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Comment by arbitrage | Hacker News Reader

Your suppositions are interesting, but there's simply no proof of them.

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?

Because that's how we differentiate science from theology.

Hard disagree here. There's a lot of differences between science and theology. There is nothing divine or holy about potential past civilizations.

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!

>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.

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".

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).

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.

"I doubt a randomly picked person has a more complex net of social interactions today than 50,000 years ago..." Why? 50k years ago the average person lived with a small group of people and barely ever interacted with anyone else in the world. Whereas the common person, today, interacts with a large number of people socially; if you include virtual and physical interactions.

Yes, by simple count the social net may have been smaller in the past, but I was talking about complexity. Just imagine living with one tribe for the rest of your life, having to partake in everyone managing each other's friendships and relationships with each other.

> Why? 50k years ago the average person lived with a small group of people and barely ever interacted with anyone else in the world.

I think at least some of the people in this thread would argue against that, seeing as how it is about the idea of advanced or at least extant cities in the distant past. That would be exactly one of the points being argued on.

What you mean isn't something many of the relevant experts would agree with, but the words in the second sentence aren't bad.

Similarly to biological evolution, on any sufficiently long time scale the descendents aren't more advanced, simply better adapted to different conditions. Our ancestors' societies reflected wildly different contraints and path dependence, not primitiveness.

>Similarly to biological evolution, on any sufficiently long time scale the descendents aren't more advanced, simply better adapted to different conditions. Our ancestors' societies reflected wildly different contraints and path dependence, not primitiveness.

I understand what you mean, yet I refuse to call concepts like universal human rights, rule of law and the unacceptability of war crimes as simply different adaptations, as opposed to being strictly more advanced than the predecessor ideas.

That's fine, you can take whatever moral stance you want. It just doesn't have any place in scientific discussion.

There's actually pretty solid archaeological evidence of at least the cognitive capacities which would prefigure in civilisation through toolmaking and their complexity.

This is a long but highly informative presentation by Sander van der Leeuw from 2012:

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pOyQqPi28ug

Relevant segment begins at about 8m30s.

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.

And in the absence of proof, the simplest assumption would be that humans then were just as human, and so had sophisticated societies etc.

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.

Or maybe they simply choose to not spend those excess calories on philosophers and bureaucrats because doing so provided no immediate benefit? We have evidence showing that the rise of civilization and agriculture were a net negative for an average individual. It seems that at least in Egypt and Mesopotamia climate change, specifically an end of warmer and wetter climatic cycle, is what pushed people into fertile river valley. Most people would had probably preferred to remain hunter gatherers had that been possible or even independent farmers (which is what happened in the rest of the world.

The people in Mesopotamia (and in other similar areas which were slowly turning into a desert) didn't really have a choice. Building and maintaining irrigation systems takes a lot of people and coordination. Since most would probably prefer to be the ones handling 'coordination' aspect rather than digging trenches in the mud priests and philosopher classes had to appear to maintain social cohesion. It's much easier to convince peasants to give X% their harvest to the local strongman when they know that he's an divinely appointed king or maybe even a living god himself.

That is definitively not a simpler assumption. Each of those bullet points is itself a new assumption.

> sophistication is driven by specialization

Sophisticated technology is driven that way for sure, Sophisticated culture, I would argue, does not have those preconditions.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Unfortunately most of the (probable) evidence is under meters of water and mud.

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.

But also untouched. Maybe we'll find a way to dig up evidence in the future...

Is there such a thing as "evidence of absence"?

It's called a contradiction and it can only exist in the realms of logic.

I'm thinking that would be demonstrating that there cannot be evidence.

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