1500 years ago, life was much worse than it is today because the world is warming, right? Pilø et al. 2020 shows interesting things--and loads of bias in archaeology
The Lendbreen findings really complicate the narrative about unprecendented warming. What gets me is how archaeologists found 800 artifacts including that tunic from AD 300-400, which means people were traversing these passes during periods when the ice wasnt there. The fact that transhumance routes existed at such high elevations during warmer periods suggests climatic variability has always shaped human adaptation inways we tend to overlook when framing everything as novel.
Plus there's the entire issue of stuff archaeologists finding elsewhere in high altitudes now that they are looking for it (watch this space come Wednesday).
One idea that has done great damage and still does, is the notion that ancestor groups plopped down in various places around the world, without any knowledge about the rest of the world, at least the region or continent they resided in.
I suspect it is an artefact of thinking from when the Bible was read as literal truth and thus all finds had to fit in with the narrative of the Tower of Babel, the age of the world and so on.
Thus we get ideas that agruclture was first in invented in place X and the knowledge then migrated from there to elsewhere or that the horseshoe was invented by people Y in place Z.
In reality, lots of peoples developed similar solutions to similar and common problems as over the world.
I mean, what Ice Age hunter-gatherer on the coast of what is today southern Finland would know to dig for amber and then sell it to people travelling all the way to the Levant and back, unless there was knowledge already about places far off?
Looked it up because I only know of it from sci-fi and comics.
Sounds very Jungian to me, frankly, and thus entirely pseudo-scientific at worst - or philosophical at best.
On one hand, DNA somehow "knows" what shape it is supposed to have. On the other hand, knowledge transfer on the most basic level is apparently possible, else very small children would not have reflex reactions towards snakes, spiders and such.
But there's really neither tangible proof nor a way to prove it beyond reasoned argument, is there?
Well, judging from the few podcasts I listened to, Sheldrake never says that there's that much evidence for it, yet there are these experiments with rat populations that point towards…well, something.
As to mankind, I suppose the best analogy would be inventions arrived at roughly the same time by different people (that is, at least in the context of modern Europe we have that kind of data; for older stuff, I suppose it's harder to come up with such things).
Yes, and the counter is that most inventions/discoveries weren't made at roughly the same time. The reason for this is of course due to our definitions: it is an evolutionary process, and when we impose our arbitrary cut-offs for what counts as scythe or not, we can't help but creating what looks like it happens simultaneously with no communication.
What instead happened was that it happened gradually, and that the break-through or quantum-leap kind of inventions got adopted quicker. The adoption of the metal-clad plow f.e. took several centuries but the spread was geographic and follow poverty-levels; the poorer the area, the slower the pace of adoption since only the more well-off farmers could affor it initially.
Same with stirrups, saddles, horseshoes, and so on - plus accessability and suitability of different materials; a Mongol horsebow wasn't much use in Eastern Europe due to differences in climate and terrain from where it was developed.
Which leads to our semi-nomadic ancestors: as they moved, they had to change how they made and took care of their equipment, and so the eqpuipment changed, making it eventually appear as knowledge of (f.e.) the makings of canoes and the attendant knowledge (curing hides) was spread from one people to another, when in reality it spread with people moving about.
Add trading to that, and people being sent abroad by their chiefs and kings to learn, and people taken as slaves and then returning with knowledge (Arminius certainly showed the Romans what he had learned) and it starts becoming pointless to look for "who's on first", in my opinion.
Earliest know find, is fine. First is always erroneous and simply sensational.
As for rats, their brains are wired thus: 1/3 deals with scents. They have better sense of smell than dogs, and they are wired for competitive co-operation, something I've witnessed first-hand when we had pet-rats many years ago. They developed a co-operative scheme with one of the dogs, where they'd clean his teeth, ears, fur and he'd let them ride along on his back.
Which meant they got access to the kitchen counter and started doing food-raids. One rat would distract you if you were in the kitchen, making you look down or hunch. When you did, the dog sauntered past carrying two rats on its back. These two would jump to the counter, grab whatever was most desirable (meatballs!), push one on the floor for the dog, and then all three rats and the dog would scamper into the living room.
This happened more than once and followed a pattern.
That is not instinctual behaviour, nor is it accidental - that is something that takes planning in several steps and consideration of "if-then"-scenarios.
There are plenty of such anecdotes from pet-owners, some validated in clinical fashion, so maybe there is something to his idea - but for lack of tangible proof it will be a very hard sell.
Brilliant, chipping away at the CLIMATE narrative.
The Lendbreen findings really complicate the narrative about unprecendented warming. What gets me is how archaeologists found 800 artifacts including that tunic from AD 300-400, which means people were traversing these passes during periods when the ice wasnt there. The fact that transhumance routes existed at such high elevations during warmer periods suggests climatic variability has always shaped human adaptation inways we tend to overlook when framing everything as novel.
It does complicate things, eh?
Plus there's the entire issue of stuff archaeologists finding elsewhere in high altitudes now that they are looking for it (watch this space come Wednesday).
One idea that has done great damage and still does, is the notion that ancestor groups plopped down in various places around the world, without any knowledge about the rest of the world, at least the region or continent they resided in.
I suspect it is an artefact of thinking from when the Bible was read as literal truth and thus all finds had to fit in with the narrative of the Tower of Babel, the age of the world and so on.
Thus we get ideas that agruclture was first in invented in place X and the knowledge then migrated from there to elsewhere or that the horseshoe was invented by people Y in place Z.
In reality, lots of peoples developed similar solutions to similar and common problems as over the world.
I mean, what Ice Age hunter-gatherer on the coast of what is today southern Finland would know to dig for amber and then sell it to people travelling all the way to the Levant and back, unless there was knowledge already about places far off?
Have you heard about Rupert Sheldrake's 'morphic resonance' hypothesis?
Looked it up because I only know of it from sci-fi and comics.
Sounds very Jungian to me, frankly, and thus entirely pseudo-scientific at worst - or philosophical at best.
On one hand, DNA somehow "knows" what shape it is supposed to have. On the other hand, knowledge transfer on the most basic level is apparently possible, else very small children would not have reflex reactions towards snakes, spiders and such.
But there's really neither tangible proof nor a way to prove it beyond reasoned argument, is there?
Yet, at least.
Well, judging from the few podcasts I listened to, Sheldrake never says that there's that much evidence for it, yet there are these experiments with rat populations that point towards…well, something.
As to mankind, I suppose the best analogy would be inventions arrived at roughly the same time by different people (that is, at least in the context of modern Europe we have that kind of data; for older stuff, I suppose it's harder to come up with such things).
Yes, and the counter is that most inventions/discoveries weren't made at roughly the same time. The reason for this is of course due to our definitions: it is an evolutionary process, and when we impose our arbitrary cut-offs for what counts as scythe or not, we can't help but creating what looks like it happens simultaneously with no communication.
What instead happened was that it happened gradually, and that the break-through or quantum-leap kind of inventions got adopted quicker. The adoption of the metal-clad plow f.e. took several centuries but the spread was geographic and follow poverty-levels; the poorer the area, the slower the pace of adoption since only the more well-off farmers could affor it initially.
Same with stirrups, saddles, horseshoes, and so on - plus accessability and suitability of different materials; a Mongol horsebow wasn't much use in Eastern Europe due to differences in climate and terrain from where it was developed.
Which leads to our semi-nomadic ancestors: as they moved, they had to change how they made and took care of their equipment, and so the eqpuipment changed, making it eventually appear as knowledge of (f.e.) the makings of canoes and the attendant knowledge (curing hides) was spread from one people to another, when in reality it spread with people moving about.
Add trading to that, and people being sent abroad by their chiefs and kings to learn, and people taken as slaves and then returning with knowledge (Arminius certainly showed the Romans what he had learned) and it starts becoming pointless to look for "who's on first", in my opinion.
Earliest know find, is fine. First is always erroneous and simply sensational.
As for rats, their brains are wired thus: 1/3 deals with scents. They have better sense of smell than dogs, and they are wired for competitive co-operation, something I've witnessed first-hand when we had pet-rats many years ago. They developed a co-operative scheme with one of the dogs, where they'd clean his teeth, ears, fur and he'd let them ride along on his back.
Which meant they got access to the kitchen counter and started doing food-raids. One rat would distract you if you were in the kitchen, making you look down or hunch. When you did, the dog sauntered past carrying two rats on its back. These two would jump to the counter, grab whatever was most desirable (meatballs!), push one on the floor for the dog, and then all three rats and the dog would scamper into the living room.
This happened more than once and followed a pattern.
That is not instinctual behaviour, nor is it accidental - that is something that takes planning in several steps and consideration of "if-then"-scenarios.
There are plenty of such anecdotes from pet-owners, some validated in clinical fashion, so maybe there is something to his idea - but for lack of tangible proof it will be a very hard sell.