101–110 of 168 posts
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Under these terms, all 400+ tribes north of the deserts of North America were prehistoric until the arrival of the European and some paper.
There were plenty of urban centers in the Americas prior to European arrival, e.g. Cahokia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
Didn’t Time Team cover these topics and more?
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This seems like unjustified speculation; people could look at e.g. people leaving cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve as an example of how modern Americans are poor at abstraction and have to give literal offerings to their god Santa Claus. AFAWK there has been no significant change in the anatomy of humans in the past 200k years, and similarly nothing to indicate that we’ve had major changes in things like our abi…
You can always find examples of irrational behavior, but the difference is scale. Today a major state isn't spending inordinate resources to ensure that the cookies left for Santa are prepared using the finest ingredients (say, a few million dollars' worth of gold) by the most accomplished bakers, and then placed on a dish so large that it can be seen from space (and hundreds or thousands of people died making it). I…
Generally every theory which talks about these great leaps in human cognition, and ties these to human "development" while ascribing diminished intellectual capabilities to our ancestors, seems to fall apart after scrutiny (e.g., Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, bicameral theory of mind).
Also, we've seen plenty of "undoing" of abstraction in long-continuing cultures. E.g., in Hinduism, idol worship wasn't really a thing in Vedic times, and only became popular in Puranic times (over a 1000 years later). Many Hindus do believe that some idols contain portions of gods, especially those idols that reside ones in "big" temples. I would not say that these folks have lost their ability to abstract. As another example, post-Vedic religion underwent a large amount of abstraction in the Upanishads, but then reverted to personification of deities via the bhakti movement and in Puranic religion. Again, I wouldn't say that Hindus lost their ability to think abstractly.
This is sort of a sequel to a piece about the ancient Mediterranean megaflood that did really well on here last month - so, with my fingers crossed it's not too obnoxiously self-promotional of me to do it, I thought I'd give this one a punt as well. Also, thank you to those who left comments saying you didn't like that former piece's introduction. I agree with you! It was rambling and a bit self-indulgent and I shoul…
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Thanks, I think this is great! I've often wondered if the "great flood" myths and the legend of Atlantis have any factual basis carried on in oral history. The Zanclean flood stretches credulity beyond reason (as fun as it is to think about a story passed down from the first Hominins), but this event happened recently enough to ponder links to mythology... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessair
Great flood maybe, but we don't have any actual proof that Atlantis was some ancient legend vs something Plato just made up and said he heard from someone else since there are no previous accounts of it before him.
So Atlantis might be much the same - the story of a city lost to flooding (maybe even the same root story as the biblical one) repurposed and embellished to express a philosophical point.
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Just scroll past the 2nd picture and start reading.
Just... do that thing that nobody does on a normal basis, nor should they be expected to. Just. Has to be one of my favorite words.
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Thanks, I think this is great! I've often wondered if the "great flood" myths and the legend of Atlantis have any factual basis carried on in oral history. The Zanclean flood stretches credulity beyond reason (as fun as it is to think about a story passed down from the first Hominins), but this event happened recently enough to ponder links to mythology... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessair
Great flood maybe, but we don't have any actual proof that Atlantis was some ancient legend vs something Plato just made up and said he heard from someone else since there are no previous accounts of it before him.
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Under these terms, all 400+ tribes north of the deserts of North America were prehistoric until the arrival of the European and some paper.
Yes. This is absolutely correct. The generally accepted view is that prehistory ended and history started on the North American continent roughly mid 1490's. This only sounds prepostrous if you don't understand what the terms mean. This is also roughly the timeframe when the last stone-age society near Europe finally got subjugated by Europeans and stone age finally ended in the old world, when the Spanish crushed th…
It'd be really nice if all parts of the internet engaged in good faith debates on topics they were knowledgeable but finding that phrasing preposterous isn't unreasonable if you've spent a decent chunk of time exposed to reddit and twitter.
I agree that you're correct and reasonable, but I also agree that the person you're replying to was correct and reasonable when expressing caution over how things are worded.
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There were plenty of urban centers in the Americas prior to European arrival, e.g. Cahokia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
That addresses civilization but not prehistory as there is no known record of written language north of the desert barrier.
This is sort of a sequel to a piece about the ancient Mediterranean megaflood that did really well on here last month - so, with my fingers crossed it's not too obnoxiously self-promotional of me to do it, I thought I'd give this one a punt as well. Also, thank you to those who left comments saying you didn't like that former piece's introduction. I agree with you! It was rambling and a bit self-indulgent and I shoul…
Megaflood? I thought the Biblical flood had no evidence for it
That doesn’t mean these mythical floods had no basis in fact, and weren’t inspired by real floods. It just depends how literally you take the specifics of how they are described in the sources.