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12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

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Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#231

Honest question. How do young-earth creationists react to these news? We don't have many in Spain, despite being quite a religious country, and I'm always intrigued.

svpk's comment aligns with my own understanding. Also, some young-earth creationists may say that God created the earth with age. If you ask them why God did that or where they find such information in the Bible, they'll either say it's part of God's plan or be silent.

Another interesting place where young-earth creationists provide physical theories for biblical events is the Flood. Many ancient cultures have flood myths, some talk of a global deluge in the distant past, and few cultures attempt to derive a physical explanation for the massive flowing of water.

Though less popular today, some young-earth creationists interested in physical explanations (who also almost always have some theories about the Flood) hypothesized the existence of a "vapor canopy", which served as the source of the flood waters. Essentially, the vapor canopy was a water shell which surrounded the earth. The floodwaters came when God caused the vapor canopy to collapse. Now, this hypothesis fails to withstand a small amount of physics inquiry; the earth's gravitational forces would naturally collapse the shell, and the water's shell would make the earth's surface too dark to sustain life. Yet, they're not bad people, just misguided.

Since we're on this topic, there's one physical theory for a global deluge which is my personal favorite from a scientific standpoint. We know the earth has a crust and mantle. The crust is like a hard shell around the mantle, while the mantle acts like a viscous fluid. The mantle is thought to be magnetic [1]. One interesting and obscure field of research is magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), or the study of the dynamics of magnetic fluids. The geodynamo effect [2] proposes that the earth's magnetic field arises from magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effects in the mantle.

Now, let's say the earth experiences a magnetic pole flip. Presumably, the earth's magnetic field will collapse for some period of time before returning in a reversed configuration. At some point during the flip, the field collapses completely. During that collapse, the MHD forces in the mantle are eliminated. The precise effects are unknown to us, but perhaps the crust then experiences a sudden rotational deceleration. Conservation of momentum says that the earth's oceans will slosh across the surface of the planet. Once the earth's magnetic field returns, the oceans gradually calm again, but much of the earth's surface has now been washed by a tsunami spanning all oceans.

From a purely theoretical standpoint, I like the scientific plausibility of this theory to explain the deluge, particularly because there's no need for the magical invention of a water source. However, there's still issues, like the precise cause of the earth's magnetic pole flip. If the pole flip is caused by, say, the Sun, then we need to know why and if the Sun's own electromagnetic field induces the MHD forces in the mantle. (MHD forces cause magnetic fluids to flow, which, short of additional information, would imply the Sun may cause the earth to rotate via MHD, which, according to a quick web search, is not the scientifically-accepted rationale for the earth's rotation.)

[1] https://www.geoengineer.org/news/magnetic-field-found-in-ear...

[2] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978AnRFM..10..435B/abstra...

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#232
post #13

If you're interested in learning more about these incredible Turkish archaeological sites, I can't recommend the YouTube channel Miniminuteman [0] enough. Milo is extremely passionate about his field of study and makes highly entertaining and informative videos about archaeology and anthropology, including a recent series where he became the first real archaeologist ever to be allowed to film a documentary on-site at…

He mentions that people back then lived around 35 years. I recall reading it's a mistaken interpretation of the average age, while many people died infants adults actually easily lived to 70+ yo. Is it true and he made the same mistake or am I thinking about a different period in history?

I don't know if they -easily- lived up to 70, but it was possible to live to that age for sure :) . death rate of "at birth" and early years was far far higher than now. they certainly lived longer than 30-35 that I hear slung around though. If you lived to 15 or so you could easily live to 50-60. Although those early corpses almost always show infection by parasites and such and not so pretty healing from injuries.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#233
post #50

> featuring a lifelike facial expression Notice that, although it was a completely alien culture in a very far away time, before agriculture and writing, we still know what a lifelike facial expression looks like. Many things vary from culture to culture. Facial expressions, at least many of them, are consistent across humanity. If someone stubs their toe or tastes something delicious, you'll know without words. Look…

How many of these universals are shared with other mammals (especially apes)?

Showing teeth, universally means aggression. In humans, it's for showing you are happy, or excited.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#234

It feels like the significance of this is lost on many people. My understanding is that complex things like statues were not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. I think it’s supposed to be more like 6000 years ago. The fact that it has been carbon dated to 12,000 tears should means that we have to rewrite the theories on the start of human civilization. These statues needed to be carved out of tools and the edu…

I don't even understand what are you on about. The same kind of statue up.to the holding of the genital has been found in the same area in 1993 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urfa_Man

Not even talking of the fact that 25000 years before people were making incredible art at the grotte Chauvet or that around the same time, a 30cm statue was carved in Germany representing an anthropomorphised Lion ans

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think cat faces are all that much less expressive than dog faces. They have a wide variety of facial expressions, including surprise, irritation/anger, happiness, playfulness, anxiety/fear, disgust, and so on - and that's not including at cat body language, especially tail movements. Our cat has perfected the guilt-tripping innocent stare. She stands beside her food bowl looking almost blank. This somehow com…

I suspect the most effective for pets is a perfect blank slate onto which the owner can project whatever they want.

have you ever owned and been inseparable from a pet? you absolutely can interpret their moods and you can find papers on it if you like, they do have expressions and body language. It may not be the same as humans necessarily but it is there if you care to research it.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#236
post #61
post #4

That's not what I consider a "realistic human statue" ?

In that time there is relatively little figurative art of humans. Rarely seen in cave painting, etc. The nearest would be the Venus figurines but they don't typically show facial features or internal anatomical details. It's a major major find bro.

I don't understand why it is so radical though. Even when I was a bored kid I could pick up a stick and whittle out a face not to far from what was in the article with a decently sharp knife and some time. Doesn't seem like a huge jump to do it in stone if the stone is easy enough to shape with a harder stone/mineral...

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#237
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO it's more interesting and a greater achievement than lifelike. To me it's an expression of fertile abundance that shows more intention, more imagination, more desire to communicate, more understanding of form and humanity than a straight depiction would.

The problem is, how do you distinguish between "lacked the skills or tools to make a true life-like statue" and "intentionally made something more abstract"? When I played guitar I liked doing noisy high-distortion stuff because I could play bad guitar and still make it sound kind of okay (to my ears anyway). Not saying that everyone who plays this type of music is a bad guitar player, because many aren't, but some a…

It reminds me of Oliver Sacks' excellent book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.

It contains descriptions of several real cases of brain damage, including someone who literally made the mistake in the title of the book. He could still see but was increasing struggling to synthesise understanding of objects from the lines and patterns, culminating in that particular confusion (as he was getting up to leave a consultation with Sacks, he tried to grab his wife to put on his head).

This person was an amateur painter, and his paintings were getting increasingly abstract as his condition worsened. The funny thing is, critics would comment that his art was improving in subtly and insight. In reality, he was losing his grasp of object coherence.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#238

What a crazy week for old things discovered this statue at Göbekli Tepe and the 400,000 year-old notched lumber beams in Zambia. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66846772

From the article:

>I was amazed to know that woodworking was such a deep-rooted tradition

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#239
post #113
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that complex things like statues were not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. Huh? The Venus of Willendorf[1] is twice as old, and to my eye displays a higher degree of artistry than the statue shown in the article. Several such Venus figurines have been found in central Europe. Compared to the intricacy of the Venus' limestone carving, the statue from the article looks downright crude. Th…

Venus of Willendorf is quite small, and not especially life-like, but similar large statues have been found in the area before, from around the same time (12kya ago). It's not even a unique find, and fits reasonably well(ish) in established chronology and progression (insofar that's possible for pre-history). Pretty much everything the previous poster said is wrong.

looks pretty lifelike to me; like most people I see at Walmart.

Re: 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy in the video said "their lifespans would have only been around 35 years" which sounds not so much glossing over as being plain incorrect. I am annoyed by these slips every time because they make it seem as if we live so much longer since hunter-gatherer times... Modern medicine reduced early age mortality, sure, but funny enough it did not do much to increase max lifespan (and especially healthy lifespan).

Ah, yeah, that sounds like it was indeed just incorrect. To add to your comment about modern medicine. Keep in mind that when you isolate out infant mortality, you get an average life span of roughly 60-ish in ancient times. Present day mortality is closer to 85+ for the G7 countries and 75+ for other fairly well developed countries. That's a 25 year increase! Given those statistics, I would say modern medicine is ac…

IMHO healthy life expectancy should be the thing which is discussed and referenced. Back then you’d likely just die if you were too sick to comfortably live.
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