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British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

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Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#61

Post by JackCh »

mkohlmyr wrote: post #53
dalbasal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It starts to get cumbersome when you use it multiple times in a paragraph. The problem is really the BC/AD (starting the clock 2018 years ago) is clunky. It's pretty widely used in the context of history these days, mostly because it's common to look at long stretches of time. It's really the easiest system once you know the acronym. Here... Herodotus is a 5th century BC historian, a favourite among the 13th century…

While you may think BC/AD is clunky, having a static reference point in the past obviously has its advantages. 200BC will forever correctly and uniquely reference the same year, 2218 YBP not so much, as it depends on year of writing (which is fine for a live interaction, but less handy for written and archived content).

> 2218 YBP not so much, as it depends on year of writing

As I understand it, the "present" in YBP refers to 68 years ago, 1950. This is related to the advent of carbon dating, and the way widescale nuclear tests altered the proportion of carbon isotopes found in nature.

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

Insofar as 68 years is a rounding error when discussing the Great Pyramids, YBP is a lot less clumsy. But 500 years from now it will probably begin seem just as clumsy as BC/AD. At least this time there is a pragmatic reason for the delineation (carbon 14 levels being altered.) Of course in 1,000 years you'll probably have people on hyper-reddit very smugly pointing out that nuclear testing actually started in 1945 not in 1950, just as today they point out Christ was not born in 0AD. ;)

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#62

Post by coldtea »

tlb wrote: post #51
coldtea wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a logical impossibility to really determine whether "fabrications are usually discovered" or not. We can only know about fabrications after they have been discovered -- so there could be 2x or even 10x as much that we don't know about and count among the "non fabricated" work.

It's not impossible. We know how many fabrications are discovered. You can take a random sample of papers and analyze them in depth to estimate the number of papers that are fabricated.

>You can take a random sample of papers and analyze them in depth to estimate the number of papers that are fabricated.

That assumes that the fabrications in those papers will be revealed upon further analysis.

And, what's worse, that such analysis is economically feasible.

Most metastudies don't even verify the original results, just assume them as fine.

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#63

Post by extralego »

Thomas was so widely respected that nobody questioned his work for decades.

We naturally encourage questioning honorable confidence in the abstract but rarely in concrete actions.

Serious question: Is there a field, or even a social context, in which doing so would actually be rewarded?

And sort of related: Is a system for such questioning a necessity for a meritocracy or can a be meritocratic system still exist at the same time? I guess I just assume that, for example, companies claiming meritocracy were just actively ignoring organic social structures responsible for most of the honor hierarchies in the first place. I always thought social paradigms associated with enlightenment we’re essentially anti-structures to contend with this sort of thing. But doesn’t meritocracy in tech somehow seem to take those efforts for granted? I have never worked at these companies so I am really curious.

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#64

Post by nonbel »

ec109685 wrote: post #59
nonbel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to move huge stones. Its possible to cast limestone in place, like concrete. I read/watched some stuff about this guy not too long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Davidovits He claims he sent samples of his cast limestone to geologists and they couldnt tell the difference. Overall I think his theory makes much more sense. It just would have been easier to pour each block in place rather than…

I am surprised there aren’t documenration / art that describes the process contemporaneously.

Supposedly there is, "Irtysen Stele", "Sehel Stele" and "Famine Stele": https://www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/pyramids/pyramids-2-t...

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#65

Post by DanBC »

extralego wrote: post #63

Thomas was so widely respected that nobody questioned his work for decades. We naturally encourage questioning honorable confidence in the abstract but rarely in concrete actions. Serious question: Is there a field, or even a social context, in which doing so would actually be rewarded? And sort of related: Is a system for such questioning a necessity for a meritocracy or can a be meritocratic system still exist at t…

> Serious question: Is there a field, or even a social context, in which doing so would actually be rewarded?

Health care is putting considerable effort into creating psychological safety and just culture, in front line staff and in the board, to create the ability to question what happens.

This is to prevent things like the Argon Beam Liver Tattoo doctor from carrying on without being stopped; or to ensure boards question the serious incident reports they get.

So far it's had a limited effect, but culture takes a long time to change.

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#66

Post by lifeisstillgood »

tlb wrote: post #52
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #13

>>> Such a monumental procession would have been akin to transporting the space shuttle Endeavor in a parade, for all to see and celebrate, the archaeologists said. This is another one of those "sounds good" ideas that the article is complaining about. The total population of the UK would have varied from 40,000 lower bound to 200k in this period (see below - figures really hard to find) Basically that's empty. It's…

You can never have all the people pushing the rock. Women, children, and the elderly wouldn't. And you need a large supply chain to feed and shelter the rock pushers along the route. As a benchmark, 31% of Germany's population were in uniform in WWII. That's probably the greatest fraction a society can devote to a project.

Everybody should have been in air-quotes - but whichever percentage you choose (I have heard upto 90% of all able bodied workers in Egypt were on the pyramids until harvest time) at some point it is mind boggling - how were there enough people in the UK - stonehenge was a multi-generational project on a scale that dwarfs St. paul's cathedral and similar projects - hundreds of years long and involving such a fraction of the population for what? A petrol pump for visiting space aliens would have made more sense than fifth aveneue style sunsets.

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#67

Post by dEnigma »

coldtea wrote: post #37
dEnigma wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't off by 200 miles. That's just how far the source of the stones is away (both the location he gave and the new one). You should probably read the comment again.

Oh, I got that wrong while reading the article too then.

Yeah,the article is worded very poorly (misleadingly?). I just measured the distance between the location Thomas originally gave (Carn Menyn) and one of the two new locations (Craig Rhos-y-felin) and it's about 4.5 kilometers.

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#68

Post by JJMcJ »

dalbasal wrote: post #15

A question that really interests me about Stonehenge, Gobleki Teppeh and other such mysterious monumental sites is " how many people did this? " When we (now, and in the past) look at ancient construction projects, we instinctively tend to imagine fairly "brute force" construction methods. Basically, the way things are done now but with people powered trucks, cranes and such. Think of all those depictions of many peo…

Saw TV show on Stonehenge. A group of students dragged a stone from the quarry location (as was believed when the show was made) and about 20 people got it done in about two weeks.

There is a tendency to underestimate what can be done by human labor.

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#69

Post by lovemenot »

dalbasal wrote: post #38
coldtea wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With stonehenge in 5,000 ypb britain, there are thought to be far fewer people. Well, it's also a much smaller scale project compared to a pyramid. > So either, (1) "civilised" society was much more common historically and ancient in origin (2) There were "pre-civilised" ways of organising very large numbers of people. Or (3), they had very clever building techniques that did not require many people. I think (1) is…

Yes, definitely much smaller scale. Still, the unit of work is similar (massive stone cut, moved and placed). If it takes a lot of people, that implies a lot of people coordinating at that time an place. In a sense, it gives us a minimal level of societal complexity that must have existed. Since britain didn't seem to have towns or cities, the nature of this complexity would be pre-civilised in the literal civil=city…

It's may be that Stonehenge's labourers concentrated from sparsely populated remote locations in Britain and overseas.

Analysis of pig bones at Durrington Walls - probably a work camp - showed that this animal had been brought in from Scotland.

Re: British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas’ seminal study on Stonehenge was wrong

#70

Post by JackCh »

nonbel wrote: post #64
ec109685 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised there aren’t documenration / art that describes the process contemporaneously.

Supposedly there is, "Irtysen Stele", "Sehel Stele" and "Famine Stele": https://www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/pyramids/pyramids-2-t...

I don't know anything about rocks, but it's very hard for me to take this website seriously when their FAQ repeats several times word for word (https://i.imgur.com/B0VojAZ.png):

>If it is not convincing enough: Recent scientific studies using very powerful and modern equipment found the ultimate evidence that the pyramids stones are synthetic. Believing in the artificial stone theory, or countering it, is simply no longer relevant. It has become a fact, a truth.

https://www.geopolymer.org/faq/faq-for-artificial-stone-supp...

In my experience, people who use repetition like this are not to be taken very seriously. It's a blunt persuasion tactic employed by the likes of used car salesmen and cult leaders.

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