> you can’t always make a definitive statement
It's far short of that. Human speculation is wildly unreliable and we seem to always overestimate it, perhaps because it's emotionally satisfying: What other speculative answer would we choose but something that satisfies our emotions? Lacking evidence, nothing compels us to face the unpleasant or unexpected. Look what our understanding of nature and the world was before we required evidence (before science).
But if you don't see how people yearn to believe in big dramatic things like conspiracies, aliens, bigfoot, or even simple narratives about single people changing the course of history, and how they only accept the complicated and/or boring reality with conscious effort, then, well, you seem to be living in a better universe than I am.
At least in the case of things like migrations, we're starting to get overwhelming genetic evidence.
> Balance would be nice, yes
a, you can drill a hole and cut a 100 ton stone block with a chisel
b, you create a hole with a drill, you use some for of stone cutting technology that supports cutting 100 ton stone blocks?
- Incan stonework with stones 'perfectly' cut to fit without mortar -- did they have advanced tools to support that? Or just persistence?
- Greek fire -- is there some lost mechanism here? Or just the growth of legends?
- the pyramids (I think not so controversial among academics, but certainly in pop culture)
Can you explain what you're referring to? Obviously "ancient aliens" does not count as archaeology, despite your insistence otherwise.
(Just saw the snark about ancient aliens; no idea where that came from. If you're going to try to imply that that's my position you'll need to produce some artifacts to back it up.)
Two examples from over a century is not evidence of unreliability.
> if you have a theory that explains facts (e.g. drilled holes) but no physical artifacts (in this case drills) it will be rejected".
Evidence is a requirement in all scholarship; the rest is speculation - which can be useful as a direction for searching for evidence, but is not sufficient to be accepted in any field. What field accepts claims without evidence?
As for the examples, when they start with "swings over the years" they're clearly taking a long-term perspective, and not trying to claim that modern archaeology will "believe anything" (especially not when their more prominent claim is that modern archaeology believes too little).
Ridicule is the refuge of those without an argument. Maybe try standup or Twitter.
But more importantly, where did MarkusQ ridicule you? What's your excuse for not reading what they actually said, but instead imagining something they said that was conveniently easy to criticize?
The important part of my phrase "laughably bad-faith" was the bad-faith part. That's what destroys "that relationship".
There are also numerous examples where physical artifacts haven't been immediately accepted. The white sands footprints. Monte Verde II. Others like Monte Verde I, Buttermilk Creek, and Cooper's ferry still aren't accepted despite physical evidence.
Consensus generally has high standards for anything that pushes boundaries. It's very easy to construct an "obvious" explanation that's totally wrong. We call these "just-so" stories. A narrative that's supported by physical evidence is a lot more verifiable.
Well of course it wasn't a current example -- to quote their original comment:
> Quite frustrating how archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". While some of the excesses of the past were clearly excessive ... [emphasis added]
In other words, they feel that historical examples of fanciful theories being mainstream has resulted in an over correction to modern archeology requiring unreasonably strict proof standards.
(There is a certain irony in a user called "AlotOfReading" not reading a fairly short comment carefully...)
Archaeology has come a long way over the last couple of centuries. It used to be little better than grave robbing and crackpot (often racist) theories. Archaeologists made all sorts of assumptions that turned out to be ridiculously (and sometimes tragically) wrong. Excavations once involved dynamite and bulldozers. Things have changed. Techniques for re-analyzing and extracting new information from old finds are allowing archaeologists to make discoveries without digging at all. Even a careful, modern dig is a destructive act that can only be conducted once.
It's not frustrating. It's progress.
Could you provide some evidence of your own? Archaeology has always been tied to evidence, as any scholarship is.
archeology is a cesspool.
not to mention tons of hings being twisted into weird shit only to try and push colonial agendas!
These days it's seen as a dynamic decision tree. If such and such people had so and so technology, then the logical ways to achieve that are x, y and z methods. Let's look for evidence for those things and weigh up the probability of each. Importantly, let's not allow cultural bias to cloud that analysis by consulting with the closest living relatives of said people.
The problems are, amongst others, maintaining that lack of cultural bias, recognising that you have to allow for unknown paths to technology, and being aware that every deductive step exponentially expands the decision tree whilst simultaneously clouding the certainty.
This is why modern archaeology is actually highly averse to saying things are "true", but it's also very strong on saying other things are almost certainly "false".
Most things in this tree of dwindling probability are "false" , and it takes serious evidence, linking a bunch of deductive steps, to flip the consensus to "true".
Historical sea levels were wildly different at different times, so not necessarily. For instance, the British isles were settled at a point when it was a part of the mainland: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland.png
For me the ‘archaeology not accepting things’ has been fueled by Graham Hancock etc. Archaeology is a lot like science, it sits on a body of research, if there’s evidence of advanced tooling and it’s properly investigated and written up, verified, no archaeologist would deny it.
My theory is that the industry is so small, they are afraid it will put them out of a career.