New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought • Hacker News Board

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#141

Post by ceedan » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 3:57 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #85

ceedan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One area in the world where society may have evolved differently doesnt seem to be enough evidence to debunk the idea that the agricultural revolution gave rise to cities. Isn't this just an outlier... if it even does predate agriculture.

No time for a proper reply, but here's a series of blog posts addressing those issues (among others): https://evolution-institute.org/blog/complex-societies-befor... https://evolution-institute.org/blog/why-become-a-farmer/

It's an outlier. That's not deniable. It doesn't disprove the fact that agriculture lead to cities in so many other places... technically agriculture may not have been a prerequisite to cities, because of this one exception... cool. To say that this exception disproves the idea entirely, is to assume that all places evolved identically, which is just dumb.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#142

Post by Balgair » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

azernik wrote: post #133

Balgair wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Beringia went through many cycles of land and sea coverage[0]. Our climate has been pretty up and down since homo sapiens came onto the stage. Aside: The land-bridge was not just a passing point, it was actually a nice place to sit and stay, due to the wind, sea, and glacial climatic issues. Also, the coastal-migration idea states that we just skimmed the coast all the way to at least Chile. The issue with that…

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

Yeah! There are a lot of areas on Earth that Homo used to inhabit, but have disappeared under the oceans. Here are some more, for those that are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#143

Post by Balgair » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #87

flukus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it glaciate? That process often grinds away everything down to the bedrock.

I don't believe the Bering Strait area was subject to any recent (within the timeframe we're discussing) glaciation. And there is always a leading edge of the glacier where all that ground-up goodness ends up. Many dynamic biomes are found on the boundaries of extreme and hostile environments.

Take a look at the wiki page linked above. Beringia was never really covered in ice due to the wind and sea currents near it when it existed. The area was a 'refugium' of steppe grasses and light forests. It is thought that people may have moved there, stayed there, and then moved back into Asia as time went on, as well as into the Americas. As for using the area to farm, the very short summer growing season of higher latitudes is not well suited for agriculture.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#144

Post by Balgair » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 4:30 PM UTC

adrianratnapala wrote: post #124

jlarocco wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like we've been pretty smart for a long long time. There are civilizations all over the globe that rose, fell, and died, and we will never ever know of them. The idea of 'civilization' is ancient, it seems. I've wondered about that a lot, actually. If homo sapiens have been around for ~200k years (according to wikipedia), what were we doing for the first 185k years? What changed ~15k years ago that we star…

It seems (though it is controversial) that some time during the last ice-age the brain (but not the visible anatomy) evolved to the point that there was a sudden explosion in culture (as visible to archaeology through art, burials etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Revolution_(human_or... . Herding and framing then began as soon as that ice-age receded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period#/media/F…

Remember that many of the areas we know think of as ocean, were at that time dry land (Sundaland, Doggerland, etc) or covered in a mile of glacier. Even today fishermen will haul up old tools and bones from the Dogger banks off in the north sea. We may have had agriculture in many areas and times, but have not yet found the evidence for it, or the evidence is submerged and too hard to get to, or we built on top of it. Xenophon wrote of very ancient cities way back in ~400BC whose origins are attributed to legends and gods, possibly those cities were already thousands of years old.

https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2014/02/04/fishing-for-fossi...

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg...

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#145

Post by Balgair » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #117

nkoren wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the traditional answer, but it's wrong. Göbekli Tepe[1] decisively pre-dates agriculture. Although it wasn't inhabited, it displays a level of technology and social organisation on par with city-building. But agriculture definitely had nothing to do with it. Not saying that I've got a good answer for what did happen -- just that agriculture wasn't it. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

If it wasn't permanently inhabited, then it's not a city. There are the remains of massive camps in Russia built out of Mammoth bones and tusks that held many thousands of people, made possible by massive culls of migrating herds, but these are not permanent settlements either. Living permanently in the same place on a large scale is a completely different way of life compared to living a mainly nomadic life and gath…

Permanent populations are not a sign of civilization. Many religious sites today are sparsely populated except for once/twice a year, but we still have civilization. The Mongols were civilized even when they were raiding the entire old-world and establishing many dynasties. They had writing, religion, generals and well-organized armies, a bureaucracy, laws and customs, tariffs, etc, just not a single plot of land they went to sleep on every single night. Heck, even NYC doubles in population daily [0], those people may be daily commuter nomads, but they are 'civilized' people.

[0]https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/commuters-near...

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#146

Post by drowned » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 4:49 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #86

drowned wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find this interesting: The town of Carencro, Louisiana takes its name from an American Indian legend about a mastodon that died there. The name has been interpreted as either "carrion crow" for wake of vultures that feasted upon its carcass, or "carnero"--"bone pile"--for the bones of the creature itself. The fossil was discovered in the 18th century. Oral cultures have a long memory.

Mastodons used to be everywhere. Finding a mastodon's bones is not that unusual, so is not compelling proof of the veracity of the legend.

As far as I remember the story was regarding a fairly specific segment of Bayou Carencro where the creature was said to have drowned, and is where the fossils were found. That makes it a bit more compelling than some Mastodon being unearthed in the general region.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#147

Post by Balgair » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #81

pmalynin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What changed ~15k years ago that we started building cities, constructing tools, etc., and why did it take 185k years to happen?" Old question, the answer is: Agricultural Revolution

More specifically, what made societies around the world start building cities at roughly the same time? I suspect the answer will be that humans were a lot more mobile than we assume.

There is the "Nagging Auntie" hypothesis. :)

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#148

Post by Balgair » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #84

pmalynin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What changed ~15k years ago that we started building cities, constructing tools, etc., and why did it take 185k years to happen?" Old question, the answer is: Agricultural Revolution

Does that answer the question, though, or just change it to "Why did it take 185k years to discover agriculture, cities, and tool making?" Not to mention all the millennia of close human ancestors like Neanderthals who could have potentially stumbled upon them. If the best explanation is "it just took a long time to discover," then I can believe it, but it's very odd that not even once (that we've discovered) in 185k…

Also remember that a lot of the coastlines of yesteryears are now underwater, and coasts tend to be good for fishing and Homo habitation. So, there may be sites, just 200m down and buried in sediments. Also, humans tend to scavenge older sites and many places still may be the sites of current metropolises. Just as they were good places to settle way back when, they are good to settle now. Essentially, many theories are valid as there is not enough evidence to really support one side or the other. New techniques like geo-spatial mapping satellites may help, as will others that are not yet invented. Google Earth has been a (possible) asset to this and people may have found some new Egyptian sites using it : http://news.sky.com/story/two-new-pyramids-found-on-google-e...

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#149

Post by Balgair » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

will_brown wrote: post #122

jacobolus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing doesn’t show up in a vacuum. It’s a product of needing scribes to manage complicated supply chains, tax collection, property boundary recording, dispute adjudication, and most of all debt tracking. Those come along with population density, social stratification, inherited wealth, etc., which are part of feedback loops that start with agriculture and permanent settlement. For instance in Mesopotamia, cuneiform…

>Those come along with population density, social stratification, inherited wealth, etc., which are part of feedback loops that start with agriculture and permanent settlement. I agree writing doesn't show up in a vacuum. The cuneiform clay tablets from Mesopotamia are the oldest record of "written language" but certainly not the oldest form of writing. At least according to the current historical record argiculture…

To add to this, pyromancy, specifically scapulimancy, may be some of the earliest forms of writing, and that was mostly used for divination and other 'religious' rituals, we think. I couldn't find the exact source, but some samples in ...China?... may be scapulimantic symbols used for fortune telling and the like that predate the cuneiform tablets. Again, conjecture and I can't find the source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapulimancy

Edit: Found it, Oracle bones were used in the early 1200's BC, which does not predate cunieform usage from the 3500's BC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Bones

Also, wow! -3500 is when writing started, damn that is a long time ago.

Re: New Evidence Suggests Humans Arrived in the Americas Earlier Than Thought

#150

Post by robotiamsowhat » Thu, Apr 27, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #94

jlarocco wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like we've been pretty smart for a long long time. There are civilizations all over the globe that rose, fell, and died, and we will never ever know of them. The idea of 'civilization' is ancient, it seems. I've wondered about that a lot, actually. If homo sapiens have been around for ~200k years (according to wikipedia), what were we doing for the first 185k years? What changed ~15k years ago that we star…

According to Jared Diamond, part of this was the development of complex, spoken language. He thinks it is responsible for a "great leap forward" about 60k years ago -- https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/jul/03/research.h... This would predate agriculture.

From [1]:

"Lake Toba is the site of a massive supervolcanic eruption estimated at VEI 8 that occurred 69,000 to 77,000 years ago, representing a climate-changing event. It is the largest known explosive eruption on Earth in the last 25 million years. According to the Toba catastrophe theory [2], it had global consequences for human populations; it killed most humans living at that time and is believed to have created a population bottleneck in central east Africa and India, which affects the genetic make up of the human worldwide population to the present."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Toba

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory