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21st May 2017, 06:21 PM | #41 |
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21st May 2017, 06:22 PM | #42 |
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21st May 2017, 06:32 PM | #43 |
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He did OK. Could have done better. But you wanted to know why he's the leading editor of Skeptic, not if he is some leading expert on Gobekli Tepe. Shermer very much understands the principles of good skepticism and he laid them out in the interview.
He also brought a couple experts with him to help. Bottom line it: Did Hancock convince you? He sure didn't convince me. |
21st May 2017, 06:36 PM | #44 |
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21st May 2017, 06:59 PM | #45 |
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21st May 2017, 07:01 PM | #46 |
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21st May 2017, 07:06 PM | #47 |
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Yep, the first and last thing his 'expert' did was admit he was wrong and apologize to Hancock.
Since this was the first time I had heard of "Gobekli Tepe," I was convinced at least, that a lost unknown civilization existed 12,000 years ago, and that a series of floods eliminated it as the ice age ended. |
21st May 2017, 07:37 PM | #48 |
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Sounds like the response you'd expect from an honorable man, interested in getting things right.
Quote:
First, no matter how devastating an extraterrestrial impact might be, are we to believe that after centuries of flourishing every last tool, potsherd, article of clothing, and, presumably from an advanced civilization, writing, metallurgy and other technologies—not to mention trash—was erased? Inconceivable. https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...000-years-ago/ |
21st May 2017, 07:45 PM | #49 |
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Rebuttal-
The floods resulting from the melting ice sheets gave rise to ocean levels while washing "writing, metallurgy and other technologies—not to mention trash" out to sea... A flood of over 120 feet covered Cairo, now there are NO TRACES of who built the sphinx. No "writing, metallurgy and other technologies—not to mention trash"... Try visiting Sri Lanka at the places not yet rebuilt from the tsunami- there's NOTHING left- ZERO, ZIP, ZILCH. Cars, three story buildings, roads, computers, tools...it's all just off the coast buried in mud banks. The moral of this post is- "Water washes away evidence." |
21st May 2017, 08:11 PM | #50 |
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It goes somewhere.
Also, we were talking about stone structures that weren't washed away. It's hard to imagine standing structures that get scrubbed as clean as required, especially when archeologists are able to carbon date things they did find. I don't see Hancock getting the evidence he needs from the evidence that's missing. Forget metal, even pottery would be nice. |
21st May 2017, 08:18 PM | #51 |
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The timeline of Gobekli Tepe doesn't really fit a catastrophe model.
The National Geographic Magazine describes a gradual falling away of "tech" rather than an all-or-none. "Puzzle piled upon puzzle as the excavation continued. For reasons yet unknown, the rings at Göbekli Tepe seem to have regularly lost their power, or at least their charm. Every few decades people buried the pillars and put up new stones—a second, smaller ring, inside the first. Sometimes, later, they installed a third. Then the whole assemblage would be filled in with debris, and an entirely new circle created nearby. The site may have been built, filled in, and built again for centuries. Bewilderingly, the people at Göbekli Tepe got steadily worse at temple building. The earliest rings are the biggest and most sophisticated, technically and artistically. As time went by, the pillars became smaller, simpler, and were mounted with less and less care. Finally the effort seems to have petered out altogether by 8200 B.C. Göbekli Tepe was all fall and no rise." http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...tepe/mann-text |
21st May 2017, 09:11 PM | #52 |
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Rebuttal -
1. you are speculating: "there's no evidence because it all got washed away completely" versus "there's no evidence because it didn't happen". 2. The last ice age *ended* 10k years ago: what change in sea level are you claiming occurred during the period at which the article places the destruction that is asserted to have at the site speculated to be Atlantis? |
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21st May 2017, 10:20 PM | #53 |
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No one lived in the mountains?
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Normal in a weird way. |
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21st May 2017, 11:34 PM | #54 |
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There is no Antimemetics Division. |
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22nd May 2017, 02:42 AM | #55 |
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22nd May 2017, 03:39 AM | #56 |
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22nd May 2017, 03:40 AM | #57 |
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22nd May 2017, 03:59 AM | #58 |
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Sounds like Fingerprints of the Gods evidence...
I'm not saying it is, but the technology, seemingly advanced, "pops up out of nowhere" and then is lost. Weird, to say the least. --- ETA: Impact also lends itself to agricultural collapse and descending time spent on 'the arts'...as more and more crops failed they had to spend more time hunting and gathering? |
22nd May 2017, 04:33 AM | #59 |
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Weird that Hancock et al. were able to draw far-reaching conclusions about completely lost civilisations without any evidence. The assertion that the survivors of these advanced cities abandoned every shred of their culture and technology and became stone age hunter-gatherers out of penance is also weird, and seems to be too convenient an explanation to explain the lack of physical evidence.
But what you have just posted is, well, let's say interesting. Find these mud banks, rediscover the remnants of these ancient city dwellers, and presto: evidence. Why would anyone just accept Hancock's outlandish speculation before he has produced any evidence? And where is this mud bank? Any ideas? Or are you going to be very vague, so you can always claim 'maybe the next mud bank over, I'm going to insist I'm correct until every inch of the Eurasian coastline has been dug up'? |
22nd May 2017, 04:47 AM | #60 |
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22nd May 2017, 05:01 AM | #61 |
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22nd May 2017, 05:05 AM | #62 |
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22nd May 2017, 05:08 AM | #63 |
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You asked where it was...
I can present tsunami evidence as proof, that if it exists, that's where you'd find it. In the interview, Shermer accepts Hancock supposition that Cairo suffered a flood that covered the Nile basin in 120 feet of water...I think he said around 10,000 bc. Whatever evidence of who and when the sphinx was built is likely at the bottom of the Mediterranean. 'I' don't have access to it but that doesn't it isn't there... |
22nd May 2017, 05:11 AM | #64 |
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22nd May 2017, 05:14 AM | #65 |
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One of these is not like the other. Getting someone with no kind of training in the relevant disciplines to accept a supposition, is no proof of tsunamis occurring, much less of them sweeping away whole civilisations.
Also, your whole argument is contingent on your own supposition that " "if it exists, that's where you'd find it" Just like if Nessie exists, you'd find her in Scotland. |
22nd May 2017, 05:35 AM | #66 |
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Yes, "if it exists"... We KNOW tsunamis wash entire cities out to sea. However, I DON'T know that floods are responsible for the removal of the civilization responsible for the removal of knowledge.
Could have been aliens...they came, enslaved us, forced us to build these massive structures, and then left because of a slave uprising? That's not what I am supporting. Instead, I think its likely an asteroid impact (proof provided in the interview) dramatically changed the climate and set mankind back technologically to the point of hunter gatherer reversion. |
22nd May 2017, 05:49 AM | #67 |
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Like the interview, you are conflating claims:
1. there was a prehistoric advanced civilisation 2. An asteroid struck earth during the time claimed 3. all evidence of the previously advanced civilisation was removed by the effect of the asteriod impact I'm glad you "think it likely" but the substantiation is somewhat absent. |
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22nd May 2017, 06:47 AM | #68 |
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Yes.
And what's really sad is that a lot of the good archaeological work is showing that prehistoric civilizations were more advanced than the grunting cave-dwellers people imagined. They built tools and musical instruments and respected their fallen brethren. Almost from the beginning we organized ourselves and interacted with other groups and loved art and developed intricate languages.... What really turned me off the "aliens must have been here" people was the realization (in middle school) that believing early humans required some space intervention to build the pyramids or develop complicated religions is highly disrespectful bordering on racist, when it's applied to African and Central American cultures. We had some really awesome ancestors. They were more advanced we previously thought. Doesn't mean space aliens were involved in Nazca. And that was Hancock's angle for a long time. Then he tossed that aside and ran with ideas like Antarctica moving hundreds of miles in a big earthquake and all of these impossible cataclysms. |
22nd May 2017, 11:10 AM | #69 |
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The part you put in scare quotes is significant. If we didn't have a written explanation, 3,000 years from now they might be saying that about steam, or nuclear power (depending on whether we abandon it or not) and the "out of nowhere" assumes technology that didn't exist before and suddenly appeared - is that the case? Moving large stones doesn't strike me as anything super special. I don't even think you could say it was "lost" - we quit doing it, sure, but that just means the reason for doing it fell out of favor - anyone building stone pyramids today?
On the time scale we are talking about, electricity and all of its boons have appeared "out of nowhere." ---
Quote:
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22nd May 2017, 11:32 AM | #70 |
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That might cause the collapse of a civilisation, as it did in the case of the Roman Empire. But did it obliterate all evidence for the Empire that had existed previous to the Dark Age? Go and look at Herculaneum, or get hold of a coin or some other product from the Roman Republic or Empire. They are still to be found in huge numbers.
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22nd May 2017, 12:01 PM | #71 |
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22nd May 2017, 12:48 PM | #72 |
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That's the point though. We'd expect to find such evidence but don't. Whatever happened there it hasn't been revealed in the 5% excavated so far. Really, it could be as simple as "they moved to where the fishing was better" coupled with "Why are we wasting so much time building stuff to honor Gods which have let us down?"
12,000 years was a long time ago. In my opinion, monoliths alone do not an advanced civilization make. |
22nd May 2017, 04:13 PM | #73 |
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22nd May 2017, 04:18 PM | #74 |
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1. Ahh, so 12,000 years ago there actually was an agriculturally supported city that constructed THE most impressive monolith structure on the planet to date. *You are wrong.
2. Watch the interview, evidence for asteroid impacts are evidence in sedimentary layers dating to the time period in question... "microspherials" I think. *Wrong there too. 3. Sorta... The asteroid impact caused flooding. This is what wiped away the previous civilization. *Wrong again, sorry. |
22nd May 2017, 05:19 PM | #75 | |||
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I don't know how they did it.
Have you seen this guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5pZ7uR6v8c
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22nd May 2017, 05:50 PM | #76 | |||
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A wheel? An axle? For lifting a block of stone?
What about a block and tackle? Or what about a lever? As Archimedes said: "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth with it". In fact, Wally Wallington built a Stonehenge replica on his own without any of that:
ETA: damn, ninja'ed by marplots. |
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"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf "I think accuracy is important" - Vixen |
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22nd May 2017, 06:00 PM | #77 |
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22nd May 2017, 06:02 PM | #78 |
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22nd May 2017, 07:37 PM | #79 |
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You so funny. You know full well that all 3 criteria need to be met for your claim to have a chance of being credible
Saying "wrong" doesn't make it wrong, and your assertion in statements numbers 1 and 3 remain unsubstantiated. And don't think I haven't noted your weasel-wording rephrasing of your claim on point 1 either... |
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22nd May 2017, 07:45 PM | #80 |
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