[HN Gopher] Europe's now-drowned 'lost world' and the 25m-high t... ___________________________________________________________________ Europe's now-drowned 'lost world' and the 25m-high tsunami that finished it off Author : bandibus Score : 187 points Date : 2022-04-18 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (everythingisamazing.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (everythingisamazing.substack.com) | rurban wrote: | Turns out it was about 2.5m. Off by factor 10. And only a wild | theory for the disappearance of Doggerland. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide | greatpostman wrote: | I think it's pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed | long before recorded history. They may not have had the tools of | working with metal, but they definitely had sophisticated | philosophical views and moral frameworks. I would bet this goes | back even 30-50 thousand years. This idea that humanity sprang up | out of nothing in Sumerian/Babylon is very contrived. There was | an ice age ten thousand years ago, the cessation of which caused | the floods, which destroyed large swaths of human "civilization" | drewcoo wrote: | Civilization means people living in cities. To do that, | agriculture is probably needed. There's also probably some | level of specialization and accompanying social stratification. | | History is written records. | | There were many prehistoric societies, but because civilization | tended to have some form of written records, the prehistoric | societies are not considered civilizations. | | No scholars would clai that humanity sprang out of nothing in | those places. I mostly hear that from bible literalists. But if | some of their people weren't in cities, the society was not | civilized. And if there was nobody to write about them they | were prehistoric. | Swizec wrote: | > if there was nobody to write about them they were | prehistoric | | A comment from a documentary about Rome stuck in my mind, it | goes something like : _" There is no history of Europe before | Rome because for most of Europe, history starts with Rome | conquering that region. They were the first to write anything | down."_ | | Similarly, we know how slavic peoples migrated into Europe | because those regions stopped sending written updates back to | Rome. Did they then revert back to pre-history? Or does a | region continue to "have history" even if for a few centuries | nobody in that area writes anything down? | sorokod wrote: | How about ancient Greece? Also Europe as something that has | a cultural identity is relatively new, difinitley postdates | Rome. | 867-5309 wrote: | or Egypt | sorokod wrote: | Yes, except that is not Europe but the distinction is | anachronistic hence my comment. | habosa wrote: | You might be interested to read "The Dawn of Everything" | which discusses all of this. Cities and agriculture are far | from requirements to have civilization. | | https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314/314162/the-dawn-of- | every... | anonAndOn wrote: | Under these terms, all 400+ tribes north of the deserts of | North America were prehistoric until the arrival of the | European and some paper. | Tuna-Fish wrote: | Yes. This is absolutely correct. The generally accepted | view is that prehistory ended and history started on the | North American continent roughly mid 1490's. | | This only sounds prepostrous if you don't understand what | the terms mean. | | This is also roughly the timeframe when the last stone-age | society near Europe finally got subjugated by Europeans and | stone age finally ended in the old world, when the Spanish | crushed the Guanches in the Canaries. | kibwen wrote: | There were plenty of urban centers in the Americas prior to | European arrival, e.g. Cahokia: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia | anonAndOn wrote: | That addresses civilization but not prehistory as there | is no known record of written language north of the | desert barrier. | heavyset_go wrote: | Genuine question, how much evidence of agriculture would | survive an ice age, being crushed under the weight of 2 mile | thick ice sheets and then washed away or engulfed by bodies | of water once they've melted? | [deleted] | MisterTea wrote: | > There were many prehistoric societies, but because | civilization tended to have some form of written records, the | prehistoric societies are not considered civilizations. | | What about cave paintings? | pas wrote: | That's archeology or something, not real history :) | jl6 wrote: | I personally find cave paintings to be compelling evidence | for a behaviourally modern mind. They demonstrate great | skill. The artists did not live in cities or have | agriculture or writing, but I have little doubt that they | perceived the world as we do, and were capable of | essentially the same speech and thought patterns as we are. | It's an awe-inspiring tragedy and mystery that those lives | were lived in a manner so unknown to us, and yet | potentially so relatable to us. | | They absolutely would have had conversations around | campfires. Talking about what, I wonder? | dleslie wrote: | There are known city sites that predate agriculture in their | regions. | pmlnr wrote: | Example, source, etc? | JanisErdmanis wrote: | A comprehensive evidence around the world with sites and | prehistoric periods are well outlined in the last David | Grabaur's book "The Dawn of Everything". | jcranmer wrote: | I assume you're referring to Catalhoyuk | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk)? | ge96 wrote: | Interesting the sand bags, I do see a concrete wall | around the whole thing. | | It's great people care enough to set that | up/preserve/study it. | [deleted] | api wrote: | This fits a pattern in science: the further we look, the more | we find. | | First we thought the Earth was the center of the universe. Then | we thought it was just our solar system. Then we thought the | Milky Way Galaxy was the whole of the universe. Some | astronomers persisted in this belief all the way up to the | 1920s. Now... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field#Hubble... | | ... and we've just launched the JWST which will be able to see | a lot further than Hubble. | | Gobekli Tepe pushed the date for civilization back a few | thousand years: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe | | It'll probably get pushed back some more. Also I've always | thought there are too many flood myths around the world for it | to be chance. No I don't think there was a true global flood | since it makes no sense, but the end of the ice age would have | brought sea level rise and enormous regional floods due to | things like the bursting of glacial dams. This would have | occurred over the same period of time across the world, leaving | behind traces in myth and legend but also physically destroying | a lot of evidence of civilizations in the path of these | disasters. | HuShifang wrote: | On the flip side, let's also not forget that the earliest | civilizations (so to speak) were also rather different from | later ones in some striking ways. Put simply, they were a lot | more literal-minded, and didn't engage in as much abstraction | as did their descendents. Ancient fertility statues (even as | late as classical Greece and Rome) are grotesquely over- | endowed; ritual sacrifices of food and symbolic objects have in | many places taken the place of sacrificed slaves or wives. | Mesopotamian city states would fight wars because, like a frat | prank, one would steal a statue of a god like Marduk from the | other's temple -- only, there was no notion that it was a | statue, rather it _was_ the god. Early Egyptian murals speak to | the power of kings by showing piles of dicks their soldiers had | cut off of defeated enemies (unlike Egyptians they were | uncircumcised). And there 's the whole mummification thing, | which betrays a certain literal-mindedness about immortality. | So yeah, it's a spectrum - but both before and after the "rise | of civilization" | Ar-Curunir wrote: | This seems like unjustified speculation; people could look at | e.g. people leaving cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve as | an example of how modern Americans are poor at abstraction | and have to give literal offerings to their god Santa Claus. | | AFAWK there has been no significant change in the anatomy of | humans in the past 200k years, and similarly nothing to | indicate that we've had major changes in things like our | ability to abstract. The bicameral theory of mind has been | thoroughly discredited. | HuShifang wrote: | You can _always_ find examples of irrational behavior, but | the difference is scale. Today a major state isn 't | spending inordinate resources to ensure that the cookies | left for Santa are prepared using the finest ingredients | (say, a few million dollars' worth of gold) by the most | accomplished bakers, and then placed on a dish so large | that it can be seen from space (and hundreds or thousands | of people died making it). | | If you can show me the tomb of a prominent world leader | from the last, let's say, 500 years that's decorated with | images of his/her enemies' severed genitalia, I'll concede | the point. | Ar-Curunir wrote: | I feel that the problem with your claim is that within | 500 years all humans everywhere have suddenly become | abstracters extraordinaire, which just seems terribly | unrealistic. | | Generally every theory which talks about these great | leaps in human cognition, and ties these to human | "development" while ascribing diminished intellectual | capabilities to our ancestors, seems to fall apart after | scrutiny (e.g., Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, bicameral theory | of mind). | | Also, we've seen plenty of "undoing" of abstraction in | long-continuing cultures. E.g., in Hinduism, idol worship | wasn't really a thing in Vedic times, and only became | popular in Puranic times (over a 1000 years later). Many | Hindus do believe that some idols contain portions of | gods, especially those idols that reside ones in "big" | temples. I would not say that these folks have lost their | ability to abstract. As another example, post-Vedic | religion underwent a large amount of abstraction in the | Upanishads, but then reverted to personification of | deities via the bhakti movement and in Puranic religion. | Again, I wouldn't say that Hindus lost their ability to | think abstractly. | ativzzz wrote: | > grotesquely over-endowed | | Download almost any anime-style game off the Google Play | store and you'll see the exact same thing | HuShifang wrote: | Yeah, that's why I hesitated to include it on the list, but | I don't think such representations are very common in | religious contexts today (and these statues do seem to have | been religiously significant, e.g. all the Venus statues | from prehistoric Europe and the Middle East) | thechao wrote: | I'm not sure I've ever seen "literal mindedness" argued like | this in recent works? Do you have any papers or books you | could point to where an archeologist or historian argues | this? | | Most of the recent academic work I'm familiar with tends to | emphasize the opposite case, tempered by the fact that | ancient _religion_ and _culture_ tend to be very alien. Take, | for instance, popular reviews by Irving Finkel in his "Noah" | book, or Ed Barnhart's work on the Moche, etc. | HuShifang wrote: | Well, I _am_ a working professional historian of the | premodern world, and this is certainly my impression from | years of reading Chinese-language primary sources about | China during the Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties. Spend | some time with the literature, and you 'll read how Mohists | coupled careful logic and quasi-scientistic reasoning with | "ghosts who will punish you if you're bad," about how Han | dynasty tomb exterior-door inscriptions talk extensively | about how the decedent's family loves them but earnestly | hopes to never, ever see them again, because if they did it | would mean the decedent left their tomb to punish them for | their unfilial conduct. (And you'll read how gingerly the | subject of human sacrifice in the distant past, or emperors | indulging itinerant "Daoist" rainmakers, to the | considerable chagrin of more secular-minded officials, is | handled.) I can't point to anything synoptic on the Chinese | case -- early China scholars tend to make a lot (frankly | _too_ much) out of a little (we don 't have _that_ many | texts -- but Herbert Fingarette 's "Confucius: The Secular | as Sacred" was formative for all the early China people I | studied with on a more intellectual register. One | controversy that gets lots of play: whether Confucius urged | performing the rituals "as if" the dead were present, or if | they _were_ actually present. Linguistically, the phrasing | is entirely open to the latter, even if people like to make | the thinking presented in the "Analects" out to be more | modern-seeming. At the risk of giving too much of a peek | behind the curtain, so to speak, broadly speaking -- this | being several decades since Foucault made his mark -- | careers get made by either emphasizing the past's | surprising lack of alterity or by finding some spectacular, | flamboyantly surprising new form of alterity. And the | former is rather easier to pull off than the latter. | | But, I read about the piles of genitalia in Toby | Wilkinson's "The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt" and about | the god-statues in Trevor Bryce's "Babylonia: A Very Short | Introduction." | dgellow wrote: | > This idea that humanity sprang up out of nothing in | Sumerian/Babylon is very contrived. | | I don't think anyone believe that's the case? It's just what we | have records for. You need a lot of prior development to arrive | to the point where you have recorded history. | jazzyjackson wrote: | Eh, maybe no one who's thought critically about it, but past | the "earth is 6,000 years old" crowd I think you'll find a | "cilization is 10,000 years old, before which we were hunter | gatherers" crowd | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: | I think most people are just repeating what they learned as | children and haven't given it much more thought. So the | answer is usually some combination of religious influences, | when you were schooled, and what textbook your teacher was | using. | | In 2008, this is what a certain group in Hollywood thought | 10,000 B.C. was like... anachronisms and all.[0] | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_BC_(film) | vmception wrote: | The ice age itself would have had glaciers grinding down all | evidence to nothing. Even our metal based structures would not | withstand it very well over a few thousand years. | | I agree that it doesn't make sense for there to be a _single_ | 6,000 year time period of human prosperity and collaboration, | its much more likely that there have been multiple periods over | a 200,000 time span. Perhaps some traits in humans continually | set us back to a rudimentary lifestyle with thinned | populations. | jltsiren wrote: | Early civilizations did not appear out of nothing 6000 years | ago. The earliest evidence of cereal harvesting in the Middle | East is from 23000 years ago. The transition from hunting and | gathering to sedentary farming communities took over 10000 | years, and those communities needed thousands of years to | grow into large sophisticated cities. | | It's also good to remember that there has been an ice age for | the last 2.5 million years. The climate is generally too cold | and dry for agriculture, except during relatively short | interglacial periods. Maybe there was an opportunity for a | civilization to develop in the Eemian period 130k to 115k | years ago, but that was likely the only window of | opportunity. | robonerd wrote: | > _Even our metal based structures would not withstand it | very well over a few thousand years._ | | Well, not steel framed buildings or anything like that. But | our modern civilization has certainly done things that I | think stand a good chance of lasting hundreds of millions of | years. Take for instance glass bottles. Those tossed into the | ocean won't last more than a few decades before they're | eroded to nothing (see: sea glass), but we've created _so | many_ glass bottles and distributed them so far and wide, it | is virtually certain that many of them will survive in the | soil for a very _very_ long time. There is no doubt that | glass can last for millions of years under the right | conditions; there is a lot of volcanic glass around that | attests to this. There are so many glass bottles in landfills | or littered around the world, at least some of them are | certain to be in geologically stable conditions. | | Then there are things like mountaintop removal mining. Maybe | normal quarries get filled in and hidden over time, but | there's no hiding the top of a mountain being sliced right | off. | gibolt wrote: | Humans were not mass manufacturing things back then, and | there were orders of magnitude less people. | | On top of that, we don't even have exact knowledge of where | to look. Most places we do discover have plenty of signs | and evidence, they are just buried under 10ft of dirt and | thus essentially undiscoverable. | robonerd wrote: | > _Humans were not mass manufacturing things back then_ | | Ah, but how do you know that? You weren't there. ;) | | Sometimes the absence of evidence _really is_ evidence to | the contrary, but other times it isn 't. It all depends | on whether or not it's reasonable to expect evidence to | be found given the amount of looking we've done and the | nature of the evidence we're looking for. If we don't | find a ton of glass coke bottles in the soil around the | world, after digging around in innumerable construction | sites on almost every corner of the globe, that's | _strong_ evidence that nobody was mass manufacturing coke | bottles 50k years ago. | | Contrast that with the lack of evidence for ancient | wooden sailing vessels. We don't have any evidence of | wooden ships 50k years ago. But supposing there were a | shipbuilding culture back then, would we really expect to | find evidence for it? All those wood artifacts would be | LONG gone, even the oldest bog wood ever found is less | than 10k years old. In this case, the absence of evidence | is weak evidence to the contrary at best. | rfwhyte wrote: | Were that the case we'd have evidence of the "Material | culture" of these cultures, yet we do not. Conversely, we | have literally TONS of archaeological evidence of Neolithic | hunter-gatherer people spread across the entire world during | these so called "Lost ages" so personally I think it's | preposterous to assume that somehow some advanced | civilization that left absolutely ZERO trace of it's supposed | grandeur existed beside a hunter-gatherer civilization for | which we have plenty of archaeological evidence. | | It's a certainly fun through experiment to think of some lost | ancient civilization with glittering cities and high | technology that was ground down to dust by the last ice-age, | but there's literally no factual evidence to support such a | notion and plenty of factual evidence to disprove it, so it's | best not to get sucked too far down that particular | irrational rabbit-hole. | 7speter wrote: | A good chance that the glaciers might have also grounded | whole societies as well | saalweachter wrote: | Eh, that doesn't get you much. Glaciers weigh heavy on the | minds of North Americans and Northern Europeans, but they | didn't reach much further -- no civilization south of, say, | 40N would be obliterated by the glaciers themselves such | that we would expect no trace to remain today. | | Sea level change would be a bigger global risk, but aside | from _sudden_ flooding, you would expect that to just push | _back_ an established civilization to the uplands of their | territories rather than wiping them out root and branch. | vmception wrote: | Oh yes, any number of things could be less conducive to | human life or a large population. | | I'm just thinking war tactics and war machines keep it in | check too. | mc32 wrote: | We can only go by what we know and what we have evidence for. | Sure, other small civs likely existed, but we don't have known | evidence of them and their history, etc. At most we have tombs | and archeological ruins to go by. So we go with the earliest | civs for whom we have written evidence as well as lots of | physical evidence for in addition to present-day influence. | Otherwise things start to get very speculative. | animal_spirits wrote: | Yeah we shouldn't say we "know" that advanced civilizations | existed, but there's nothing wrong with hypothesizing that | they did. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. | donkeybeer wrote: | But we must also be careful not to get into Russel's teapot | territory in the course of our hypothesizing. | newsclues wrote: | Plato wrote about it. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaeus_(dialogue) | | "Let me begin by observing, first of all, that nine thousand | was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which | was said to have taken place between all those who dwelt | outside the Pillars of Heracles and those who dwelt within | them: this war I am now to describe. | | Of the combatants on the one side the city of Athens was | reported to have been the ruler, and to have directed the | contest; the combatants on the other side were led by the | kings of the islands of Atlantis," | robonerd wrote: | > _We can only go by what we know and what we have evidence | for_ | | There is nuance here, in the degree to which uncertainty due | to lack of evidence is surfaced in scientific communications | for the public. | | Take for instance, the behavior of dogs. Science cannot [yet] | objectively answer the question of how much the subjective | qualia of a dog is comparable to the qualia of humans. What | then can we say about whether dogs feel 'love'? Some might | say that science has not yet answered this question; that is | fine. | | But others get overeager and assert that because science | hasn't demonstrated that dogs feel love, the scientific | position is to assume all apparent demonstrations of love | from dogs are little more than elaborate food seeking | behavior. This goes too far, it assumes a lack of evidence is | evidence to the contrary, implicitly treating science as | complete until proven otherwise. I think this overzealous | sort of 'scientific' thinking reflects a _dog_ matic attitude | which is actually antithetical to the real scientific method. | Spooky23 wrote: | It's a great point. | | When you get to the edge of knowledge, ignoring obvious | things and glossing over tends to rule the day. | | Knowing what we know about people, it seems absurd to think | that people just went poof, "civilization" has arrived! | There were a lot fewer humans in the past, and hundreds of | generations are lost to time. But the narrative of the | pageant of history, often leading to the <insert nation | here> greatness of today doesn't work with "I don't know" | mc32 wrote: | Well, it would seem like the middle way would be to | postulate things such as these but not assert them as | 'received knowledge'. And just as we might postulate that | dogs can experience love, we can also postulate the | opposite and discuss both without giving one a | preponderance of support till we can develop such support. | Cupertino95014 wrote: | "qualia" -- what does a $2 word like this say that a $0.25 | word like "qualities" doesn't? | robonerd wrote: | I chose to use that word to preempt nitpicky objections | about measuring oxytocin in dog brains (which doesn't | actually tell you anything about the subjective | experience the dog feels.) 'Qualia' refers specifically | to the subjective conscious experience, which is | something science is presently ill-equipped to answer | questions about. The word 'qualities' does not have the | same rhetorical effect. | | As an aside, what's the point of complaining about | uncommon words? Dictionaries have never been more | convenient to use. If you didn't know the word before, | then in about 5 seconds you can learn what it means and | your personal vocabulary will be enriched. | vasco wrote: | > If you didn't know the word before, then in about 5 | seconds you can learn what it means and your personal | vocabulary will be enriched. | | That was me and I was glad to learn it. Thanks for using | it! | dragonwriter wrote: | "qualia" are the internal experiences of sensory | perceptions of the subject, "qualities" are the | attributes of the subject. They look a bit similar, and | are etymologically connected, but their denotations are | about as far apart as is possible for words that are the | same part of speech. | Peritract wrote: | Precise language is useful for discussing complex ideas | precisely. | | If HN is to be a place for gratifying intellectual | curiousity [1], then dismisisng dismissing accurate | terminology as pretentious _purely_ because it is | unfamiliar is counter-productive. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | nanidin wrote: | Qualia is your subjective experience of your senses - how | can we discuss whether we see the color red the same way, | or whether we smell a rose the same way? The core concept | we would discuss is qualia. | | Qualia is not plural qualities so I'm afraid I don't see | the connection, or the downside to using an expanded | vocabulary for that matter. | fsloth wrote: | I warmly recommend to anyone interested in this line of thought | James Scott's "Against the grain" for oldest evidence of the | first agrarian states in the middle east. | | "Against the grain" points out that it's not obvious as number | of people increases everyone wants to live in cities ruled over | and taxed by someone else. | | "I think it's pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed | long before recorded history." | | If you mean beyond 12k years or so I would not say it's "pretty | clear". I would go as far and say it's psychologically and | biologically feasible, but we have no evidence to back this up. | | What archaeological evidence does prove, is that arrival of | anything resembling civilization was a shambolic affair lasting | thousands of years, composed of waxing and waning city-sized | polities that could at maximum control only few tens of square | kilometers of area. | | What we do have are sites like Gobekli Tepe at max 12 000 years | ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe | | The arrival of agricultural plants is around the same time | during Neolithic Revolution | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution | | I think you would need to expand on the meaning of | "sophisticated". I don't want to presume your intent with the | use of this word. | | But, a hunter gatherer society looks quite a lot different from | an agricultural society. | | Of course the people living in a hunter gatherer society could | very well be artistically and philosophically very developed. | But the likelihood of an "Atlantean supercivilization" would be | very small. | | I think both options are pretty cool. As a species we have a | history of 200 000 years. Either our past is riddled with | complex emergent societies that have been ground to dust, | forgotten, only for the cycle to start again a new over and | over again over thousands of years. And only on our current | cycle we've managed to start to reach the full potential of our | species. | | Or, there have not been "civilizational cycles" which would | make our anthropocene epoch with it's industrialization and | science something even more mind blowingly astonishing. | | Both options are humbling. | arbitrage wrote: | Your suppositions are interesting, but there's simply no proof | of them. | Naga wrote: | Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Unfortunately | most of the (probable) evidence is under meters of water and | mud. | judahmeek wrote: | Is there such a thing as "evidence of absence"? | earleybird wrote: | I'm thinking that would be demonstrating that there | cannot be evidence. | LeanderK wrote: | But also untouched. Maybe we'll find a way to dig up | evidence in the future... | [deleted] | throwaway5752 wrote: | As long as it has been investigated scientifically, then | "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is | actually not correct. To my understanding that is exactly | how particle physics research is conducted. | | My understanding is that there is no evidence for pre- | historic human societies that had advanced technologies. We | have hard data in our genetics for the timeframes of human | existence (statistical rate of random genetic drift vs | nearest ancestors) in addition to the fossil record, we | have good information from ice cores about when/what of | particulates were in the atmosphere, we know general rates | of tectonic movements , and it's easy to observe what's | under kilometers of strata with drilling cores if anyone | has a good hypothesis as to where to drill. | greatpostman wrote: | Actually I think platos account of Atlantis and how it | coincides with the dates of the flood is evidence. How could | he have known the exact years back of the flood? Sure it's | shaky, but the geology checks out. | TSiege wrote: | Why is the default assumption that since we can't prove | humans had sophisticated and complex lives comparable to our | own, that we must assume they are simpletons. Their minds | were no less capable of our own, why shouldn't we assume they | had complex morals and social structures? | jpollock wrote: | Because that's how we differentiate science from theology. | mynameisvlad wrote: | Hard disagree here. There's a lot of differences between | science and theology. There is nothing divine or holy | about potential past civilizations. | jpollock wrote: | Divine/Holy are how powerful people prevent others from | questioning things. I didn't mention Divine or Holy, just | theology. | | The core difference between Science and Theology is how | they deal with statements of "truth" without evidence. | | Theology starts with "it's true because I said so" | | Science starts with "it's true because I can demonstrate | it" | | That humans were complex in the past is a good | hypothesis. It needs evidence before it can be accepted | as fact, or even necessarily expect respect from others. | The lack of recent skull changes would seem to be a good | start. | | If someone believes the hypothesis to be true, they will | go explore and find evidence to back their claims. If | there was a complex society in the English Channel, it's | likely well preserved, just waiting to be found! | tbihl wrote: | >Theology starts with "it's true because I said so" | | To believe this is to cut yourself off from an | unfathomably rich collection of human knowledge, and it | is sad to see someone committed to it. | jpollock wrote: | Except, that's what it literally is. | | God speaks to someone. That someone says "It's true | because God told me so." | | I have read religious works, I'm not cut off from them. | It's impossible to be cut off from theology in the USA. | However, they all start with "it is true because I (the | author) say so". | [deleted] | kspacewalk2 wrote: | Because complex social structures tend to be innovations | and inventions similar to those in the physical realm. It | thus stands to reason that a 'social evolution' has taken | place over the millennia, and there's ample evidence of | that progress in the world around you. No one says | prehistoric humans were individually simpletons, just that | societally they were far simpler (as in strictly less | advanced). | medstrom wrote: | Please specify, what do you mean by "less advanced"? I | doubt a randomly picked person has a more complex net of | social interactions today than 50,000 years ago - | probably the personal level is a lot simpler today, since | we can outsource many needs to corporate and national | structures, with whom you also have pretty | straightforward relations. | SideburnsOfDoom wrote: | And in the absence of proof, the simplest assumption would be | that humans then were just as human, and so had sophisticated | societies etc. | chucksmash wrote: | A simpler alternative assumption could be this: | | 1. sophistication is driven by specialization | | 2. the ability to specialize is driven by access to surplus | energy | | 3. before the advent of agriculture bands of humans simply | did not have the excess calories available to them to | support a priesthood and philosophers and bureaucrats, etc. | SideburnsOfDoom wrote: | > sophistication is driven by specialization | | Sophisticated technology is driven that way for sure, | Sophisticated culture, I would argue, does not have those | preconditions. | Peritract wrote: | That is definitively not a simpler assumption. Each of | those bullet points is itself a new assumption. | christkv wrote: | Reminds me about the theory about how the Persian Gulf was the | origin of the first civilisations and the origin of the myth of | paradise. As the water rose people was displaced and eventually | ended up forming ur. | dgellow wrote: | In case people aren't familiar with Ur (I wasn't): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur | | > Ur was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient | Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern "Tell el-Muqayyar" | in south Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate. Although Ur was once a | coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian | Gulf, the coastline has shifted and the city is now well | inland, on the south bank of the Euphrates, 16 kilometres from | Nasiriyah in modern-day Iraq. The city dates from the Ubaid | period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in written history as a | city-state from the 26th century BC, its first recorded king | being Mesannepada. | | The pictures of the Ziggurat are really impressive. | HappyDreamer wrote: | I also wasn't. Quite depressing laws they had, I think: | 6. If a man violates the right of another and deflowers the | virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male. | 7. If the wife of a man followed after another man and he | slept with her, they shall slay that woman, but that male | shall be set free. ... and slaves of course ... | | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur- | Nammu#Surviving_law... ) | | Has it been like that for 4000+ years (at some places) :-( | | > pictures of the Ziggurat are really impressive | | Yes :-) | christkv wrote: | You might enjoy this podcast about the rise and fall of the | Sumerians https://youtu.be/d2lJUOv0hLA | anm89 wrote: | It's pretty fascinating to comprehend how different Europe's land | mass is from a couple thousand years ago. Imagining the current | world with shore lines as different as that is pretty hard to | Fathom. | | It puts the climate change narrative in perspective a bit. In | someways, the change we are experiencing isn't as unprecedented | as some people perceive. In other ways, if we are going to be on | a highly accelerated version of something like the event in the | story than we are going to be in for a hell of a ride. | quickthrower2 wrote: | This xkcd shows how highly accelerated it is: | https://xkcd.com/1732/ | del_operator wrote: | Didn't Time Team cover these topics and more? | ugl wrote: | Yep. Twice. Posted a link upstream. | gorm wrote: | The BBC program "In our time" did an episode on Doggerland some | years back https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006707 | pferde wrote: | There is an interesting Youtube video by AlternateHistoryHub on | exactly this topic ("What if Britain Wasn't An Island?"), so if | you're interested in a bit of theorizing about what could've been | or might've been, I recommend it: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssoKkvDbJpE | bandibus wrote: | This is sort of a sequel to a piece about the ancient | Mediterranean megaflood that did really well on here last month - | so, with my fingers crossed it's not too obnoxiously self- | promotional of me to do it, I thought I'd give this one a punt as | well. | | Also, thank you to those who left comments saying you didn't like | that former piece's introduction. I agree with you! It was | rambling and a bit self-indulgent and I should have just got on | with the story. This one does that (I think). Cheers. | argomo wrote: | No offense, but I couldn't get into this piece due to the | upfront clutter. Some readers may find it charming, but the | privilege comment, the chart tweet, the subscribe button, the | references to various novels... I just wasn't finding a good | starting point to latch onto the content promised by the | (excellent) headline. It felt like I had jumped into the middle | of a podcast where the hosts are bantering and not making much | progress on the discussion. | bandibus wrote: | That's a fair comment, thank you. I originally wrote it that | way because it was for longterm readers, with a bunch of | callbacks to previous stuff, as you mention there. But for | first-time visitors, it could be seen as clutter. I've cut | some of that out, and I think you're right. Cheers! | imilk wrote: | Just scroll past the 2nd picture and start reading. | dylan604 wrote: | Just... do that thing that nobody does on a normal basis, | nor should they be expected to. Just. Has to be one of my | favorite words. | munk-a wrote: | Whether you think wearing my mouse wheel down to actually | get to the directions for any recipe posted on a blog is | good or not - it certainly is normal... and ditto for | websites having a lot of above the fold advertisements. | formerkrogemp wrote: | It's great to see the follow up piece! I enjoyed the read, and | I think many others will too. | bandibus wrote: | Thank you! :) | klyrs wrote: | Thanks, I think this is great! I've often wondered if the | "great flood" myths and the legend of Atlantis have any factual | basis carried on in oral history. The Zanclean flood stretches | credulity beyond reason (as fun as it is to think about a story | passed down from the first Hominins), but this event happened | recently enough to ponder links to mythology... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessair | neaden wrote: | Great flood maybe, but we don't have any actual proof that | Atlantis was some ancient legend vs something Plato just made | up and said he heard from someone else since there are no | previous accounts of it before him. | munk-a wrote: | Also, please bear in mind that there's a good reason to | suspect that Plato bent a lot of things to suit his goal of | trying to explain philosophical concepts. Socrates is often | hailed as one of the greatest western philosophers but we | have almost no record of his character outside the | dramatizations written by Plato. We're almost certain he | was a real person but if Plato is to be trusted he was | extremely against any preservation of his discourses - | almost everything we've got on him comes from Plato | describing his mentor. | | So Atlantis might be much the same - the story of a city | lost to flooding (maybe even the same root story as the | biblical one) repurposed and embellished to express a | philosophical point. | akomtu wrote: | There should be some traces of it still. Per the legend, | the last day of Atlantis was the day Sahara became a | desert, so inspecting it should reveal something. Also, | "Atlantis" is a made up term (by Plato?). Again, per the | legend, that nation called themselves "lanka" and I wonder | if Sri Lanka ("Holy Lanka ") was named this way for a | reason. | greatpostman wrote: | Platos account of Atlantis which was destroyed ten thousand | years prior matches geological artifacts of huge climate | changes/end of the ice age. I'd say the evidence point to his | stories legitimatacy | joshuaissac wrote: | The Gunditjmara Australian story "Dreamtime" recounts the | eruption of the now-dormant volcano Budj Bim about 37,000 | years ago.[1][2] So it is possible for accounts of historical | events to be transmitted orally over a very long period of | time. | | 1. https://www.awe.gov.au/parks- | heritage/heritage/places/nation... | | 2. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-26/study-dates- | victorian... | EGreg wrote: | Megaflood? I thought the Biblical flood had no evidence for it | robscallsign wrote: | I'm curious if anyone has a similar image of the shoreline of the | west coast of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington state, etc. | ugl wrote: | Time Team did an episode/dig about this, and another sbout | doggerland in general. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTvOcm5dgDI ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-18 23:00 UTC)