Europe's now-drowned 'lost world' and the 25m-high tsunami that finished it off

Post by Cupertino95014 » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #32

mc32 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can only go by what we know and what we have evidence for. Sure, other small civs likely existed, but we don't have known evidence of them and their history, etc. At most we have tombs and archeological ruins to go by. So we go with the earliest civs for whom we have written evidence as well as lots of physical evidence for in addition to present-day influence. Otherwise things start to get very speculative.

> We can only go by what we know and what we have evidence for There is nuance here, in the degree to which uncertainty due to lack of evidence is surfaced in scientific communications for the public. Take for instance, the behavior of dogs. Science cannot [yet] objectively answer the question of how much the subjective qualia of a dog is comparable to the qualia of humans. What then can we say about whether dogs fee…

Post by robonerd » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #61

robonerd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can only go by what we know and what we have evidence for There is nuance here, in the degree to which uncertainty due to lack of evidence is surfaced in scientific communications for the public. Take for instance, the behavior of dogs. Science cannot [yet] objectively answer the question of how much the subjective qualia of a dog is comparable to the qualia of humans. What then can we say about whether dogs fee…

Quoted post unavailable.

Post by Ar-Curunir » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

HuShifang wrote: post #45

greatpostman wrote: post #4

I think it’s pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed long before recorded history. They may not have had the tools of working with metal, but they definitely had sophisticated philosophical views and moral frameworks. I would bet this goes back even 30-50 thousand years. This idea that humanity sprang up out of nothing in Sumerian/Babylon is very contrived. There was an ice age ten thousand years ago, the c…

On the flip side, let's also not forget that the earliest civilizations (so to speak) were also rather different from later ones in some striking ways. Put simply, they were a lot more literal-minded, and didn't engage in as much abstraction as did their descendents. Ancient fertility statues (even as late as classical Greece and Rome) are grotesquely over-endowed; ritual sacrifices of food and symbolic objects have…

Post by 867-5309 » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

sorokod wrote: post #66

Swizec wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if there was nobody to write about them they were prehistoric A comment from a documentary about Rome stuck in my mind, it goes something like : "There is no history of Europe before Rome because for most of Europe, history starts with Rome conquering that region. They were the first to write anything down." Similarly, we know how slavic peoples migrated into Europe because those regions stopped sending written upd…

How about ancient Greece? Also Europe as something that has a cultural identity is relatively new, difinitley postdates Rome.

Post by thechao » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 7:42 PM UTC

HuShifang wrote: post #45

greatpostman wrote: post #4

I think it’s pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed long before recorded history. They may not have had the tools of working with metal, but they definitely had sophisticated philosophical views and moral frameworks. I would bet this goes back even 30-50 thousand years. This idea that humanity sprang up out of nothing in Sumerian/Babylon is very contrived. There was an ice age ten thousand years ago, the c…

On the flip side, let's also not forget that the earliest civilizations (so to speak) were also rather different from later ones in some striking ways. Put simply, they were a lot more literal-minded, and didn't engage in as much abstraction as did their descendents. Ancient fertility statues (even as late as classical Greece and Rome) are grotesquely over-endowed; ritual sacrifices of food and symbolic objects have…