[HN Gopher] Lost world revealed by human, Neanderthal relics was...
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Lost world revealed by human, Neanderthal relics washed up on North
Sea beaches
Author : chippy
Score : 177 points
Date : 2021-07-21 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencemag.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencemag.org)
| lalos wrote:
| Reminds me of Gobekli Tepe which is also ~10K old evidence of
| human lost worlds
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
| ntrz wrote:
| Is the dredging process stripping a great degree of
| archaeological context from the items, or has being under the sea
| for so long already scrambled them up to a degree that we aren't
| losing all that much information by bringing them up in this way?
|
| I get the impression that modern archaeology tends to emphasize
| viewing a site holistically and painstakingly recording as many
| details as possible, to the extent that some sites are just left
| alone rather than risk an imperfect or destructive excavation, so
| I'm curious whether anyone in the field is upset that these
| artifacts are surfacing as a byproduct of an unrelated civic
| project that isn't even trying to adhere to those standards.
| yarcob wrote:
| Classic archaeology is all about layers. When excavating, a lot
| of effort is made to determine where one layer starts and where
| a layer ends. You can often tell eg. by soil color or other
| hints.
|
| So yes, dredging up the ground destroys all context, and you
| get finds that are very hard to date (carbon dating and other
| scientific methods have limited precision if you don't have any
| reference points)
|
| On the other hand, I guess you take what you can get, and
| archaeologists often work with finds like that. A farmer might
| accidentally have dug up some roman coins on their field, or
| people with metal detectors may find some clothing pins (not
| sure of the correct english word) or something. These people
| may also not be eager to tell you where they found it (farmers
| really don't want excavations on their fields)
| soperj wrote:
| Clothes pins is I think the word you're looking for.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can also make an argument to wait with the underwater
| exploration a few decades until better tools have been
| developed.
| macintux wrote:
| The dredging wasn't done by the archaeologists. They're
| just taking advantage of it.
| naturalauction wrote:
| Slightly different but I remember viewing the subways in Athens
| and seeing the ruins that they had discovered while just
| digging subways. I know the tube in London has run into similar
| issues.
|
| In the UK, a lot of archeologists are employed by building
| companies in order to ensure a new development isn't on
| archeologically significant land and that if something is
| encountered that it is cataloged. There are definitely
| standards that can be implemented to allow archeology and
| development to coexist.
| JackFr wrote:
| A friend who's an archaeology professor told me that's where
| the real money is in archaeology. Working as expert to come
| up with the "nothing historical here - ok to build a mall"
| report that many municipalities now require.
| krylon wrote:
| In passing, the article reveals that in the Netherlands, there is
| a place called "Monster", and Willy is a woman's name.
|
| But the archaeology is fascinating, too, of course. It is both
| sad and exciting to think about how much human culture and
| history has been lost to time, and how there still is out there,
| waiting to be discovered.
|
| There is an episode of Star Trek TNG where Captain Picard gets
| neurally linked to an alien probe and gets to experience the life
| of a person in a civilization that has long since ceased to
| exist. It is frustrating sometimes how Sci-fi can implant such
| appealing ideas in our minds that are - AFAIK - scientifically
| impossible. But how amazing would it be to live for just one day
| among the mammoth hunters of Doggerland.
|
| Also, this makes me think about what _we_ leave behind for some
| future explorer to unearth. Maybe we should start creating time
| capsules, so future archaeologists won 't have such a hard time
| figuring out what life was like back in the 21st century.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The AI that evolves from us within the next hundred(s) years,
| will likely have a good memory persistence.
|
| Then again, I suppose if it is destroyed by an AI from a
| neighboring region/galaxy, that too might be lost.
|
| I wonder how many civilizations have been obliterated and
| forgotten by the AIs they created.
| Retric wrote:
| I don't see why it's assumed AI would be overly antagonist.
| For example without biological needs they might prefer
| Mercury, Moons, or even Pluto depending on constraints over
| earth. Similarly computers have great memory persistence, but
| AI may sacrifice that for increased flexibility.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| I'm betting more on the odds of living in the stone age after
| WWIII than a general AI anytime soon.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Ah, The Inner Light, s05e25, by many regarded as the best TNG
| episode ever. I re-watched it recently, still a powerful
| message. And there is plenty of other quality to choose from...
| gibolt wrote:
| We are closing in on enough storage and cheap cameras to easily
| store a lifetime from at least one vantage point.
| doovd wrote:
| With climate change etc there probably won't be future
| archaeologists so :shrug:
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Maybe they'd be from another solar system.
| medstrom wrote:
| This is not a chatroom, think twice. Climate change won't
| kill literally everyone.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Wow. Some of these seem highly significant.
|
| EG " _Neanderthal flake with birch tar grip - 50kya_ "
|
| AKAIK, birch tar production has already been attributed to
| neanderthals, but hafting hasn't yet been. I wonder what kind of
| tool that is. It doesn't look like a spear point or axehead.
| yarcob wrote:
| I think the most fascinating, and also frustrating, thing about
| archaeology is how little we actually know.
|
| We find these tiny fragments, and they tell us something about
| the past, but every artefact invites a lot more questions than it
| provides answers.
|
| My late father spent some time researching tattoos and body marks
| in antiquity. A common pattern that appeared often were 4 dots
| arranged like the vertices of a rhombus. The pattern appears eg.
| on terracotta figurines and must have had some significance. But
| we have no idea what it meant, and all we can do is make wild
| guesses.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Could be birth marks of a king or some famous, so having them
| was considered high status. See beauty marks
| anyfoo wrote:
| Right, that's the stuff we come up with: Kings, religious
| ceremonies, symbolism.
|
| And then it turns out (or rather, we never fully figure out)
| that it just meant that the owner paid that time's equivalent
| of sales tax on the figurine. And that the "unknown site
| probably used for ritual purposes" was more akin to that
| society's DMV, and people spend a lot of time there sitting
| around being bored until it's their turn at the clerk's
| station.
|
| I should add that I don't really think that my "sales tax"
| explanation is in any way more likely in that specific case,
| but I do wonder if we (as layman, not necessarily
| archeologists) tend to discard mundane theories a lot. And
| yet I somehow find how the mundane stuff was handled in
| ancient times much more interesting then any regal or
| religious ceremony stuff...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Sure, of course we do. That's what we found when we were
| finally able to translate old Babylonian tablets. We
| thought they might be works of literature or important
| stories. They were basically all contractual agreements and
| receipts. As a result, we may have to conclude that written
| language was probably created for business, not for art.
| medstrom wrote:
| In hindsight, this makes a lot of sense. _Of course_
| writing was created to keep track of who got paid and who
| 's yet to be paid, who's paid their taxes and who's yet
| to pay.
| grillvogel wrote:
| and much of what we do "know" is still based purely on
| speculation but has been repeated enough to be considered
| truth. consider modern "ironic" appreciation of things, how
| would that appear to future archaologists?
| yupper32 wrote:
| I think part of it is that some items/patterns/etc might
| actually mean absolutely nothing. It might be a dead end even
| with perfect knowledge.
|
| Some Neanderthal was fucking around with some rocks one day and
| we look for some meaning in the remains. Was it a tool?
| Religious artifact? Nope, just Bobby Neander being bored and
| hitting rocks together into a shape with no meaning.
|
| To be clear, that doesn't mean it's not worth trying to find
| the meaning if there is one.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Good ole Bobby "Bashrocks" Neander. RIP Bobby.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| The problem is that we cannot use the scientific method to be
| sure of past events. The correct answer to a lot of
| anthropology is "We don't know" which is the most scientific
| explanation. I expect most people have the same expectation of
| truth across different sciences. It is a difficult concept for
| many people in my experience that hard physics is more truthful
| than anthropology, which are both called sciences.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I agree about the overall problem, but there are some
| empirical techniques we can use. Being able to extract and
| sequence DNA from preserved remains has been revolutionary.
| It's also amazing what we can do with pollen now. These don't
| solve the problem of reconstructing pre-historic culture, but
| they have helped us understand pieces of the picture better.
| They've been able to discredit some ideas that were widely
| held in the past.
| gpvos wrote:
| Yes, you can use the scientific method in the historical
| sciences. There are all kinds of methods that you can use to
| be more certain about things. (I'm no historian, so I cannot
| elaborate, sorry.) The level of certainty you can reach may
| often be different from the exact sciences, but some things
| can be very certain; no-one is going to deny that Julius
| Caesar existed, for example.
| pomian wrote:
| And yet the more one learns in any scientific field, finds
| you answering more and more: "I don't know." The more you
| learn about anything the more you realize how little you
| 'know'. Only idiots are left with the certainty they are
| 'right.'
| wanderingstan wrote:
| "We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As
| our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our
| ignorance."
|
| John Archibald Wheeler
| ethn wrote:
| You're not wrong, despite Wittgenstein's Brown Papers, his
| criticism of Golden Bough---people continue to refuse to
| acknowledge the limits of knowledge.
|
| Here's an author theorizing on why people go to festivals
| TODAY, instead of the obvious answer that they're a fun
| social game he creates this entire abstract theory about
| worship and religion.
|
| https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/girard-series-
| part-1-th...
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| Future humans will say the same thing about us for letting
| non-God billionaires have disproportionate control of our
| economic behavior.
|
| "They sat around playing banal number games, trying to
| manipulate each other's agency, pointing at some other
| typical human called "Jeff Bezos", seeking to get rich like
| him not realizing he's actually protected by their consent
| to then contemporary political arrangements. They played
| along with all of it!"
|
| The only difference is they'll probably have a perfect
| digital record of our acquiescence to laugh at over.
| medstrom wrote:
| "Manipulating each other's agency" is a hell of a
| description of nonessential economic activity.
| dorkwood wrote:
| Future alien civilizations are going to think the cool S means
| something. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S
| meepmorp wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it means not paying attention during class in
| 1985
| gpvos wrote:
| Huh, never seen that before.
| dhosek wrote:
| You clearly didn't go to high school in the 1980s.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| It's still a very popular thing for kids to doodle even
| today.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I too feel frustrated that we know so little. One big issue,
| I've come to realize after visiting so many sites around the
| world.
|
| A lot of the amazing archaeological sights are in countries
| that struggle/struggled economically and security wise. (E.g.
| Iraq, Ethiopia, Turkey, Syria, etc.)
|
| Many sites are destroyed or we simply can't invest the proper
| time and money. Very frustrating.
| shoto_io wrote:
| It's amazing that just 10k years ago England was part of
| continental Europe... I wonder if people back then were worried
| about climate change too.
| pomian wrote:
| Well, they lost their land bridge. At some point they had to
| say farewell to their relatives across the water. It probably
| didn't happen all at once. It just got harder every year to
| make it across. Then one year, that low low tide, didn't
| happen. Makes you imagine all sorts of adventures and stories
| related to 'the crossing'.
| lovemenot wrote:
| It's hard to say whether this or the more recent Brexit was
| the more damaging.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Absolutely. Sounds like great material for a novel.
| emmelaich wrote:
| You might like Helliconia by Brian Aldiss.
| gpvos wrote:
| (2020)
| fernly wrote:
| Off topic, DAE find that drop-down Science Mag "eyelid" banner
| extremely annoying? I see it both here and on the In The Pipeline
| blog[1] I often read. Is there a browser extension that will kill
| such things?
|
| [1] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > MONSTER, THE NETHERLANDS--On a clear, windy autumn afternoon
| last October
|
| Can I just say how cool it would be to say that I live in a town
| called Monster?
| jacobriis wrote:
| Monster doesn't mean monster in Dutch.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I figured that. Neither does *UCKING, Austria have the same
| English meaning:
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/austrian-village-of-fucking-decides-
| to...
| Bayart wrote:
| You can write << Fucking >>, you know.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I did not know. Thank you.
| jhgb wrote:
| > ... << ... >> ...
|
| Pardon your French? ;)
| 1-more wrote:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monster#Dutch sure it does.
| Probably not how this town got its name, but it does.
| 317070 wrote:
| It does. Monster is also a dutch word, with the same meaning
| as the English monster (horrid creature), but can also be
| used as synonym for "a sample".
|
| In this case, the name of the village probably comes from the
| same word as the English "Monastry". Other places have the
| same etymology, e.g. the city Munster in Germany.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Yes it does
| gpvos wrote:
| Until 31 October 2021 there is an exhibition about Doggerland in
| the Rijksmuseum voor Oudheden in Leiden.
| skyde wrote:
| if i was at the beach and found one of those "artefact" there is
| no way I would they they are important or old.
|
| Can someone explain how to _easily_ know if what you are looking
| at is important or not.
| mod wrote:
| Stone tools worked by humans are all important. It's not easy
| to distinguish Neanderthal from ours, or anything like that, or
| modern from ancient, but it's vastly more likely you'll find an
| ancient stone tool than a modern version. Very few people are
| making them, and even fewer are leaving them out on the ground.
| datameta wrote:
| > Eventually, that, too, came to an end. On the basis of
| sediments and computer models, researchers think a tsunami
| originating off modern-day Norway around 6150 B.C.E. devastated
| Doggerland with waves at least 10 meters high. Soon the landscape
| vanished as global sea levels continued to rise.
|
| Ah, another explanation for one of the many "Great Flood" myths.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| It's pretty wild to think Belgium/Netherlands/France were
| connected to Great Britain via a huge swath of land. This means
| all the cultures intermixed for many generations moving back and
| forth. It's no wonder we have Stonehenge and all of the ancient
| cultures in Britain if there was an actual land-bridge to that
| area!
|
| I wonder if places like Ireland or more of the Scandanavian
| Islands would've been accessible as well? This doesn't even
| account for all the other places in the globe that humans may
| have moved around differently, like in China or India there may
| be other ancient differences too.
| medstrom wrote:
| I think you're overstating the importance of land bridges. The
| English Channel is narrow and hunter-gatherers have crossed
| much greater bodies of water, like in Oceania. Actually, water
| is essentially a teleportation device: you arrive by slow foot
| travel to some coast and end up on the opposite coast pretty
| quickly.
|
| But everything is different when you go to prehistory, it seems
| hard for us laymen to imagine correctly. A given band of
| hunter-gatherers would not have travelled far in one
| generation. And I don't really see why the Stonehenge couldn't
| have been erected by a culture that had not even met another
| culture for a hundred generations. Look at the statues of
| Easter Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_island).
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