141 réponses à ce sujet

[Swordfishtrombone]

^ You're right, good point AwesomeName!

Modifié par Swordfishtrombone, 04 décembre 2010 - 12:11 .

[Ecaiki]

AwesomeName wrote...

Is this how most people view science now?  Do most people now think it's just a majority of pretentious dusty old farts who declare what's officially science and what isn't?  Ugh... well that's not how it works at all.  A group of scientists will do their research on something, they'll gather evidence, they'll do experiments, they'll repeat those experiments over and over and over, and stuggle as hard as they can to understand the thing they're studying without adding any extra information that could come from their imagination..... on top of that, once the study is over, it must go through the scientific process where a bunch of other scientists check it all over to make sure they haven't made any mistakes, etc... So NO, they're not merely stories that are made "official".  Research has to go through a very stringent process before it can even be considered science (unlike some things, like "creation science", which tries to bypass the scientific process alltogether and go through the political one instead, so it can be taught in schools, ugh).

You're completely correct, and I would have no problem... if we were talking about physics, chemistry, or biology.  However we're talking about archeology, which is one person looking at the past and trying to explain the what and why of civilisation(s) gone by.

The biggest problem here is people tend to filter what they find through a social/political/religious lense based on their current society.  If, for example, they firmly believe that their current society is the most advanced humanity has ever been then anything they discover that hints ovtherwise will be ignored or explained away.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

A common mistake like when communist historians wanted to explain history of all countries with Slavery, Feudal, Bourgeois etc. method.

Disappearing of Maya civilization is another Historical mystery, we can only explain (guess) its causes with Aztec documents and archeological discoveries. also we can get help from geography, linguistics and population studies. Its a difficult work.

[Ecaiki]

It's ok, and believe me I have a healthy respect for the scientific process.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Ecaiki wrote...

The biggest problem here is people tend to filter what they find through a social/political/religious lense based on their current society.  If, for example, they firmly believe that their current society is the most advanced humanity has ever been then anything they discover that hints ovtherwise will be ignored or explained away.

I think this is basically where we fall short.

We tend to think of ourselves, our current civilization, as the best of the best on Earth (in terms of technological maturity). It is, therefore, anything but strange that we understimate the capabilities of those we came before us, which is probably the reason we just had to stretch our imagination as far as saying aliens might have helped our ancestors build themselves. I would call it human nature, but...

Modifié par FieryPhoenix7, 04 décembre 2010 - 12:55 .

[Swordfishtrombone]

Ecaiki wrote...

You're completely correct, and I would have no problem... if we were talking about physics, chemistry, or biology.  However we're talking about archeology, which is one person looking at the past and trying to explain the what and why of civilisation(s) gone by.

The biggest problem here is people tend to filter what they find through a social/political/religious lense based on their current society.  If, for example, they firmly believe that their current society is the most advanced humanity has ever been then anything they discover that hints ovtherwise will be ignored or explained away.

I don't think this is true. Surely biases exist not only among archeologists but also among scientists of ALL diciplines - but that is what peer review is for!

Scientists of a dicipline aren't a cohesive "team", but a collection of researchers of various backgrounds, various political views, various belief systems, and various takes on history. The requirement for you to PUBLISH your research and methods, and the evidence upon which you found your conclusions, for the scrutiny of these peers many of whom hold opposing views to yours, is what keeps the science honest. If you try to extend your conclusions too far beyond what the evidence warrants, you can BET you'll get called out on it.

Such ideas as "the modern civilization isn't the most advanced in human history" have no support in professional archeology, simply because the methodology of those that make these conclusions and speculations isn't nearly up to scratch. It suffers from the flaws I described in my earlier (long) post today about the distinguishing features of pseudoscience.

IF there was a civilization more advanced than the modern one some time in history, then fine - present your evidence - and make sure you understand the standards of evidence, what counts as evidence and why. Make sure you understand logical fallacies, and psychological errors and biases all we humans are prone to. And then PUBLISH your results - not to convince the lay public, but for the scrutiny of the professional audience that is qualified to evaluate that evidence.

If you don't, or can't do that, then you - quite rightly - have no stake in the making of real science, and are relegated to making fanciful claims without sufficient evidence to justify them.

If there had been a more advanced civilization in the past, that would be an awesome find - I'd LOVE to be wrong about this. But I care more about what is true, than what I want to be true - and this is why I care about the standards of evidence, and good methodology in finding that evidence, and thus don't accept the pseudoscientific feel-good imaginings of the mystical, paranormal, and alien archeology crowd.

[Ecaiki]

So what do you think of the Antikythera mechanism?

The problem with what you demand is the evidence that would really prove how advanced a civilisation was just doesn't stand the test of time. I mean take the mechanism I just mentioned, if it weren't for it being preserved by the ocean we'd have never known the Greeks were capable of such feats.

It's the same thing that will happen to us, all the data we have on CDs won't last more then a hundred years if we're lucky. Even then who's to say those that come after us will even be able to read them. All we'll leave in 1,000 years is our monolithic structures, just like those before us. Except we don't leave paintings on the walls like the Egyptians, or carvings telling stories and recording the passage of time like the Mayans. Which means they may think we were even more primitive then we think people 4,000 years ago were.

Modifié par Ecaiki, 04 décembre 2010 - 01:18 .

[nikki191]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

Garbage Master wrote...

@Swordfishtrombone
Good, lets build some 300m monuments in your backyard!
OK, you admitted that our ancestors had higher (lost) technics that we hadn't had until 19th century.

What on Earth are you talking about? Didn't you understand the concepts I was explaining? The fallacy of declaring something "impossible" with technology available to the ancients, based on your own inability to imagine how they could have done what they did? That is a fallacy, not evidence of anything. Something you cannot reasonably found a case for "alien archelogy" on.

If you watched the video I posted, it showed a simple proof of concept - of how you can move massive objects using leverage and ingenuity - both of which were quite available to the ancients.

I don't care to start investigating every monument and how it was built - there are archeologists that do that for a living, and I'm not an archeologist. But those archeologists - the vast, vast majority of them, sigh in despair at the naive notions of archeology, and fallacies of the alien archeology enthusiasts.

I totally agree with you and personally I find people dismissing ancient people as incapable of building these monuments as offensive. People 4000 years ago were just as smart as you or I, they werent stupid, and to say they needed aliens to build things is insulting to them and their memory. The fact that people now have difficulty working out how the heck they lifted and moved blocks as large as they did is a testament to their ingenuity and intelligence.

[Ulous]

[Swordfishtrombone]

Ecaiki wrote...

So what do you think of the Antikythera mechanism?

Dealt with quite thoroughly here. You can either read the transcript or listen to the podcast (about 12 minutes long).

It's all said there better than I could put it - no reason for me to repeat it.

The problem with what you demand is the evidence that would really prove how advanced a civilisation was just doesn't stand the test of time. I mean take the mechanism I just mentioned, if it weren't for it being preserved by the ocean we'd have never known the Greeks were capable of such feats.

It's the same thing that will happen to us, all the data we have on CDs won't last more then a hundred years if we're lucky. Even then who's to say those that come after us will even be able to read them. All we'll leave in 1,000 years is our monolithic structures, just like those before us. Except we don't leave paintings on the walls like the Egyptians, or carvings telling stories and recording the passage of time like the Mayans. Which means they may think we were even more primitive then we think people 4,000 years ago were.

No, this speculation simply doesn't gel with what we DO find. If our civilization was truly lost,  what would remain is not only the most sturdy megalithic structures, but also smaller artefacts which bear indisputable marks of highly advanced tooling, and materials technology. Much of it would be lost, but some of it would inevitably survive. Much of our trash would survive - our current waste dumps would be the archeological treasure mine from which true scientists could learn much about our level of technology.

And what OTHER things do we find then, from the times of the builders of the big monuments, and the antikythera mechanism?

We find pottery shards, we find stone masonry, we find items made from bone and natural materials. We find nothing at all that would suggest a technologically advanced culture.

As we are discussing this, there is a structure being built in Finland which is designed to last a hundred thousand years - a deep cave structure that is to house a nuclear waste storage. Where are the ancient greek nuclear waste storages?

You simply don't get advanced technology without it being written all over the culture of the time, including the daily, mundane objects people use, the buildings they live in, and the trash they produce. While exposed structures of most materials will crumble, collapse and erode, much of the smaller every day items that tell the tale of the lives of the people at the time will get burried, and preserved for thousands of years.

It isn't remotely plausible that a civilization more advanced than the current one wouldn't leave any traces of it's advanced technology, burried in the ground - it is even more implausible that we WOULD instead of these advanced items, find simple tools and simple jewelry, and at best, a few simple mechanisms, that while impressive for their time, are nothing at all compared to modern technology, nor are they somehow too far advanced to have been within the reach of a clever, industrious inventor and craftsman of the time.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

only graves will remain!

@AwesomeName

We must distinguish Mayans with Aztecs, Aztec was the civilization who confronted the Spaniards, but Maya was an ancient civilization in Yucatan peninsula that had been deserted 4 centuries before forming Aztec empire.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Maya_collapse

[Swordfishtrombone]

Garbage Master wrote...

only graves will remain!

Only graves... and trash... and various household objects... and the sturdiest structures.... and the foundations of less sturdy structures....and.... so on remain.

The record of ancient past is far from as poor as you imagine. Archeologists aren't just pulling history out of their asses, they actually find objects that ancient people used, the things they discarded, all stuff that got burried with time - some of it quite well preserved.

Please do read my post above, and DO especially listen to the podcast on the Antikythera mechanism. It makes several crucially important points, regarding our understanding of the past, and what it is based on.

What you'd expect to find from a hypothetical ancient highly advanced culture isn't just monuments and a few curious items - it would be written all over the mundane stuff that people leave behind in their daily lives. Mundane stuff which WOULDN'T be pottery shards and bronze jewelry in a highly technologically advanced culture.

[Ecaiki]

AwesomeName wrote...

Well, at least we've got a crap load of junk in geosynchronous orbit.

I do find it hard to believe, though, that if there were any civilisations preceding us with a level of technological advancement close to ours, that there's not a shred of evidence to support it...

Time and nature consume all, which is why we don't easily find wooden tables and cloth from 3,000 years ago.  Also you assume they aren't telling us exactly what they were capable of, which falls under what I said before about how we interprete the information left behind.

Of course it then becomes a battle of wills over who's right.

@Swordfish

Just look around you, if our mudane items are supposed to record how advanced we are then we're doing a terrible job.  That Hello-Kitty shirt doesn't say much about the Hubble Telescope. 

Otherwise it may very well be written on the wall, or their pottery, or whatever just what they could do, but that doesn't mean squat if the archeologists aren't reading it that way.  But that's getting into conspiracy and hiding evidence.

Modifié par Ecaiki, 04 décembre 2010 - 02:11 .

[addiction21]

So its the Illuminati hiding the truth about why aliens that can cross the vast distances of space came to earth and moved some rocks around...



When you need to rely on conspiracy theories it goes from being science to science fiction.

[Ecaiki]

A conspiracy can be as simple as only telling people half the truth about a situation.

[grregg]

Ecaiki wrote...

(...)

Just look around you, if our mudane items are supposed to record how advanced we are then we're doing a terrible job.  That Hello-Kitty shirt doesn't say much about the Hubble Telescope. 

Otherwise it may very well be written on the wall, or their pottery, or whatever just what they could do, but that doesn't mean squat if the archeologists aren't reading it that way.  But that's getting into conspricy and hiding evidence.

I would recommend reading some more about archeology. As hard as it might be to believe, archeology is not another word for "pulling things out of one's behind".

And actually Hello Kitty shirt tells you a lot about the sophistication of culture that produced it. No, you cannot deduce Hubble telescope out of the shirt, but you would know that it wasn't ancient Greeks that made the shirt.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

grregg wrote...
And actually Hello Kitty shirt tells you a lot about the sophistication of culture that produced it. No, you cannot deduce Hubble telescope out of the shirt, but you would know that it wasn't ancient Greeks that made the shirt.

hello kitty tells you that I'm English and I'm made of a junky cloth that is far worthless than 20th century clothing

[Ecaiki]

grregg wrote...

I would recommend reading some more about archeology. As hard as it might be to believe, archeology is not another word for "pulling things out of one's behind".

And actually Hello Kitty shirt tells you a lot about the sophistication of culture that produced it. No, you cannot deduce Hubble telescope out of the shirt, but you would know that it wasn't ancient Greeks that made the shirt.

Never said it was, though I'm amused that not agreeing with their interpretation apparently means that.

Sure it tells you that, but it doesn't even hint that we have a large chunk of metal and glass in orbit that allows us to see distant stars.  Which is the point I'm trying to make, just because the things we've found don't hint at PCs and nuclear bombs doesn't mean they never had comparable.

If you want to talk insulting, it's more insulting to assume they didn't have such things then they had help from aliens.

[Swordfishtrombone]

[quote]Ecaiki wrote...

[quote]AwesomeName wrote...

Well, at least we've got a crap load of junk in geosynchronous orbit.

I do find it hard to believe, though, that if there were any civilisations preceding us with a level of technological advancement close to ours, that there's not a shred of evidence to support it...[/quote]

Time and nature consume all, which is why we don't easily find wooden tables and cloth from 3,000 years ago.  Also you assume they aren't telling us exactly what they were capable of, which falls under what I said before about how we interprete the information left behind.
[/quote]

Already answered - this is simply incorrect. There are many small items that survive, throug being burried in a suitable environment. We have a wealth of ancient artifacts, and mundane, everyday items! I'm not talking about wooden tables and cloth, but say - my wrist watch. Easily capable, if burried, of surviving thousands of years. Or steel spoons. JUST discovering a steel spoon, tells that this civilization has discovered how to make steel. Yet what we DO find - the rare times we find it - is made of bronze, like the antikythera mechanism.

[/quote]

[quote]
Of course it then becomes a battle of wills over who's right.
[/quote]

No, it becomes a battle of who is willing to accept all the evidence, to form an accurate view of history, and who'd rather cherry pick their evidence, ignoring most of it, in order to come up with a better, more interesting story. It is very unfortunate that human psychology is such, that we often opt for the good story over the evidence-based one.


[quote]
@Swordfish

Just look around you, if our mudane items are supposed to record how advanced we are then we're doing a terrible job.  That Hello-Kitty shirt doesn't say much about the Hubble Telescope. 
[/quote]

No, but the satellites in space, and the junk there, surely does! As does the footprints on the Moon, and the robots on the surface of Mars.

As would any hard-material items, when burried in a suitable environment.

[quote]
Otherwise it may very well be written on the wall, or their pottery, or whatever just what they could do, but that doesn't mean squat if the archeologists aren't reading it that way.  But that's getting into conspiracy and hiding evidence.
[/quote]

Yes, and if it's conspiracy ideas that you're flirting with, please, for the sake of all that is sane, weed that stuff out of your mind. All the more reason that you should - if you haven't already - listen to the Antikythera mechanism episode of skeptoid I posted before - towards the end, it gives some much needed sanity in the face of conspiracy theories that people resort to when the evidence given by the scientific community doesn't seem to support their favorite idea. It is another unfortunate human trait - rather than accept that we might be mistaken, we often go to extreme lengths to buttress the belief, even to the point of convincing ourselves that the whole world, or the scientific community at least, is in cohoots, with the purpose of hiding the truth.

[Swordfishtrombone]

Ecaiki wrote...

A conspiracy can be as simple as only telling people half the truth about a situation.

No, it really can't. Science isn't done by some small group working alone in an ivory tower. It is a highly distributed affair, with multiple teams across the world, working on sites. For a conspiracy to happen, you'd not only have to have one team "telling half the truth", you'd have to have all following teams studying the site ALSO deciding to tell only half the truth, AND world wide, any teams deciding to leave out corresponding bits of evidence, in order to maintain a coherent, false picture.

Ignoring the inate implausiblity of such a grand scale conspiracy, the question is WHY? WHY would anyone do this? And do new archeology students get inducted and "made evil" over night, their desire to decipher the truth about the past quelled somehow, when they enter the world of the working archeologist?

If it sounds ridiculous, it is because it IS patently ridiculous.

DO please listen to the episode on the antikythera mechanism that I posted earlier. Not only does it tell the very interesting story - in the context of it's time - of the mechanism, but towards the end, it gives you an idea of what exactly is rewarded in archeology, and why the motivation is not to enforce the same old established views, but to go against them - AS LONG AS you can do it on solid, evidentiary grounds.

[Swordfishtrombone]

AwesomeName wrote...

That antikythera thing looks incredible, but I don't see how it's evidence that the ancient greeks were anywhere near as advanced as us.  We know they were really clever when it came down to maths, and they made some pretty accurate measurements regarding astronomy... but doesn't the evidence so far suggest that their understanding of astrophysics was no where near as sophisticated as ours?

If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you listen too to the episode of Skeptoid behind the link I posted earlier, on the Antikythera mechanism. It gives the historical context of the find, and what we know people knew at the time - something you won't find from the alien archeology sources. It's an excellent way to spend about 12 minutes. Fascinating stuff.