll read how Mohists
| coupled careful logic and quasi-scientistic reasoning with
| "ghosts who will punish you if you're bad," about how Han
| dynasty tomb exterior-door inscriptions talk extensively
| about how the decedent's family loves them but earnestly
| hopes to never, ever see them again, because if they did it
| would mean the decedent left their tomb to punish them for
| their unfilial conduct. (And you'll read how gingerly the
| subject of human sacrifice in the distant past, or emperors
| indulging itinerant "Daoist" rainmakers, to the
| considerable chagrin of more secular-minded officials, is
| handled.) I can't point to anything synoptic on the Chinese
| case -- early China scholars tend to make a lot (frankly
| _too_ much) out of a little (we don 't have _that_ many
| texts -- but Herbert Fingarette 's "Confucius: The Secular
| as Sacred" was formative for all the early China people I
| studied with on a more intellectual register. One
| controversy that gets lots of play: whether Confucius urged
| performing the rituals "as if" the dead were present, or if
| they _were_ actually present. Linguistically, the phrasing
| is entirely open to the latter, even if people like to make
| the thinking presented in the "Analects" out to be more
| modern-seeming. At the risk of giving too much of a peek
| behind the curtain, so to speak, broadly speaking -- this
| being several decades since Foucault made his mark --
| careers get made by either emphasizing the past's
| surprising lack of alterity or by finding some spectacular,
| flamboyantly surprising new form of alterity. And the
| former is rather easier to pull off than the latter.
|
| But, I read about the piles of genitalia in Toby
| Wilkinson's "The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt" and about
| the god-statues in Trevor Bryce's "Babylonia: A Very Short
| Introduction."
| dgellow wrote:
| > This idea that humanity sprang up out of nothing in
| Sumerian/Babylon is very contrived.
|
| I don't think anyone believe that's the case? It's just what we
| have records for. You need a lot of prior development to arrive
| to the point where you have recorded history.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Eh, maybe no one who's thought critically about it, but past
| the "earth is 6,000 years old" crowd I think you'll find a
| "cilization is 10,000 years old, before which we were hunter
| gatherers" crowd
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| I think most people are just repeating what they learned as
| children and haven't given it much more thought. So the
| answer is usually some combination of religious influences,
| when you were schooled, and what textbook your teacher was
| using.
|
| In 2008, this is what a certain group in Hollywood thought
| 10,000 B.C. was like... anachronisms and all.[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_BC_(film)
| vmception wrote:
| The ice age itself would have had glaciers grinding down all
| evidence to nothing. Even our metal based structures would not
| withstand it very well over a few thousand years.
|
| I agree that it doesn't make sense for there to be a _single_
| 6,000 year time period of human prosperity and collaboration,
| its much more likely that there have been multiple periods over
| a 200,000 time span. Perhaps some traits in humans continually
| set us back to a rudimentary lifestyle with thinned
| populations.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Early civilizations did not appear out of nothing 6000 years
| ago. The earliest evidence of cereal harvesting in the Middle
| East is from 23000 years ago. The transition from hunting and
| gathering to sedentary farming communities took over 10000
| years, and those communities needed thousands of years to
| grow into large sophisticated cities.
|
| It's also good to remember that there has been an ice age for
| the last 2.5 million years. The climate is generally too cold
| and dry for agriculture, except during relatively short
| interglacial periods. Maybe there was an opportunity for a
| civilization to develop in the Eemian period 130k to 115k
| years ago, but that was likely the only window of
| opportunity.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Even our metal based structures would not withstand it
| very well over a few thousand years._
|
| Well, not steel framed buildings or anything like that. But
| our modern civilization has certainly done things that I
| think stand a good chance of lasting hundreds of millions of
| years. Take for instance glass bottles. Those tossed into the
| ocean won't last more than a few decades before they're
| eroded to nothing (see: sea glass), but we've created _so
| many_ glass bottles and distributed them so far and wide, it
| is virtually certain that many of them will survive in the
| soil for a very _very_ long time. There is no doubt that
| glass can last for millions of years under the right
| conditions; there is a lot of volcanic glass around that
| attests to this. There are so many glass bottles in landfills
| or littered around the world, at least some of them are
| certain to be in geologically stable conditions.
|
| Then there are things like mountaintop removal mining. Maybe
| normal quarries get filled in and hidden over time, but
| there's no hiding the top of a mountain being sliced right
| off.
| gibolt wrote:
| Humans were not mass manufacturing things back then, and
| there were orders of magnitude less people.
|
| On top of that, we don't even have exact knowledge of where
| to look. Most places we do discover have plenty of signs
| and evidence, they are just buried under 10ft of dirt and
| thus essentially undiscoverable.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Humans were not mass manufacturing things back then_
|
| Ah, but how do you know that? You weren't there. ;)
|
| Sometimes the absence of evidence _really is_ evidence to
| the contrary, but other times it isn 't. It all depends
| on whether or not it's reasonable to expect evidence to
| be found given the amount of looking we've done and the
| nature of the evidence we're looking for. If we don't
| find a ton of glass coke bottles in the soil around the
| world, after digging around in innumerable construction
| sites on almost every corner of the globe, that's
| _strong_ evidence that nobody was mass manufacturing coke
| bottles 50k years ago.
|
| Contrast that with the lack of evidence for ancient
| wooden sailing vessels. We don't have any evidence of
| wooden ships 50k years ago. But supposing there were a
| shipbuilding culture back then, would we really expect to
| find evidence for it? All those wood artifacts would be
| LONG gone, even the oldest bog wood ever found is less
| than 10k years old. In this case, the absence of evidence
| is weak evidence to the contrary at best.
| rfwhyte wrote:
| Were that the case we'd have evidence of the "Material
| culture" of these cultures, yet we do not. Conversely, we
| have literally TONS of archaeological evidence of Neolithic
| hunter-gatherer people spread across the entire world during
| these so called "Lost ages" so personally I think it's
| preposterous to assume that somehow some advanced
| civilization that left absolutely ZERO trace of it's supposed
| grandeur existed beside a hunter-gatherer civilization for
| which we have plenty of archaeological evidence.
|
| It's a certainly fun through experiment to think of some lost
| ancient civilization with glittering cities and high
| technology that was ground down to dust by the last ice-age,
| but there's literally no factual evidence to support such a
| notion and plenty of factual evidence to disprove it, so it's
| best not to get sucked too far down that particular
| irrational rabbit-hole.
| 7speter wrote:
| A good chance that the glaciers might have also grounded
| whole societies as well
| saalweachter wrote:
| Eh, that doesn't get you much. Glaciers weigh heavy on the
| minds of North Americans and Northern Europeans, but they
| didn't reach much further -- no civilization south of, say,
| 40N would be obliterated by the glaciers themselves such
| that we would expect no trace to remain today.
|
| Sea level change would be a bigger global risk, but aside
| from _sudden_ flooding, you would expect that to just push
| _back_ an established civilization to the uplands of their
| territories rather than wiping them out root and branch.
| vmception wrote:
| Oh yes, any number of things could be less conducive to
| human life or a large population.
|
| I'm just thinking war tactics and war machines keep it in
| check too.
| mc32 wrote:
| We can only go by what we know and what we have evidence for.
| Sure, other small civs likely existed, but we don't have known
| evidence of them and their history, etc. At most we have tombs
| and archeological ruins to go by. So we go with the earliest
| civs for whom we have written evidence as well as lots of
| physical evidence for in addition to present-day influence.
| Otherwise things start to get very speculative.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Yeah we shouldn't say we "know" that advanced civilizations
| existed, but there's nothing wrong with hypothesizing that
| they did. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| But we must also be careful not to get into Russel's teapot
| territory in the course of our hypothesizing.
| newsclues wrote:
| Plato wrote about it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaeus_(dialogue)
|
| "Let me begin by observing, first of all, that nine thousand
| was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which
| was said to have taken place between all those who dwelt
| outside the Pillars of Heracles and those who dwelt within
| them: this war I am now to describe.
|
| Of the combatants on the one side the city of Athens was
| reported to have been the ruler, and to have directed the
| contest; the combatants on the other side were led by the
| kings of the islands of Atlantis,"
| robonerd wrote:
| > _We can only go by what we know and what we have evidence
| for_
|
| There is nuance here, in the degree to which uncertainty due
| to lack of evidence is surfaced in scientific communications
| for the public.
|
| Take for instance, the behavior of dogs. Science cannot [yet]
| objectively answer the question of how much the subjective
| qualia of a dog is comparable to the qualia of humans. What
| then can we say about whether dogs feel 'love'? Some might
| say that science has not yet answered this question; that is
| fine.
|
| But others get overeager and assert that because science
| hasn't demonstrated that dogs feel love, the scientific
| position is to assume all apparent demonstrations of love
| from dogs are little more than elaborate food seeking
| behavior. This goes too far, it assumes a lack of evidence is
| evidence to the contrary, implicitly treating science as
| complete until proven otherwise. I think this overzealous
| sort of 'scientific' thinking reflects a _dog_ matic attitude
| which is actually antithetical to the real scientific method.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a great point.
|
| When you get to the edge of knowledge, ignoring obvious
| things and glossing over tends to rule the day.
|
| Knowing what we know about people, it seems absurd to think
| that people just went poof, "civilization" has arrived!
| There were a lot fewer humans in the past, and hundreds of
| generations are lost to time. But the narrative of the
| pageant of history, often leading to the <insert nation
| here> greatness of today doesn't work with "I don't know"
| mc32 wrote:
| Well, it would seem like the middle way would be to
| postulate things such as these but not assert them as
| 'received knowledge'. And just as we might postulate that
| dogs can experience love, we can also postulate the
| opposite and discuss both without giving one a
| preponderance of support till we can develop such support.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| "qualia" -- what does a $2 word like this say that a $0.25
| word like "qualities" doesn't?
| robonerd wrote:
| I chose to use that word to preempt nitpicky objections
| about measuring oxytocin in dog brains (which doesn't
| actually tell you anything about the subjective
| experience the dog feels.) 'Qualia' refers specifically
| to the subjective conscious experience, which is
| something science is presently ill-equipped to answer
| questions about. The word 'qualities' does not have the
| same rhetorical effect.
|
| As an aside, what's the point of complaining about
| uncommon words? Dictionaries have never been more
| convenient to use. If you didn't know the word before,
| then in about 5 seconds you can learn what it means and
| your personal vocabulary will be enriched.
| vasco wrote:
| > If you didn't know the word before, then in about 5
| seconds you can learn what it means and your personal
| vocabulary will be enriched.
|
| That was me and I was glad to learn it. Thanks for using
| it!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "qualia" are the internal experiences of sensory
| perceptions of the subject, "qualities" are the
| attributes of the subject. They look a bit similar, and
| are etymologically connected, but their denotations are
| about as far apart as is possible for words that are the
| same part of speech.
| Peritract wrote:
| Precise language is useful for discussing complex ideas
| precisely.
|
| If HN is to be a place for gratifying intellectual
| curiousity [1], then dismisisng dismissing accurate
| terminology as pretentious _purely_ because it is
| unfamiliar is counter-productive.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nanidin wrote:
| Qualia is your subjective experience of your senses - how
| can we discuss whether we see the color red the same way,
| or whether we smell a rose the same way? The core concept
| we would discuss is qualia.
|
| Qualia is not plural qualities so I'm afraid I don't see
| the connection, or the downside to using an expanded
| vocabulary for that matter.
| fsloth wrote:
| I warmly recommend to anyone interested in this line of thought
| James Scott's "Against the grain" for oldest evidence of the
| first agrarian states in the middle east.
|
| "Against the grain" points out that it's not obvious as number
| of people increases everyone wants to live in cities ruled over
| and taxed by someone else.
|
| "I think it's pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed
| long before recorded history."
|
| If you mean beyond 12k years or so I would not say it's "pretty
| clear". I would go as far and say it's psychologically and
| biologically feasible, but we have no evidence to back this up.
|
| What archaeological evidence does prove, is that arrival of
| anything resembling civilization was a shambolic affair lasting
| thousands of years, composed of waxing and waning city-sized
| polities that could at maximum control only few tens of square
| kilometers of area.
|
| What we do have are sites like Gobekli Tepe at max 12 000 years
| ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
|
| The arrival of agricultural plants is around the same time
| during Neolithic Revolution
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
|
| I think you would need to expand on the meaning of
| "sophisticated". I don't want to presume your intent with the
| use of this word.
|
| But, a hunter gatherer society looks quite a lot different from
| an agricultural society.
|
| Of course the people living in a hunter gatherer society could
| very well be artistically and philosophically very developed.
| But the likelihood of an "Atlantean supercivilization" would be
| very small.
|
| I think both options are pretty cool. As a species we have a
| history of 200 000 years. Either our past is riddled with
| complex emergent societies that have been ground to dust,
| forgotten, only for the cycle to start again a new over and
| over again over thousands of years. And only on our current
| cycle we've managed to start to reach the full potential of our
| species.
|
| Or, there have not been "civilizational cycles" which would
| make our anthropocene epoch with it's industrialization and
| science something even more mind blowingly astonishing.
|
| Both options are humbling.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Your suppositions are interesting, but there's simply no proof
| of them.
| Naga wrote:
| Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Unfortunately
| most of the (probable) evidence is under meters of water and
| mud.
| judahmeek wrote:
| Is there such a thing as "evidence of absence"?
| earleybird wrote:
| I'm thinking that would be demonstrating that there
| cannot be evidence.
| LeanderK wrote:
| But also untouched. Maybe we'll find a way to dig up
| evidence in the future...
| [deleted]
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| As long as it has been investigated scientifically, then
| "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is
| actually not correct. To my understanding that is exactly
| how particle physics research is conducted.
|
| My understanding is that there is no evidence for pre-
| historic human societies that had advanced technologies. We
| have hard data in our genetics for the timeframes of human
| existence (statistical rate of random genetic drift vs
| nearest ancestors) in addition to the fossil record, we
| have good information from ice cores about when/what of
| particulates were in the atmosphere, we know general rates
| of tectonic movements , and it's easy to observe what's
| under kilometers of strata with drilling cores if anyone
| has a good hypothesis as to where to drill.
| greatpostman wrote:
| Actually I think platos account of Atlantis and how it
| coincides with the dates of the flood is evidence. How could
| he have known the exact years back of the flood? Sure it's
| shaky, but the geology checks out.
| TSiege wrote:
| Why is the default assumption that since we can't prove
| humans had sophisticated and complex lives comparable to our
| own, that we must assume they are simpletons. Their minds
| were no less capable of our own, why shouldn't we assume they
| had complex morals and social structures?
| jpollock wrote:
| Because that's how we differentiate science from theology.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Hard disagree here. There's a lot of differences between
| science and theology. There is nothing divine or holy
| about potential past civilizations.
| jpollock wrote:
| Divine/Holy are how powerful people prevent others from
| questioning things. I didn't mention Divine or Holy, just
| theology.
|
| The core difference between Science and Theology is how
| they deal with statements of "truth" without evidence.
|
| Theology starts with "it's true because I said so"
|
| Science starts with "it's true because I can demonstrate
| it"
|
| That humans were complex in the past is a good
| hypothesis. It needs evidence before it can be accepted
| as fact, or even necessarily expect respect from others.
| The lack of recent skull changes would seem to be a good
| start.
|
| If someone believes the hypothesis to be true, they will
| go explore and find evidence to back their claims. If
| there was a complex society in the English Channel, it's
| likely well preserved, just waiting to be found!
| tbihl wrote:
| >Theology starts with "it's true because I said so"
|
| To believe this is to cut yourself off from an
| unfathomably rich collection of human knowledge, and it
| is sad to see someone committed to it.
| jpollock wrote:
| Except, that's what it literally is.
|
| God speaks to someone. That someone says "It's true
| because God told me so."
|
| I have read religious works, I'm not cut off from them.
| It's impossible to be cut off from theology in the USA.
| However, they all start with "it is true because I (the
| author) say so".
| [deleted]
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Because complex social structures tend to be innovations
| and inventions similar to those in the physical realm. It
| thus stands to reason that a 'social evolution' has taken
| place over the millennia, and there's ample evidence of
| that progress in the world around you. No one says
| prehistoric humans were individually simpletons, just that
| societally they were far simpler (as in strictly less
| advanced).
| medstrom wrote:
| Please specify, what do you mean by "less advanced"? I
| doubt a randomly picked person has a more complex net of
| social interactions today than 50,000 years ago -
| probably the personal level is a lot simpler today, since
| we can outsource many needs to corporate and national
| structures, with whom you also have pretty
| straightforward relations.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| And in the absence of proof, the simplest assumption would be
| that humans then were just as human, and so had sophisticated
| societies etc.
| chucksmash wrote:
| A simpler alternative assumption could be this:
|
| 1. sophistication is driven by specialization
|
| 2. the ability to specialize is driven by access to surplus
| energy
|
| 3. before the advent of agriculture bands of humans simply
| did not have the excess calories available to them to
| support a priesthood and philosophers and bureaucrats, etc.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > sophistication is driven by specialization
|
| Sophisticated technology is driven that way for sure,
| Sophisticated culture, I would argue, does not have those
| preconditions.
| Peritract wrote:
| That is definitively not a simpler assumption. Each of
| those bullet points is itself a new assumption.
| christkv wrote:
| Reminds me about the theory about how the Persian Gulf was the
| origin of the first civilisations and the origin of the myth of
| paradise. As the water rose people was displaced and eventually
| ended up forming ur.
| dgellow wrote:
| In case people aren't familiar with Ur (I wasn't):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur
|
| > Ur was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient
| Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern "Tell el-Muqayyar"
| in south Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate. Although Ur was once a
| coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian
| Gulf, the coastline has shifted and the city is now well
| inland, on the south bank of the Euphrates, 16 kilometres from
| Nasiriyah in modern-day Iraq. The city dates from the Ubaid
| period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in written history as a
| city-state from the 26th century BC, its first recorded king
| being Mesannepada.
|
| The pictures of the Ziggurat are really impressive.
| HappyDreamer wrote:
| I also wasn't. Quite depressing laws they had, I think:
| 6. If a man violates the right of another and deflowers the
| virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male.
| 7. If the wife of a man followed after another man and he
| slept with her, they shall slay that woman, but that male
| shall be set free. ... and slaves of course ...
|
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-
| Nammu#Surviving_law... )
|
| Has it been like that for 4000+ years (at some places) :-(
|
| > pictures of the Ziggurat are really impressive
|
| Yes :-)
| christkv wrote:
| You might enjoy this podcast about the rise and fall of the
| Sumerians https://youtu.be/d2lJUOv0hLA
| anm89 wrote:
| It's pretty fascinating to comprehend how different Europe's land
| mass is from a couple thousand years ago. Imagining the current
| world with shore lines as different as that is pretty hard to
| Fathom.
|
| It puts the climate change narrative in perspective a bit. In
| someways, the change we are experiencing isn't as unprecedented
| as some people perceive. In other ways, if we are going to be on
| a highly accelerated version of something like the event in the
| story than we are going to be in for a hell of a ride.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| This xkcd shows how highly accelerated it is:
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| del_operator wrote:
| Didn't Time Team cover these topics and more?
| ugl wrote:
| Yep. Twice. Posted a link upstream.
| gorm wrote:
| The BBC program "In our time" did an episode on Doggerland some
| years back https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006707
| pferde wrote:
| There is an interesting Youtube video by AlternateHistoryHub on
| exactly this topic ("What if Britain Wasn't An Island?"), so if
| you're interested in a bit of theorizing about what could've been
| or might've been, I recommend it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssoKkvDbJpE
| bandibus wrote:
| This is sort of a sequel to a piece about the ancient
| Mediterranean megaflood that did really well on here last month -
| so, with my fingers crossed it's not too obnoxiously self-
| promotional of me to do it, I thought I'd give this one a punt as
| well.
|
| Also, thank you to those who left comments saying you didn't like
| that former piece's introduction. I agree with you! It was
| rambling and a bit self-indulgent and I should have just got on
| with the story. This one does that (I think). Cheers.
| argomo wrote:
| No offense, but I couldn't get into this piece due to the
| upfront clutter. Some readers may find it charming, but the
| privilege comment, the chart tweet, the subscribe button, the
| references to various novels... I just wasn't finding a good
| starting point to latch onto the content promised by the
| (excellent) headline. It felt like I had jumped into the middle
| of a podcast where the hosts are bantering and not making much
| progress on the discussion.
| bandibus wrote:
| That's a fair comment, thank you. I originally wrote it that
| way because it was for longterm readers, with a bunch of
| callbacks to previous stuff, as you mention there. But for
| first-time visitors, it could be seen as clutter. I've cut
| some of that out, and I think you're right. Cheers!
| imilk wrote:
| Just scroll past the 2nd picture and start reading.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just... do that thing that nobody does on a normal basis,
| nor should they be expected to. Just. Has to be one of my
| favorite words.
| munk-a wrote:
| Whether you think wearing my mouse wheel down to actually
| get to the directions for any recipe posted on a blog is
| good or not - it certainly is normal... and ditto for
| websites having a lot of above the fold advertisements.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| It's great to see the follow up piece! I enjoyed the read, and
| I think many others will too.
| bandibus wrote:
| Thank you! :)
| klyrs wrote:
| Thanks, I think this is great! I've often wondered if the
| "great flood" myths and the legend of Atlantis have any factual
| basis carried on in oral history. The Zanclean flood stretches
| credulity beyond reason (as fun as it is to think about a story
| passed down from the first Hominins), but this event happened
| recently enough to ponder links to mythology...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessair
| neaden wrote:
| Great flood maybe, but we don't have any actual proof that
| Atlantis was some ancient legend vs something Plato just made
| up and said he heard from someone else since there are no
| previous accounts of it before him.
| munk-a wrote:
| Also, please bear in mind that there's a good reason to
| suspect that Plato bent a lot of things to suit his goal of
| trying to explain philosophical concepts. Socrates is often
| hailed as one of the greatest western philosophers but we
| have almost no record of his character outside the
| dramatizations written by Plato. We're almost certain he
| was a real person but if Plato is to be trusted he was
| extremely against any preservation of his discourses -
| almost everything we've got on him comes from Plato
| describing his mentor.
|
| So Atlantis might be much the same - the story of a city
| lost to flooding (maybe even the same root story as the
| biblical one) repurposed and embellished to express a
| philosophical point.
| akomtu wrote:
| There should be some traces of it still. Per the legend,
| the last day of Atlantis was the day Sahara became a
| desert, so inspecting it should reveal something. Also,
| "Atlantis" is a made up term (by Plato?). Again, per the
| legend, that nation called themselves "lanka" and I wonder
| if Sri Lanka ("Holy Lanka ") was named this way for a
| reason.
| greatpostman wrote:
| Platos account of Atlantis which was destroyed ten thousand
| years prior matches geological artifacts of huge climate
| changes/end of the ice age. I'd say the evidence point to his
| stories legitimatacy
| joshuaissac wrote:
| The Gunditjmara Australian story "Dreamtime" recounts the
| eruption of the now-dormant volcano Budj Bim about 37,000
| years ago.[1][2] So it is possible for accounts of historical
| events to be transmitted orally over a very long period of
| time.
|
| 1. https://www.awe.gov.au/parks-
| heritage/heritage/places/nation...
|
| 2. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-26/study-dates-
| victorian...
| EGreg wrote:
| Megaflood? I thought the Biblical flood had no evidence for it
| robscallsign wrote:
| I'm curious if anyone has a similar image of the shoreline of the
| west coast of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington state, etc.
| ugl wrote:
| Time Team did an episode/dig about this, and another sbout
| doggerland in general.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTvOcm5dgDI
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