Comment by annadiru | Hacker News Reader

Comment by annadiru | Hacker News Reader

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Gobekli Tepi is a megalithic archeological site from (going on memory) 11,900 years ago. Are you aware of when the last ice age occurred?

The level of sophisticated engineering capability and large-scale coordination of populations makes it difficult to falsify the theory that it was produced by a civilization. I have no idea how else megastructures can come into existence. All surviving hunter-gatherer, simple hunter-agrarian, and pastoral groups demonstrate little capacity to produce such things.

Excuse my ignorance about the series and mr.hancock, as i havent bothered with the series or his books, but i'd like to reach an understanding: the claims of the space-debris collisions 12,000 years ago are false?

If not then these two facts aren't false, then it's important to note they coincide with myths of a global cataclysm, and do a lot to confirm graham's theory. Which seems from my 2-mile away viewpoint to have less to do with hand-wavy atlantians-this and more to do with the two points i mentioned above.

i think we can all agree thay academia (and especially anthropology) is one of the most anti-intellectual places on the planet. There's been tons of evidence over the past few years about how a lot of the "knowledge" and analysis that is produced is distorted at best and often outright incorrect. I'd say academia is just jealous and riding the wave of the absolutely fanatical censorship crusade that's been going on.

(for what it's worth my mom's an archeologist)

Gobekli Tepi is an interesting site, but doesn't really seem like 'advanced civilization' relative to later developments:

> "Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of modern times, pushing back the origins of monumentality beyond the emergence of agriculture. We are pleased to present a summary of work in progress by the excavators of this remarkable site and their latest thoughts about its role and meaning. At the dawn of the Neolithic, hunter-gatherers congregating at Göbekli Tepe created social and ideological cohesion through the carving of decorated pillars, dancing, feasting—and, almost certainly, the drinking of beer made from fermented wild crops."

(2012) "The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey", Dietrich et al.

The Younger Dryas is a well-studied period in paleoclimate science and the evidence of an impact triggering it is pretty scant, see this from 2011:

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.earscirev.2011.02.005

> "In summary, none of the original YD impact signatures have been subsequently corroborated by independent tests. Of the 12 original lines of evidence, seven have so far proven to be non-reproducible. The remaining signatures instead seem to represent either (1) non-catastrophic mechanisms, and/or (2) terrestrial rather than extraterrestrial or impact-related sources. In all of these cases, sparse but ubiquitous materials seem to have been misreported and misinterpreted as singular peaks at the onset of the YD. Throughout the arc of this hypothesis, recognized and expected impact markers were not found, leading to proposed YD impactors and impact processes that were novel, self-contradictory, rapidly changing, and sometimes defying the laws of physics."

It does seem to sound a bit like 'the lost civilization of Atlantis was wiped out by a cosmic impact' fairy tale. Also the claims of a 'cover-up' are pretty silly.

> Gobekli Tepi is an interesting site, but doesn't really seem like 'advanced civilization' relative to later developments

Shouldn't we define “advanced” relative to the time of its construction? Seems unfair to compare it to sites that came later. You need to compare to sites from the same period…is it advanced compared to those? That’s an obvious yes.

That site would take a wide variety of skills to build. You need established leadership, an established religious or cultural belief enough to motivate the project. You need planning, you need stone cutting skills, you need artisans with stone carving ability, you need people with building skills, you need laborers, you need logistics, you need to essentially feed a large workforce which means your non-labors on the project have to provide hunting and gathering not just for themselves, but for others who are unable.

> I'd say academia is just jealous and riding the wave of the absolutely fanatical censorship crusade that's been going on.

People who grew up internalizing the ethos of cancel culture are graduating into faculty and other positions of authority. Plus, even as students through sheer aggressiveness they were quite effective at changing academic norms. Less a matter of jealously and more a reaping of what was permitted to be sown, I would think.

Cancel culture was always fundamentally based on moral certitude; not just in the abstract, but in concrete, detailed application to their own and others' activities. So there's obvious dissonance with the nature of the scientific process. The way this dissonance plays out as the cancel culture crowd becomes the scientific establishment is already turning out to be... interesting.

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