[HN Gopher] Ancient calendar, recently discovered, may document ...
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Ancient calendar, recently discovered, may document a long-ago
disaster
Author : diodorus
Score : 71 points
Date : 2024-08-12 17:24 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/wlrau
| torlok wrote:
| Can't wait to hear what archaeologists have to day about this
| interpretation. This is a fun topic to speculate about.
|
| Meanwhile, in case anybody's interested, the Younger Dryas
| hypothesis is controversial, not widely accepted by the experts,
| and dr Sweatman appears to be a Chemical Engineer, not an
| Archeologist. Not that it discredits his findings, of course.
| debacle wrote:
| I haven't researched, but I watch the guys on Rogan who talk
| about Younger Dryas. What are the arguments for/against?
| taejavu wrote:
| Sounds like you might benefit from doing some research
| mhuffman wrote:
| What better places do you recommend for research links? HN
| is known for being full of experts that might give high
| quality pointers to pro/con arguments.
| kragen wrote:
| to disambiguate, it is not at all controversial that the
| younger dryas was a thousand-year-long ice age in the northern
| hemisphere at the relevant time; that is universally accepted
| by the experts. what is 'controversial and not widely accepted
| by relevant experts' is the comet impact hypothesis which the
| nyt presents as an accepted fact:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi...
| neilv wrote:
| > _Although Dr. Sweatman has long researched the symbols at the
| ancient site in Turkey, this recent breakthrough came in the form
| of a tip when someone emailed him that the V-shaped symbols on
| the pillar could be interpreted as markings of the lunar cycle._
|
| They didn't want to be coauthor?
| burkaman wrote:
| I guess not, but they are mentioned in the acknowledgements and
| references of the paper.
|
| > In Section 8.2, text written in italic font expresses ideas
| originally communicated by Dr John Gordon (Gordon 2021).
|
| Also on the author's blog:
| https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2024/06/lunisolar-calend...
|
| Not sure who John Gordon is, and that's got to be an incredibly
| common name even among doctors.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| TLDR YDIH, if you watched Ancient Apocalypse this is what Gobekli
| Tepe episode was about. I thought it's debunked.
| torlok wrote:
| It's a widely criticised hypothesis, because it doesn't fit the
| geological record. It's mostly propped up by interpretations
| like these.
| findthewords wrote:
| Data is incomplete. It is difficult to definitively "debunk" or
| "prove" as long as crucial information is missing. Humans use
| imagination to fill in the gaps, which is wonderful.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Humans use imagination to fill in the gaps, which is
| wonderful.
|
| And _scientists_ (humans) "use imagination to fill in the
| gaps" _in ways that can be put to the test_ , "which is
| wonderful".
| cryptonector wrote:
| The evidence for the YDIH is quite strong. But as usual science
| only makes progress one obituary at a time.
|
| Science is not an exercise in accepting a scientist's say-so,
| dammit. It's an exercise in producing and testing hypothesis.
| For sciences that study the past it's harder to test because
| you can't build a test, but you can still check that a
| hypothesis is consistent with all the data available so far
| _and_ any future new finds about the past.
|
| In particular I find very compelling the theory that the YDIH
| hit the laurentide ice sheet over Michigan, sending huge ice
| boulders out that created the Carolina bays and essentially did
| great damage, but with water ice, thus leaving very little
| direct physical evidence -- no craters (apart from the Carolina
| bays), no rocks out of place, no layer of material from the
| impactor (because it was a comet rather than an asteroid).
|
| Before sonar evidence showed that the continents must move,
| geologists would say that the tectonics theory was debunked
| (using whatever the appropriate term was then). Well here we
| are now saying the exact opposite.
|
| The only thing we can say with certainty right now is that we
| don't have consensus as to the cause of the Younger Dryas _at
| this time_. To say that the YDIH is debunked is not true and
| not helpful.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| "Science is not an exercise in accepting a scientist's say-
| so, dammit."
|
| May your words echo in the hallways of this forum!
| cryptonector wrote:
| Don't hold your breath. HN is full of people with
| credentials, and people with credentials tend to push
| credentialism, and that means deferring to the experts on
| other fields so that others will defer to one in one's
| field of expertise.
|
| Mike Shapiro at Sun was fond of telling us that "we're not
| specialists -- we're generalists who can specialize as
| needed". I think that is a good attitude in general. It
| doesn't mean we get to weigh in on things we know nothing
| about, but it does mean we get to do critical thinking and
| that we can self-educate in order to form opinions when
| necessary.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> In particular I find very compelling the theory that the
| YDIH hit the laurentide ice sheet over Michigan, sending huge
| ice boulders out that created the Carolina bays and
| essentially did great damage, but with water ice, thus
| leaving very little direct physical evidence -- no craters
| (apart from the Carolina bays), no rocks out of place, no
| layer of material from the impactor (because it was a comet
| rather than an asteroid).
|
| In that case, how do can we tell that's what happened?
| cryptonector wrote:
| Antonio Zamora is a scientist studying this who writes
| papers and posts videos on YouTube at
| https://www.youtube.com/@Antonio_Zamora and he does a good
| job of showing how the Carolina bays point towards the
| impact location, and what not. I'm not going to summarize
| it all here, but the point is that there is _some_ , and
| perhaps enough evidence to go on.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| "The comet strike ushered in a 1,200-year ice age and led to the
| extinction of many large animals, Dr. Sweatman said. For humans,
| the comet probably also led to differences in lifestyle and
| agriculture that helped usher in the rise of civilization as we
| know it."
|
| I thought the Americas' megafauna died after the ice age, not
| because of it?
| jumploops wrote:
| Could both statements not be true?
|
| The ice age may have encouraged humans to hunt more mammals
| than previously required.
| kragen wrote:
| unfortunately the terminology here is very unclear, but i think
| you're right; the megafauna dying in america was part of the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Pleistocene_extinctions
| which happened before the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas, which is the
| '1200-year ice age' whose name the nyt didn't think was
| important enough to mention
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi...
| discusses the comet impact hypothesis, which it describes as
| 'controversial and not widely accepted by relevant experts'
|
| also note from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas that
| the younger dryas didn't happen in south america, which is
| where the largest extinction of american megafauna happened;
| instead south america had the milder and earlier
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Cold_Reversal
|
| however, it seems obvious that a widespread glaciation would
| have caused _some_ extinctions, and there was a long tail of
| megafauna extinctions that extended long after the younger
| dryas. glyptodonts like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doedicurus apparently didn't
| become extinct until only 8000 years ago, and the wrangel
| island mammoths didn't become extinct until only 4000 years ago
| aport wrote:
| You're correct, the comet theory has been debunked for years at
| this point.
| jmclnx wrote:
| >I thought the Americas' megafauna died after the ice age, not
| because of it?
|
| There was a article that had "proof" that megafauna extinction
| was a result of Humans moving into that area. I think I saw it
| here in NH.
|
| To me that is the theory I agree with.
| vivekd wrote:
| I think it's a theory that should be regarded with suspicion.
| It too neatly aligns with modern world views and
| environmental concerns. That's not to say it's false, it may
| turn out to be true. Just as should tread carefully with it
| recognizing the social bias supporting it
| cryptonector wrote:
| This _is_ after the "ice age", meaning after the glacial
| period. The Younger Dryas was a period during the current
| inter-glacial where temperatures went down a great deal for a
| while -- a mini ice age within an inter-glacial period.
| reedf1 wrote:
| Careful analysis must be taken to avoid falling victim to the
| look-elsewhere effect. It is easy to find any numerical
| relationship you want with motivated reasoning.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| For those interested in exploring this topic in much more
| scientific detail than the NYTimes dares to try, his
| observations, interpretations and counter-arguments - going back
| many years - are available on his YTube channel here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx11KXwumf5w8J-GdBGKNVA/vid...
| T-A wrote:
| From 2017:
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone...
|
| https://www.maajournal.com/index.php/maa/article/view/686
| nyc111 wrote:
| How do they interpret the three handbag like carvings on top also
| seen in other prehistoric figures
| https://www.pinterest.com/pin/642466703103282106/
| lazide wrote:
| Why couldn't they be bags designed to be held in the hand?
|
| Sandals also look identical from how they looked thousands of
| years ago. It's not like human anatomy is different now than it
| was.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Amazing how the NY Times can report this stuff as racist and
| conspiracist only to nonchalantly affirm it months later:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/magazine/younger-dryas-im...
| rfecdsxhkj wrote:
| Sweatman is actually not an archaeologist, and this whole concept
| he's been pushing for around a decade is actually dead wrong.
| It's incredible that this actually got published in a legitimate
| journal with an archaeological focus.
|
| I recommend reading this breakdown of why he's wrong from 2019:
| https://skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2019/01/25/martin-sweatm...
|
| And a great spoof of his work showcasing the numerous logical
| fallacies in his reasoning:
| https://skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2018/12/07/decoding-loon...
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