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Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

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Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#61

Post by mmooss »

nico wrote: post #55
p_j_w wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if what they claim is not completely right It seems even this is not the case and that the show is just completely wrong.

The show seemed very convincing, not in the speculative theories about an ancient precursor civilization necessarily, but definitely in some of the findings they show Do you have any resources you could share that debunk the specific things they show? Like the rock paintings they dated to 10k years ago, or some of the other digs that were dated as 20-25k years old? Are you saying it is all made up? Or just some of it…

> The show seemed very convincing

On a tangent, isn't that a signal of inaccuracy? Accurate people - i.e., committed to be truthful and correct - are very careful and nuanced about what they claim, make weaknesses as clear as strengths, and are careful to not be too convincing, because that can distort their reader's critical thinking.

At least, that's the ideal. But why be especially convincing - why be more convincing than your empirical evidence?

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#62

Post by mmooss »

pwillia7 wrote: post #41
whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality of the modern world cannot be explained by the history we are told.

The slow movingness of Science with its method and peer reviewing definitely fights against new ideas becoming accepted overnight, but we do get there, and glomming onto personalities with unaccepted ideas will hurt your 'correctness' more than help it. I watched some of the first season and was actually already open to all the alt archaeology stuff with the precision arguments people make, but the more I looked the…

> general lack of caring about human suffering

You may need some evidence. For example, someone looking back on us might think that, because we accept the current level of suffering as normal.

What is alt-arhaeology?

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#63

Post by roughly »

sampo wrote: post #53
nico wrote: post #24

Just finished watching "Ancient Apocalypse" on Netflix. They go over this kind of discovery It's quite speculative, but also really fascinating. Even if what they claim is not completely right, it definitely shows how the current accepted understanding of the history of the Americas needs an overhaul and a lot more research PS: if you like this stuff, also check out the movie "The Lost City of Z"

> check out the movie "The Lost City of Z" And the 2005 Charles C. Mann book "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus".

That book is really an incredible eye-opening read, I strongly recommend it.

Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything spends quite a bit of time with complex societies in the Americas as well, and is certainly worth a read as well.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#64

Post by roughly »

defrost wrote: post #12
TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

How do the LIDARs work for this kind of thing? I always imagined that the light used wouldn't be able to penetrate objects that are opaque in the visible light spectrum.

If sunlight can reach the forest floor then so can LIDAR. An airframe with a LIDAR device scatter shots a medium angle "spotlight" of pulses at high frequency downwards within an arc area of angles (straight down, a bit to the left, a bit to the right, a bit forward, etc.) Of the tens of thousands of 'RAW' data points many reflect from top canopy leaf cover, many penetrate further, a lesser number reach the ground. A…

Even when eroded, the presence of straight lines in the eroded remains has typically been used to identify human-made structures.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#65

Post by dmvdoug »

krapp wrote: post #35
jmarchello wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see news about cities discovered in south america I look to see if the dates line up with the Nephite/Lamanite civilizations of the Book of Mormon (roughly 600 BC to 400 AD). This is the closest yet that I've seen. I'm eager to see what they discover in the coming years about their culture and government. Will we find traces of their Judge-based government? Signs that they worshiped Christ and practiced…

>Will we find traces of their Judge-based government? Signs that they worshiped Christ and practiced Jewish rituals? No.

I began to read this thread just for the horror-show-train-wreck voyeurism of crazy. But your simple riposte made me laugh, so, gold star, you.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#66

Post by PittleyDunkin »

hosh wrote: post #59
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that minimizes the fact that people were deliberately curating and designing perennial food forests, historically and contemporarily. I don't see this minimization (after all, we currently do this unintentionally today and nobody sees this as lack of intelligence and I certainly hope I never implied that people in the past were in any way less capable than ourselves) but I do affirm that people were just as…

I've been on a quest to find out what went wrong with modernity. Looking through the history, I found out the Renaissance was not what I thought it was. The history of the Silk Roads were not what I thought it was. And I haven't revisited the history of the industrial revolution, but it looks so far, that is where the obsession with maximizing productivity, gains, and work all come from. It is very likely when I look…

> treating it as the most probable theory (and then making decisions based upon it) is something I have concluded for myself as folly.

Sure, but your tools reasoning about the past are quite limited. Occam's Razor helps us identify where narrative elements are unnecessary for an explanation, and in that it's quite useful. For most of history we must rely on Occam's Razor to even construct any sort of probability model. After all what's easier to believe—acting like the historical record was fabricated with the intent of deceiving us, or acting like the people who wrote the historical records generally had rational reasons to do so? The basis for preferring the latter is inherently an application of Occam's Razor.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#67

Post by vdupras »

nico wrote: post #55
p_j_w wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if what they claim is not completely right It seems even this is not the case and that the show is just completely wrong.

The show seemed very convincing, not in the speculative theories about an ancient precursor civilization necessarily, but definitely in some of the findings they show Do you have any resources you could share that debunk the specific things they show? Like the rock paintings they dated to 10k years ago, or some of the other digs that were dated as 20-25k years old? Are you saying it is all made up? Or just some of it…

This is precisely what I'm looking for too. All critiques of Hancock I can find with my feeble googling skills seem to be focused on unimportant stuff such as encouraging uses of psychedelics and accusations of racism.

But what's far, far more important, is debunking evidences like rock painting dating, geoglyphs dating. That thing on Rapa Nui about statues being more-than-half buried seemed really intriguing. The speculation he makes about why that might be so (spoiler alert: that famous lost civilization being there first) seemed interesting to me. Is there a specific debunking of that somewhere?

I'd also be interested in specific debunking of his theory that incas didn't have the capabilities to do some of the rock walls they've made. You know, with heated rocks and all. That seemed interesting too.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#68

Post by pwillia7 »

mmooss wrote: post #62
pwillia7 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slow movingness of Science with its method and peer reviewing definitely fights against new ideas becoming accepted overnight, but we do get there, and glomming onto personalities with unaccepted ideas will hurt your 'correctness' more than help it. I watched some of the first season and was actually already open to all the alt archaeology stuff with the precision arguments people make, but the more I looked the…

> general lack of caring about human suffering You may need some evidence. For example, someone looking back on us might think that, because we accept the current level of suffering as normal. What is alt-arhaeology?

All these people that think big archaeology is wrong because of gobekli Teppe and they now have a couple seasons of the Netflix show referenced in this thread

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#69

Post by cco »

hosh wrote: post #36
holmesworcester wrote: post #21

My favorite discovery about Amazon civilization is that the incidence of human-edible fruit trees is much higher in any area near navigable water. They were modifying the forest to be more supportive of humans.

That didn’t just happen in the Amazon. The Pacific Northwest had something like that. My understanding is that the Eastern American forests were curated like that too, before it was cut down. I have heard of an oasis in North Africa that was curated this way, and it still survived despite being abandoned by humans. The modern version of this is called a perennial food forest.

In Hell's Canyon Oregon, there were mining camps up and down it and you still see a ton of fruit trees dotting the canyon because of it. Many are intentional, by homes, rows etc, but sometimes you see the odd copse of fruit trees off by itself and well, that's probably where the outhouse as ;)

Only about 100-150 years old, but given how well they've done over that time and how popular they are with the wildlife, I'd bet they stick around.

Re: Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)

#70

Post by ch4s3 »

zackmorris wrote: post #57
hosh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn’t just happen in the Amazon. The Pacific Northwest had something like that. My understanding is that the Eastern American forests were curated like that too, before it was cut down. I have heard of an oasis in North Africa that was curated this way, and it still survived despite being abandoned by humans. The modern version of this is called a perennial food forest.

Permaculture is another word for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture The city where I live in the PNW has had a huge influx of immigrants from red and blue states who either don't respect the dignity of nonhuman life or want to gentrify communities to their liking. It seems like the first thing they do when they get here is cut down the biggest tree(s) in their yard to live out their pioneer fantasies. I'd…

> or want to gentrify communities to their liking.

I think you've bent this word beyond breaking.

> I'd say we've lost around 25 trees 75 years or older in just my immediate neighborhood.

What kind of trees? Red Alder which are native to the area for example don't live much more than 70 years.

> while wages haven't even doubled,

Median household income in current dollars has more than doubled in Portland since 2000[1].

> It's not a supply and demand problem

Yes it is. Housing prices increase when demand increases. Portland has an arbitrary growth boundary around the city and a lot of restrictions on height.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/205988/median-household-...

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