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

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

#111

Post by anonAndOn »

munk-a wrote: post #109
anonAndOn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That addresses civilization but not prehistory as there is no known record of written language north of the desert barrier.

Are we still not counting wampum belts or khipu as a written language? I know that those are both very different from how we comprehend written languages but there is significant evidence to support that they were used in the process of imparting information (whether that be treaties, legends, or statistics)

A language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary.[0] I don't think NA wampum or totem poles would be considered written language by that definition. Khipu aren't found in NA, AFAIK.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language

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

#112

Post by labster »

simonh wrote: post #110
EGreg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Megaflood? I thought the Biblical flood had no evidence for it

There have been many floods in many places throughout history, including the Mediterranean and Middle East. There is no evidence specifically for a global flood with all the very specific characteristics of the biblical flood, or the Mesopotamian flood myth it’s almost certainly based on. That doesn’t mean these mythical floods had no basis in fact, and weren’t inspired by real floods. It just depends how literally y…

Right. If you lived near a lake in the endorheic basin at the end of the Danube, it would sure seem like the whole world had flooded when the Black Sea came flooding in.

Protip: the Bible can still be the literal word of God, because omnipotence implies the ability to use simile, metaphor, analogy, symbolism, and storytelling tropes.

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

#113

Post by mrdatawolf »

medstrom wrote: post #30
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because complex social structures tend to be innovations and inventions similar to those in the physical realm. It thus stands to reason that a 'social evolution' has taken place over the millennia, and there's ample evidence of that progress in the world around you. No one says prehistoric humans were individually simpletons, just that societally they were far simpler (as in strictly less advanced).

Please specify, what do you mean by "less advanced"? I doubt a randomly picked person has a more complex net of social interactions today than 50,000 years ago - probably the personal level is a lot simpler today, since we can outsource many needs to corporate and national structures, with whom you also have pretty straightforward relations.

"I doubt a randomly picked person has a more complex net of social interactions today than 50,000 years ago..." Why? 50k years ago the average person lived with a small group of people and barely ever interacted with anyone else in the world. Whereas the common person, today, interacts with a large number of people socially; if you include virtual and physical interactions.

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

#114

Post by AlotOfReading »

gibolt wrote: post #48
robonerd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even our metal based structures would not withstand it very well over a few thousand years. Well, not steel framed buildings or anything like that. But our modern civilization has certainly done things that I think stand a good chance of lasting hundreds of millions of years. Take for instance glass bottles. Those tossed into the ocean won't last more than a few decades before they're eroded to nothing (see: sea gl…

Humans were not mass manufacturing things back then, and there were orders of magnitude less people. On top of that, we don't even have exact knowledge of where to look. Most places we do discover have plenty of signs and evidence, they are just buried under 10ft of dirt and thus essentially undiscoverable.

Old things aren't necessarily that far under our feet. I've excavated 4,000 year old sites under a couple inches of dirt, and found 10,000+ year old artifacts on the surface.

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

#115

Post by dylan604 »

munk-a wrote: post #106
dylan604 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whether you think wearing my mouse wheel down to actually get to the directions for any recipe posted on a blog is good or not - it certainly is normal... and ditto for websites having a lot of above the fold advertisements.

>recipe posted on a blog is good or not - it certainly is normal.

and pretty much universally abhorred by anyone but SEO types

> websites having a lot of above the fold advertisements

I wouldn't know about these. I have an adblocker. seems like a cheap price to pay to prevent unnecessary wear&tear on your mouse wheel.

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

#116

Post by throwaway568 »

greatpostman wrote: post #6
klyrs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Platos account of Atlantis which was destroyed ten thousand years prior matches geological artifacts of huge climate changes/end of the ice age. I’d say the evidence point to his stories legitimatacy

Relevant: https://www.q-mag.org/the-great-plain-of-atlantis-was-it-in-...

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

#117

Post by AlotOfReading »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #28
TSiege wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the default assumption that since we can't prove humans had sophisticated and complex lives comparable to our own, that we must assume they are simpletons. Their minds were no less capable of our own, why shouldn't we assume they had complex morals and social structures?

Because complex social structures tend to be innovations and inventions similar to those in the physical realm. It thus stands to reason that a 'social evolution' has taken place over the millennia, and there's ample evidence of that progress in the world around you. No one says prehistoric humans were individually simpletons, just that societally they were far simpler (as in strictly less advanced).

What you mean isn't something many of the relevant experts would agree with, but the words in the second sentence aren't bad.

Similarly to biological evolution, on any sufficiently long time scale the descendents aren't more advanced, simply better adapted to different conditions. Our ancestors' societies reflected wildly different contraints and path dependence, not primitiveness.

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

#118

Post by usrusr »

pas wrote: post #53
MisterTea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There were many prehistoric societies, but because civilization tended to have some form of written records, the prehistoric societies are not considered civilizations. What about cave paintings?

That's archeology or something, not real history :)

It's the threshold between "how much do we trust the author?" and the blanket claim of "used for ceremonial purpose" whenever something isn't entirely obvious. Yes, it's a real distinction. Archeologists and historians don't consider themselves one group at all.

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

#119

Post by dredmorbius »

heavyset_go wrote: post #58
drewcoo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilization means people living in cities. To do that, agriculture is probably needed. There's also probably some level of specialization and accompanying social stratification. History is written records. There were many prehistoric societies, but because civilization tended to have some form of written records, the prehistoric societies are not considered civilizations. No scholars would clai that humanity sprang…

Genuine question, how much evidence of agriculture would survive an ice age, being crushed under the weight of 2 mile thick ice sheets and then washed away or engulfed by bodies of water once they've melted?

Major regions in which early humans evolved and migrated have not been subject to glaciation since those events. Africa, Mesopotamia, Egypt (part of Africa), the Mediterranian basin, the Indian subcontinent, most of China and Southeast Asia, central and Southern America, and much of North America, particularly south of, say, the modern Mason-Dixon line.

The regions heavily affected by glaciation are relatively few, relatively lately settled (for obvious reasons), and hence, less significant to overall availability of evidence of early agriculture.

Other disturbances resulting from glaciation, notably sea level rise and the innundation of previous coastal and low-lying regions may contribute somewhat more to obscured evidence.

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

#120

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

There's strong evidence that some animals, at least, process visual stimuli similarly to humans, as illustrated by cats responding to the "rotating snakes" illusion:

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CcXXQ6GCUb8

And if you pause to consider that emotions, particularly such core and foundational ones as love (maternal, partner, tribal) are all but certainly evolved, then existence of them or precursors in other species seems all but certain. That thought had occurred to Charles Darwin, who wrote a book on the question, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.175687

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