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Comment by treis | Hacker News Reader

This seems highly suspect. The paper says there's no evidence of burial and the evidence (mussel shells) that humans were involved with the site at all is thin. That they came from a "feeding ritual" seems to be based on nothing more than speculation.

Seems a lot more plausible that it washed up on a river bank during a flood. Or it died next to a river which subsequently changed course.

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The paper says the exact opposite of what you’re stating

> At death, he was deliberately buried in a midden initiated either shortly beforehand or contemporaneously with his burial

> The geomorphological setting and sediment properties indicate that a grave was cut into a landform positioned up to 2 m higher than the surrounding scroll plains. [..] The dingo was found in an articulated context below this surface, indicating the presence of a burial cut

>Layer 1 was the only unit containing identifiable cultural materials and was interpreted as a midden because it appeared to have been formed, at least partially, by anthropic additions of mussel shells. All in situ dingo bones were confined to Layer 1. There were no observable cut or fill features that indicated a hole had been excavated to emplace the Garli

>One of the Garli’s caudal vertebrae, recovered directly below the eroding burial, was sampled for AMS radiocarbon dating and returned an age range of 963–916 cal BP (ANU-75935). A freshwater mollusc shell sampled from the central burial block (UNSW-3415) returned an age of 1,178–957 cal BP. Three additional mussel fragments (cf. Velesunio sp.) were dated from Layer 1 of Zone 1 (UNSW-3414), the Garli burial core’s interface with Layer 1 (UNSW-3416), and from sediment within the burial core adjacent to the Garli skeleton itself (SANU-75235). These produced ages several hundred years younger than the Garli

What you’re quoting does not contradict their actual conclusion, which is the first paragraph I quoted

Okay but I didn't say they didn't conclude that. I said:

>no evidence of burial and the evidence (mussel shells) that humans were involved with the site at all is thin

But you’re saying there’s no evidence of a burial and they explicitly state that it was deliberately buried, and there are multiple other factors that indicate human involvement

Again, that there is no evidence of a burial and them explicitly stating that it was deliberately buried are not mutually contradictory things.

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