[HN Gopher] Evidence that the evolution of mammals began in the ...
___________________________________________________________________
Evidence that the evolution of mammals began in the Southern
Hemisphere
Author : kalimanzaro
Score : 245 points
Date : 2022-12-19 13:39 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.australiangeographic.com.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.australiangeographic.com.au)
| Konohamaru wrote:
| No wonder mammals are afraid everything's trying to kill them and
| think everything's poisonous.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| Our biggest animal dangers here are humans, horses, and cows.
| In that order.
| nomel wrote:
| There's a theory that snakes pushed the evolution of our visual
| cortex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_detection_theory
| greggsy wrote:
| I have a lot of respect for Professor Tim Flannery - he's a great
| science communicator and hosted a heap of shows in the early
| 2000's.
|
| He fronted a parliamentary hearing on climate change some time
| around 2010, where a heroic Liberal minister stated something
| along the lines of 'you're a palaeontologist, not a climate
| scientist, so you're argument is invalid'. It was pretty sad to
| see.
|
| Even being a climate scientist back then was cause for your
| credentials to be brought into question, let alone one from a
| cognate field.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| > Liberal minister
|
| Not being familiar with Australian politics, is it liberal in
| the US meaning or the european meaning ?
| gloryjulio wrote:
| But even in US meaning, liberals are central right. Dems are
| central right. There is no labor or left party in US. The
| closest u can find is Bernie who is a social dem.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| In the US the democrats are not center-right relative to
| the US population.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| They r central right acedemically even in US. The
| difference is that the public might perceive them as 'the
| US left'. Isn't relative definition more confusing? Isn't
| it easier to put everything on the same scale so that
| there is no confusion? To say US dem party is liberal is
| exactly right. Liberals are central right
| kortilla wrote:
| There is no "scale". What is considers "left" in Europe
| just looks like authoritarian nationalism from citizens
| of countries with a completely different set of
| priorities.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Mixing up Russia style commies and Europe social Dems
| never fails to amuse me. Why would ppl keep doing such
| things?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But even in US meaning, liberals are central right.
|
| In the US, different people use "liberal" to mean:
|
| (1) Everything to the left of center of institutional power
| of the Republican Party, or
|
| (2) Everything to the right of their preferred viewpoint
| (common among the US's small number of actual leftists.)
|
| (3) People who agree with their particular take on pro-
| capitalist econonic policy (often prefixed with
| "classical".)
|
| Among other uses.
| gseggset wrote:
| Why do American users keep repeating this rubbish? Have you
| all read the same book / blockpost making this ridiculous
| claim?
| mindslight wrote:
| First past the post voting has given the two party
| duopoly a death grip on American politics. People
| generally have a latent party, and ascribe anything that
| they disagree with as part of the opposing political
| camp. To answer your question, someone in the blue tribe
| (latent Democrat) will see the big-business-supreme legal
| regime and blame it on overwhelming right-leaning
| politics. Meanwhile someone in the red tribe (latent
| Republican) will look at the same freedom-destroying laws
| and their poor outcomes, but lay the blame at
| overwhelming leftism. In reality, the grassroots of both
| parties want similar things, but are herded into violent
| disagreement by the corporate-sponsored political
| machine.
|
| (This isn't to say the two parties are the same,
| especially post ~2018. Just that the main dynamic is very
| similar)
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I don't understand ur logic. Won't American say Dems are
| left? and non-Americans would say there is no left in
| America acedemically? Isn't that the opposite of what u
| saying?
| kortilla wrote:
| > and non-Americans would say there is no left in America
| acedemically
|
| "left" isn't a thing academically because there isn't
| some line that actually captures the wide variety of
| political positions.
|
| This meme of "there is no left in America" is just a
| childish way of saying, "I don't like the current
| majority opinion of the Democratic Party".
| firsttimebigboy wrote:
| No, it means when compared on the international stage the
| American left is no more like the global center-right.
|
| Also, the majority of American citizens don't like the
| opinions of the democratic party. They works for the
| corps, not the people.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Political science is an actual subject. I would suggest
| everyone to take look just to learn bit. Why do u think I
| don't like Dems? The only thing I said is that they r not
| left. Which is true. I stated it like I say cold or hot.
| Did I ever mention I prefer which?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _"left" isn't a thing academically because there isn't
| some line that actually captures the wide variety of
| political positions._
|
| Well, for Europeans (and I'd guess Canadians, Latin
| Americans, etc.) there is a line, and the Dems never cut
| it. A fuzzy line (a spectrum if you will on the left)
| doesn't mean there isn't one, and one can be of either
| side. Dems are not, and have never been, even close to
| the fuzzy "border" part of that line, always to the right
| of it.
|
| Centrist is the more accurate term for Dems (and even
| that's charitable).
|
| It's basically center-right (Dems), and right-to-far-
| right (GOP).
|
| Sure, for some Americans, Democrats might be called
| "left", but then again other Americans also considered
| Swedish style social democracy as "communism".
|
| > _This meme of "there is no left in America" is just a
| childish way of saying, "I don't like the current
| majority opinion of the Democratic Party"._
|
| No, it's more like saying "America never has had a left
| party, just a party more to the left than the other".
|
| Not in any historical sense of the term as developed and
| still currently used in Europe, at any rate.
| klipt wrote:
| Giving how hard it is to find affordable housing in
| Stockholm, I have to wonder if Swedish style social
| democracy is so great after all, if it can't even solve
| the fundamental human need of housing by building enough
| for everyone.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| That feels to me like a straw man.
|
| Poverty rate in Sweden is, like in most of Western
| Europe, low. [1] whilst the cost of living is lower than
| in the USA as an example. [2] At the same time schools,
| university, healthcare, social services, is accessible to
| everyone. There is a shortage of housing, only 0.8% of
| rental properties are availbe for rent[3] but it isn't
| necessarily only a failure of government as the housing
| market is largely commercial, only 19% of housing is
| owned by the government [4].
|
| [1] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm
|
| [2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/rankings_by_country.js...
|
| [3] https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-
| by-subje...
|
| [4] https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/11...
| klipt wrote:
| No I mention housing supply because it is an issue that
| cuts orthogonally across the popular left-right
| dimension.
|
| Japan is very capitalist but builds lots of housing
| because landowners can build up with little zoning
| restrictions.
|
| The USSR was very communist and they also built a lot of
| housing because the government just went in and did it.
|
| But the USA and Europe seem to easily get stuck in NIMBY
| traps where nothing gets built, and then when prices go
| up due to lack of supply people will reach for solutions
| like rent control, which almost 100% of economists will
| tell you is bad for longterm housing supply because it
| discourages new construction.
|
| I've heard Stockholm's rent control is especially stupid
| because while the landlord is forced to rent to the
| primary tenant at a low, below market rate, that primary
| tenant can turn around and _sublet_ their entire unit at
| a much higher, market rate to a secondary tenant. So the
| primary lease is basically a capital asset with perpetual
| returns. The unit ends up renting for market rate anyway
| to the secondary tenant, while the primary tenant
| collects free money.
| davidgay wrote:
| > Well, for Europeans (and I'd guess Canadians, Latin
| Americans, etc.) there is a line, and the Dems never cut
| it.
|
| This is overly simplistic. For instance, the US (left?)
| has been ahead of Europe on issues like accessibility for
| the disabled or same-sex marriage.
| coldtea wrote:
| Those are plain old shared with bourgeois / social
| democracy concerns, not specifically left concerns (left
| is about class issues, and focuses on the economic
| substrate and equality, which is sees as more fundamental
| and where all others are mere derivatory or pale in
| importnace. Marx even considered these kind of things
| "bourgeois rights" and somewhat dismissed them.
|
| In any case, it's not like the right is against
| "accessibility for the disabled".
|
| Similarly, same-sex marriage is not about left vs right
| but about progressive/liberal (in the in favor of
| invididual rights sense) vs concervative.
|
| An anarcho-capitalist can be all about same-sex marriage
| without being left (the opposite), where even communists
| were known to be socially conservative in several cases,
| or pioneering such rights in others.
| arethuza wrote:
| _" There is only one party in the United States, the
| Property Party ... and it has two right wings: Republican
| and Democrat."_
|
| Gore Vidal
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| In any other western country and most of Europe, American
| Democrats would be considered insane right wing
| extremists. They don't even support having a healthcare
| system or banning guns.
| klipt wrote:
| In America, the anti-Romani and anti-immigration stances
| of many "left" European parties would be considered right
| wing.
|
| It's almost like not all issues fit neatly on a single
| left/right dimension.
|
| Also the Democrats created Obamacare which is similar to
| the Swiss system of mandated insurance, so they obviously
| do care about healthcare.
|
| And in many states, Democrats _have_ passed gun control
| at the state level.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > They don't even support having a healthcare system
|
| That doesn't sound right.
|
| > or banning guns.
|
| In which other western country or part of Europe are guns
| banned?
| adamc wrote:
| It isn't right, but also... in the US, parties are
| institutionally weak. People do not (cannot) vote for
| parties, but for individual representatives. Ergo,
| different Democrats (or Republicans) run on issues
| perceived to have saliency locally. From such a
| collection of elected individuals, it is much more
| difficult to craft a "party" position -- because in some
| districts, supporting healthcare/gun control/whatever is
| not a winner.
|
| Increasing partisanship and gerrymandering are making
| this less true, but it is still a significant force,
| particularly for Senate seats.
|
| Strong parties, that run on a policy platform and where
| they have much more control over their members, just
| isn't a thing in the US, and couldn't be, without a lot
| of constitutional changes.
| Izkata wrote:
| > They don't even support having a healthcare system
|
| Democrats are the ones pushing for universal healthcare:
| https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-
| platform/achievin...
|
| > or banning guns.
|
| Yep, they're the ones pushing for gun control too:
| https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-
| platform/healing-...
| ecshafer wrote:
| I don't see how one could read socialist literature and
| not come to that conclusion. Read Kropotkin, Marx, Mao,
| Engels, Proudhon, and you can not come away thinking that
| both major US parties are to the right. I think one would
| be hard pressed reading just economics and coming away
| with that conclusions. They are pro-capital, pro-
| imperial, pro-free trade parties. That sure sounds like a
| right-wing party.
| xxpor wrote:
| Minor nit: free trade isn't right or left wing in the
| traditional sense, it's isolationist vs globalist. Marx
| was generally in favor of free trade because he thought
| at the time protectionism bred more industrialists:
|
| >The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely
| within the bounds of the present system of capitalist
| production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us
| socialists who want to do away with that system.
|
| >Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must
| desire as the present system of production to develop and
| expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because
| along with it will develop also those economic phenomena
| which are its necessary consequences, and which must
| destroy the whole system: misery of the great mass of the
| people, in consequence of overproduction. This
| overproduction engendering either periodical gluts and
| revulsions, accompanied by panic, or else a chronic
| stagnation of trade; division of society into a small
| class of large capitalist, and a large one of practically
| hereditary wage-slaves, proletarians, who, while their
| numbers increase constantly, are at the same time
| constantly being superseded by new labor-saving
| machinery; in short, society brought to a deadlock, out
| of which there is no escaping but by a complete
| remodeling of the economic structure which forms it
| basis.
|
| From this point of view, 40 years ago Marx pronounced, in
| principle, in favor of Free Trade as the more progressive
| plan, and therefore the plan which would soonest bring
| capitalist society to that deadlock. But if Marx declared
| in favor of Free Trade on that ground, is that not a
| reason for every supporter of the present order of
| society to declare against Free Trade? If Free Trade is
| stated to be revolutionary, must not all good citizens
| vote for Protection as a conservative plan?
|
| >If a country nowadays accepts Free Trade, it will
| certainly not do so to please the socialists. It will do
| so because Free trade has become a necessity for the
| industrial capitalists. But if it should reject Free
| Trade and stick to Protection, in order to cheat the
| socialists out of the expected social catastrophe, that
| will not hurt the prospects of socialism in the least.
| Protection is a plan for artificially manufacturing
| manufacturers, and therefore also a plan for artificially
| manufacturing wage laborers. You cannot breed the one
| without breeding the other.
|
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-
| trade/
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Politicians are subservient to the entities that fund them,
| and in Australia?
|
| > "Coal is mined in every state of Australia. The largest
| black coal resources occur in Queensland and New South Wales.
| About 70% of coal mined in Australia is exported, mostly to
| eastern Asia, and of the balance most is used in electricity
| generation. In 2019-20 Australia exported 390 Mt of coal (177
| Mt metallurgical coal and 213 Mt thermal coal) and was the
| world's largest exporter of metallurgical coal and second
| largest exporter of thermal coal."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Australia
|
| The fact that Australia has been experiencing severe climate-
| change-related whipsaws from extreme flooding to extreme
| drought and fire hasn't changed this dynamic, as the
| Australian government cheerfully reports:
|
| > "Coal export volumes have grown at an average annual rate
| of 2.5 per cent from 285 Mt in 2010-11 to 363 Mt in
| 2020-21... In 2020, Australia held 14 per cent of the world's
| coal reserves (black and brown), ranking third behind the
| United States (23 per cent) and Russia (15 per cent)."
|
| It's the same in the USA, although here we have two fossil-
| fuel-owned parties, Dems and Reps, but the former lie about
| their climate agenda while the latter are honest about it. In
| reality, both are owned by Wall Street interests who invest
| heavily in fossil fuels.
|
| At least they could be honest about the science, instead of
| trying to hide the reality.
| erklik wrote:
| Liberal party in Australia is the centre-right party. I am
| guessing they'd still be left of the US right-wing but that's
| beside the point.
| tw1984 wrote:
| I personally won't label the Liberal party as a centre-
| right party or left of the US right wing when it is
| currently led by Peter Dutton who is a typical far right
| element in modern politics.
|
| I also struggle to categorize its recent former leader Tony
| Abbott and his close mate Joe Hockey who was the Treasurer
| as "centre-right". We are talking about a priest who was
| famously & accurately labelled by the only female
| Australian Prime Minister as a misogyny - that speech was
| voted for the No.1 moment in Australian TV history! These
| two are the people who want everyone to believe that it is
| a life style choice when people don't buy & drive ferrari.
|
| Oh, let's also don't forget what happened to Liberal's
| actual centre-right leader Malcolm Turnbull. He was
| replaced by a bulldozer PM who is responsible for the use
| of automated machines to force the most vulnerable people
| to fork out billions of $ to cover their non-exist debts so
| his federal budget can look better to his supporters. Is
| this centre-right?
| robbiep wrote:
| The Liberal party, for all its recent decade plus of
| derangement, is still clearly a center right party on an
| international scope. It would, for example, be anathema
| to degrade the level of services we experience in this
| country (and the Libs did pump a lot of money into
| services over the last few years, even whilst favouring
| private schools and clawing back robotically cash from
| those unable to fight back)
| [deleted]
| moffkalast wrote:
| That's especially funny since almost all we know about the
| climate's long term behaviour has been dug up from the ground.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| first mistake - you take the words of a politician, at one
| stroke, against a lifetime of disciplined study and speaking.
| permo-w wrote:
| this article takes a spectacularly long time to get to the point
| of what the actual discovery was
| psychphysic wrote:
| legostormtroopr wrote:
| > You like lock them up, sterilise them, use them for
| experiments.
|
| Not withstanding that your commentary has nothing to do with
| the article, as an Australian I am going to request some more
| information on this.
|
| Australia is by no means a perfect country, but your phrasing
| suggests that First Nations people are _currently_ sterilised
| or used for experiments. That may have been the case, but hasn
| 't been for many decades.
|
| Additionally, First Nations people have access to substantial
| government programs, including free higher education, welfare
| and housing programs, and specialised medical support. So
| please, with less inflamatory rhetoric and more fact, how can
| you possibly compare Australia with District9 (which was itself
| more accurately a reflection of apartheid South Africa, not
| Australia)?
| psychphysic wrote:
| I'll abstain from engaging as the original comment was
| flagged.
|
| Guess not a topic for HN.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| "Currently taking it with a massive heap of salt as potential
| biased source"
|
| You probably mean a tiny grain of salt. As in: "There is very
| little meat here, so I'll only need [to take it with] a tiny
| bit (a pinch) of salt."
| delecti wrote:
| My understanding of that idiom (and how I see it most
| commonly used) is that the skepticism is proportional to the
| salt. Slightly suspect things only get a bit of salt and
| skepticism, hugely unproven things get a lot of salt and
| skepticism. Given that, an unproven but large claim would
| need a lot of salt and skepticism
|
| Based on the supposed origin of the idiom, I think salt and
| skepticism being proportional is a bit closer to the original
| meaning, than them being inversely proportional, though
| neither is especially close.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_of_salt
| psychphysic wrote:
| Thanks for the link! Very interesting read I'd assumed the
| salt was to make something more palatable seems vaguely
| right.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| There is strong evidence that a lot of bird evolution occurred in
| Gondwana as well. A good book for that is Tim Low's "Where Song
| Began".
| AlbertCory wrote:
| (Disclosure: been to Oz three times & I love it)
|
| I hate to get all _ad hominem_ here, but the fact that it comes
| from an Australian journal is just a tad bit self-interested. It
| reminds me of the Chinese scientists who keep insisting that
| humans evolved in China, not Africa:
|
| https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/evolution/chinese...
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| I don't know anything about the subject itself, but I don't
| like that the article makes hyperbolic claims like
|
| > Together this weighty band of experts has just published a
| paper in the scientific literature that's likely to be seen as
| landmark in our understanding of life on Earth.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| So I take it you'd be equally suspicious of all the prior work
| from the Northern Hemisphere that claimed mammalian origins to
| be there? I guess that's reasonable. Western Europeans and
| North Americans are the default humans/scientists after all,
| and are completely objective about their central place in
| everything, even pre-human evolution.
| somishere wrote:
| Point taken, but where would you expect Australians to publish
| re a fossil found in southern Australia? In a North American
| Journal?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Are there not international journals? Peer review by non-
| Australians?
| somishere wrote:
| It's peer reviewed by Australians?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I got the same feeling, the critical fossil is a type of tooth
| discovered by the author many years ago.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Aside from the truth or falsity of this theory:
|
| Why is it a matter of regional pride whether mammals (or humans)
| originated in your region?
|
| Usually there was no nation or culture there at the time, and in
| this case, not even any humans.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| I need to know when we start the Mammals vs Birds game in the
| World Cup who to cheer for
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| People are proud of all kinds of things that they have no
| control over/didn't do. Race, nation, sports teams, etc
| aaron695 wrote:
| Map of the Earth - https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#120
| (Display Options -> "equator" for better context)
|
| DOI - https://doi.org/10.1080/03115518.2022.2132288
| justinator wrote:
| Amazing. I wish the dropdown menu was sorted in chronological
| order.
| barbazoo wrote:
| This is fascinating.
| guerrilla wrote:
| So then, all the invasive species are actually indigenous there*
| ;)
|
| * This is a joke; I know how it works.
| personjerry wrote:
| I hate how the article asserts the new theory as fact
| analog31 wrote:
| It also refers to the previous theory as "dogma."
| sesm wrote:
| Kurzgesagt recent video was about quasi-stars, a very exotic
| hypothetical object described in just couple of papers with 0
| proofs of existence. It's so marginal, that even Wikipedia has
| a 'no recent papers on subject' badge on corresponding article.
| Still, an entire video was made, as if they were describing an
| established scientific concept.
| russdill wrote:
| The video made it clear that they are hypothetical, with a
| lot of, "if they exist"
| marmetio wrote:
| From the video about 45 seconds in:
|
| "but if they existed, they would solve one of the largest
| mysteries of cosmology"
|
| Is that not enough?
| xenotize wrote:
| This video might give you some insight on why they use the
| research that they use, or rather, the lack of research they
| use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHMoNGqQTI
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Okay, what billionaires want propaganda about weird star
| objects?
|
| This kind of thing is important with relation to _some_ of
| their video topics, but what 's the connection here?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Unless he said they were real in the video I don't see the
| problem.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Isn't it possible to compare dna between marsupials, mammals and
| monotremes and figure out which is 'earlier'? The paper described
| depends entirely on fossils which is good but not a smoking gun.
| masklinn wrote:
| Sure is, that's the principle of a (time-scaled) phylogenetic
| tree.
|
| But it does not tell you anything about where they came from.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Marsupials and placentals are more closely related than any of
| them is related to monotremes. This is what has been determined
| from the DNA comparison.
|
| Neither marsupials nor placentals are "earlier", they both have
| a common ancestor. This paper is about that common ancestor,
| more precisely about the continent where it lived, which now
| appears to have been Gondwana, in contradiction with earlier
| suppositions.
|
| Gondwana is the former union of Africa, South America,
| Antarctica, Australia, Madagascar and India. The evolution of
| mammals has been influenced much more by the breaking and
| fusion of the continents than the evolution of other animals,
| because for mammals travel across seas was much less likely to
| be successful.
| hinkley wrote:
| I assume you mean compared to birds? Ferns, wasps and slugs
| don't like ocean voyages much, either. Coconuts are adapted
| to them (and yet the Polynesians had to bring them along to
| many places they now exist).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| After hurricanes, frequently giant rafts of detritus can
| travel across the ocean. These sometimes have all sorts of
| life on them. It is conceivable that would include all of
| those creatures?
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| This article talks about something called the "Sherwin-Williams
| Effect", but DuckDuckGo doesn't turn up any relevant results.
| Does anyone know what it is?
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| I think it's just an in joke about the Sherwin Williams paint
| company logo, which shows paint running down the Earth from the
| Northern Hemisphere.
|
| http://penguinology.blogspot.com/2011/01/fossil-hunt-in-anta...
| masklinn wrote:
| Hasn't that been pretty well established for a while?
|
| I thought it well grounded that mammals had evolved on Gondwana
| (the southern part of Pangea) during the process of it splitting
| away from Laurasia, and had settled Laurasia from Gondwana
|
| Gondwana was composed of now South America, Africa, India, and
| Australia.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| National Geographic covered it about a year ago:
|
| https://archive.vn/YHs1H
| WelcomeShorty wrote:
| Fascinating article.
|
| "Many paleontologists angrily reject the DNA findings,
| arguing there must be something wrong with the molecular
| clocks the geneticists use to date their findings. The
| geneticists counter that paleontologists just haven't found
| the right fossils yet."
|
| And that should make clear it is not that clear cut as I
| (with ZERO background knowledge in either area) thought it
| was.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| > Many paleontologists angrily reject
|
| Just this quote immediately put me off the article. Weasel
| word "many" to start with (how many? Four or five? Half of
| them?) and followed up with emotive language (how angry
| were they? Perhaps they were just bored with shoddy
| justifications?)
| brightball wrote:
| I think there are certain things that we're simply never
| going to be able to know with certainty, but it sure it fun
| to talk about.
|
| That Ancient Apocalypse show in Netflix is really
| interesting along those lines.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hm; I thought that Ancient Apocalypse had been debunked
| here, as a collection of old myths that had been
| thoroughly discredited, but now presented as current
| issues. Just an invented-content money grab kind of
| thing?
| CommitSyn wrote:
| Graham Hancock says that it hasn't been truly debunked,
| but that 'establishment archeologists' are programmed to
| dispute it, or something.
|
| 'Establishment archeologists' say it's a bunch of BS.
|
| Mr. Hancock studied sociology for a while before
| switching gears to journalism.
|
| It's fun to think about, but as far as him being the
| modern day Galileo, I'm not personally buying it.
| over_bridge wrote:
| You can always tell a conspiracy theory when it relies on
| some nebulous group of villains to prop it up. "They
| don't want you to know what I'm telling you". Tell me
| clearly who 'they' refers to.
|
| Big archeology? Could we get some names? Maybe an
| interview with some of them? No, just imagine them like
| the illuminati but dirtier and poorer, and extremely
| tribal for some reason.
|
| People just aren't as good at organising as the theories
| demand they are. They would 100% break ranks if there was
| a chance to make a major discovery and be famous for it,
| group loyalty be damned.
| rhodorhoades wrote:
| Well... the whole 'ancient apocalypse theory' might be
| discredited, but the sites they visit date back extremely
| far into our ancient history. It also shows that pockets
| of architectural knowledge rapidly advanced and then
| receded all across the known world. One thing is for
| sure, the human story is far from a ladder, with periods
| of around 1000 years of advancements and then everything
| collapses for a couple generations.
|
| I think it goes back to the OP's original point... there
| are some things we cannot ever know for sure but they are
| fun to learn and talk about.
| ummonk wrote:
| You're making it sound like everything advanced and then
| receded at the same time across the world. This hasn't
| been the case since the end of the last glacial period.
| There have been recedings of local civilizations
| scattered throughout history, as well as some large scale
| regional disruptions (e.g. late bronze age collapse,
| decline of the roman empire), but nothing like periods
| where everything collapses globally.
| nomel wrote:
| With "pockets of", I read this
|
| > It also shows that pockets of architectural knowledge
| rapidly advanced and then receded all across the known
| world.
|
| as "individual pockets, all around the world, advanced
| and receded."
| ummonk wrote:
| Oh, you're right. My objection was based on my own
| misinterpretation of "pockets" as referring to time
| periods and/or specific architectural knowledge rather
| than to particular locations.
| ordu wrote:
| _> Ancient Apocalypse show in Netflix is really
| interesting along those lines._
|
| https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/ancient-apocalypse-
| pseud...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> That Ancient Apocalypse show in Netflix_
|
| I started to watch it, then figured out that I didn't
| really want to.
| mkehrt wrote:
| Uh, that show is horrific pseudoscience nonsense; you
| know that, right?
| ummonk wrote:
| Apparently even on HN some people fall for History
| Channel type nonsense.
| beaned wrote:
| Don't understand why you guys characterize these things
| this way. The person who brought it up would probably
| just say that it stimulates thought and make you think.
| In your response, you assume one who shares the show has
| "fallen for" it - like definitely believes it, without
| doubt.
|
| Never heard this type of pushback about Ancient Aliens,
| which is even more ridiculous. I feel like the replies
| are going to be "but nobody took that seriously anyway."
| Firstly, I dunno about that. Secondly, not sure anyone's
| taking Ancient Apocalypse more seriously.
|
| The show presents a theory, it's not claiming a fact.
| It's so bizarre that out of all the media out there that
| walks the line between history, science, and outlandish
| ideas, this one very specific show, for some reason, gets
| all this hateful focus. Very weird.
| ummonk wrote:
| If someone posted about Ancient Aliens or any other
| pseudoscience show on here and said it's "really
| interesting" in a discussion about history (rather than,
| say, fantasy or entertainment), we'd characterize it the
| same way. I don't know why you think Ancient Apocalypse
| is being singled out when I explicitly said "History
| Channel type nonsense".
| labster wrote:
| Ancient Apocalpse is quite entertaining horrific
| pseudoscience nonsense. You just have to come at it from
| the right perspective.
|
| For me, it's fodder for modern TTRPG campaigns and a
| Sailor Moon prequel fanfic, as well as letting me know of
| the existence of ancient sites I never knew about.
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