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

Post by galaxyLogic » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #38

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…

I warmly recommend to anyone interested in this line of thought James Scott's "Against the grain" for oldest evidence of the first agrarian states in the middle east. "Against the grain" points out that it's not obvious as number of people increases everyone wants to live in cities ruled over and taxed by someone else. "I think it’s pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed long before recorded history." If y…

Post by fsloth » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 7:45 AM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #131

fsloth wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I warmly recommend to anyone interested in this line of thought James Scott's "Against the grain" for oldest evidence of the first agrarian states in the middle east. "Against the grain" points out that it's not obvious as number of people increases everyone wants to live in cities ruled over and taxed by someone else. "I think it’s pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed long before recorded history." If y…

Isn't the theory that agriculture meant some book-keeping was needed, to keep track of the seasons and when to plant. This book-keeping then caused the development of writing in general. And writing caused the birth of inter-generational memory and the ability to accumulate knowledge. Of course oral histories can be cross-generational as well, but writing is much more efficient storage medium than human brain alone.…

Post by mr_toad » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 7:51 AM UTC

HuShifang wrote: post #95

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by imtringued » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:33 AM UTC

judahmeek wrote: post #21

Naga wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Unfortunately most of the (probable) evidence is under meters of water and mud.

Is there such a thing as "evidence of absence"?

Post by AndrewDucker » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 9:07 AM UTC

drewcoo wrote: post #42

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…

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…