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Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

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Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#31

Post by partyboat1586 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #19
dragonwriter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a line of thinking that wanders away from intellectual curiosity and into intellectual madness. When we’re talking about the prospects of a more advanced human civilization in a time from which we have artifacts (but, obviously, not ones that are more obviously advanced than standing stones into which people read improbable histories), if you aren't going to lean hard into intellectual madness, what's the p…

Heh. I tend to pretty rapidly lose interest in subjects when they go from "huh, that's kinda neat" to young-adult fantasy storytime. It's a mental self-defense against the kinds of ideas that sneak up on clever people and trick them into believing dumb things.

You can consider the ideas without accepting them as true. You don't need a self defence. Feed your imagination and it feeds creativity.

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#32

Post by chrisco255 »

fit2rule wrote: post #18
sixothree wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So maybe the simulation was reset?

Mass Corona Ejection is the one theory that I find sticks in my mind most, when the question "what could possibly have reset things so drastically that none of the survivors would remember ancient civilisation?" is asked. Its like the Degauss'ing of our planet. I can imagine even we wouldn't survive such an event unscathed.

Why not a super volcano?

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#33

Post by akiselev »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #27
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask you: If the earth had some major event tomorrow and basically everything quit working, do you think we'd forget about things such as the internet, phones, indoor plumbing, vehicles, or electricity? No, probably not. We'd rebuild, though some areas of the world would rebuild better or more equally than others. I don't know why folks think the past was any different. This is the main reason I highly doubt th…

Ehhhh. It might be because so many recent events have given me cause to be disappointed in people, but I don't think a massive loss of cultural memory is all that implausible. We have great numbers of people now who either don't believe vaccines are safe, or don't believe the Earth is round, or don't believe in evolution, or don't believe in anthropogenic climate change. Even as little attention as this thread is lik…

The global literacy rate two hundred years ago, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, is estimated to be under 20% [1]. Today it's over 80% because the contributions of a small number of inventors raised the tide for everyone, increasing access to education. Half the world couldn't even read until the mid-1960s.

Knowledge has always been unevenly distributed and most people who succeed do so because they were born into a supportive environment. It's unreasonable to expect that from seven billion people when a significant fraction of them grew up with illiterate elders.

[1] https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-was-life_978926...

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#34

Post by drran »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #3
apaz037 wrote: post #2

I'm of the firm belief at this point that we are a species with severe amnesia. I find it significantly more plausible that cataclysmic events we no longer remember occured in our past and wiped away a rich history in which we may have feasibly been far more advanced technologically than we currently are.

This is a pretty old idea that was recently rebranded as the "Silurian Hypothesis". If you put in a bit of thought, it'll be obvious that it essentially boils down to one of two things: Either every paleoanthropologist, archaeologist, and geologist out there is in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth, or all of the people in those disciplines are complete idiots. An event like that would leave strong genetic, palyn…

The answer is simple: concrete is very simple technology, which was discovered and forgotten multiple times, but archeologists are not specialists in concrete making technology, so they label kilns as temples.

If somebody will sponsor two sits from Ukraine to Peru, I will just demonstrate that using ancient temple, which is already filled with stones, waiting for fire.

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#35

Post by partyboat1586 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #3
apaz037 wrote: post #2

I'm of the firm belief at this point that we are a species with severe amnesia. I find it significantly more plausible that cataclysmic events we no longer remember occured in our past and wiped away a rich history in which we may have feasibly been far more advanced technologically than we currently are.

This is a pretty old idea that was recently rebranded as the "Silurian Hypothesis". If you put in a bit of thought, it'll be obvious that it essentially boils down to one of two things: Either every paleoanthropologist, archaeologist, and geologist out there is in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth, or all of the people in those disciplines are complete idiots. An event like that would leave strong genetic, palyn…

You know Graham Hancock?

"Archeologists hate him, this one weird trick to discover ancient civilizations".

He recently said in an interview that younger archeologists have read his work and are subversively challenging the orthodoxy. Also Randall Carlson mentioned that mainstream Geology has already come round to the idea of a catalysmic event around the time of The Younger Dryas.

Now I don't know how much of what either of these men claim to be true is true but it seems to me that it's not only stupidity or conspiracy that holds a field back. The real problem is when a fundamental mistake is made and then built on, ego gets involved and confirmation bias is abound. For example Geologists at some point all decided that everything happens gradually, the earth is stable and there are no catalysmic events. In the last 20 years that has been reversed, yet cataclysmic theories of The Younger Dryas have existed since the early 20th century.

It is certainly true that people like Graham Hancock and other fringe theorists play up the story of how much they oppressed by the mainstream as if it is evidence to support their claims. This is to be ignored as evidence and their arguments looked at on their own merit. We should however admit that mistakes are made in all fields, they gain momentum over time and require huge amounts of evidence to overturn.

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#36

Post by hunta2097 »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #28
jedberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They lost the plans, they're recreating them. Which is exactly the point I made at first. That we've lost the knowledge to make the engine.

They lost the plans . For this particular engine type. That's not the same as losing fundamental knowledge of how the engines work, or the ability to recreate one larger. And you have not acknowledged you misrepresented what the article said. What is it with you types that have to feel we're failing, going backwards? I had an argument once with a guy that insisted there were compiler optimisation that aren't used any…

I find a more extreme version of this thinking in anti-science subjects like flat earth and homeopathy.

Those guys are always referencing ancient texts.

Many parts of humanity stagnated for millennia - see cave systems in France and Eastern Europe which were occupied for thousands of years without any progress.

I find it incredible that you could take a baby from that era, send them to school and they could be indiscernible from the rest of us.

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#37

Post by 082349872349872 »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #13
guerrilla wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a silly argument, we could build pyramids 100 times bigger than the Egyptian ones if we wanted to today, and we can build engines that are far more efficient and powerful than the Apollo ones. You seemed to have missed a couple of points there. Of course we can build the pyramids, but can we do it with the same level of technology that we think they had? Of course we can build better engines than the Apollo…

Can you recreate the exact breakfast I just made? Can you crack an egg the same way twice? Entropy always increases. It's knowledge that we don't necessarily need, if we really needed to made pyramids in the same way, we'd figure it out.

"Wally" Wallington, retired construction worker, proposes a very Archimedean, but not very labour intensive, henge technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vHHhmJBY0k

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#38

Post by Broken_Hippo »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #27
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask you: If the earth had some major event tomorrow and basically everything quit working, do you think we'd forget about things such as the internet, phones, indoor plumbing, vehicles, or electricity? No, probably not. We'd rebuild, though some areas of the world would rebuild better or more equally than others. I don't know why folks think the past was any different. This is the main reason I highly doubt th…

Ehhhh. It might be because so many recent events have given me cause to be disappointed in people, but I don't think a massive loss of cultural memory is all that implausible. We have great numbers of people now who either don't believe vaccines are safe, or don't believe the Earth is round, or don't believe in evolution, or don't believe in anthropogenic climate change. Even as little attention as this thread is lik…

It isn't that we all know how to build this stuff - but more that we know the stuff exists. We all have these ideas. It is online, it is written in books. The chances of all of our information being lost is slim. We have a pretty good literacy rate now as well. You don't need to know everything: Other folks know a lot about mining, making wire, and so on. Some folks know a great deal about making medicine, fixing bones, and so on.

This is why I say it won't be lost: We have the information, both digital and in hard copy form. We know it all exists: We'd rebuild. It isn't going to need YOU, specifically, to remember it all, but simply to know this stuff exists and understand that folks are peppered through the earth that know about the technologies you don't - and know what these things are used for. We wouldn't lose toilets - a well documented technology - we'd rebuild them. A solar flare wiping out some of the communication routes wouldn't be enough. That would simply be a setback - a major one, but not enough to destroy things.

This is all despite folks not believing in a round earth or vaccines and all of that stuff.

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#39

Post by Broken_Hippo »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #30
thaumaturgy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhhh. It might be because so many recent events have given me cause to be disappointed in people, but I don't think a massive loss of cultural memory is all that implausible. We have great numbers of people now who either don't believe vaccines are safe, or don't believe the Earth is round, or don't believe in evolution, or don't believe in anthropogenic climate change. Even as little attention as this thread is lik…

It literally took a millennium for Europe to rediscover the lost knowledge of the Romans and Greeks and to reorganise itself to a comparable level of political and economic sophistication. And the ancient world wasn't operating at anything like the level we have today. Technical knowledge is incredibly fragile. It requires a global network of raw materials, energy sources, processing systems of various kinds, and log…

Do you not think that society, after living in the digital age with internet and communication, wouldn't immediately work to fix these things?

I don't know about the 'rediscover lost knowledge of the Romans and Greeks" bit. We aren't clamoring to get the 'sophistication' of the Victorian time period, in part because so many of the ideas aren't valued, and much of the same attitude probably was the same for the 'lost' information. We view the ancients in a romantic way, but... they also didn't have chimneys. Folks through history often didn't have the literacy rates we do.

And no one in history had a really good overview either, honestly. A complete supply overview isn't necessary at a local level: We all know these exist. It won't take long before we communicate easily again and we'll have electricity before long. Once you have these things, lots of other things will fall into place.

Re: Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

#40

Post by technothrasher »

stareatgoats wrote: post #26
AlotOfReading wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty old idea that was recently rebranded as the "Silurian Hypothesis". If you put in a bit of thought, it'll be obvious that it essentially boils down to one of two things: Either every paleoanthropologist, archaeologist, and geologist out there is in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth, or all of the people in those disciplines are complete idiots. An event like that would leave strong genetic, palyn…

You could be right. It is certainly a compelling argument; "either scientists are in a conspiracy or complete idiots" (paraphrased). The answer is however unequivocally: we don't know. And it behooves to be a bit more humble when it comes to these things, and investigate each claim individually instead of making blanket statements about everything such. There are several aspects one can take into account that can ins…

So no, let's assume that we don't know, that anything is possible. But let's also inspect the evidence for each fantastical claim with best of our knowledge.

Well, first of all, you don't know that anything is possible. To assert something is possible without actually showing it is possible is meaningless. That doesn't mean we can conclude it isn't possible, just that we don't know if it's possible.

Second, while 'we don't know' is a perfectly acceptable position, it does not lead to,'therefore my pet idea is worthy'.

You are, of course, entirely within your right to explore any idea you'd like, but to claim the scientific community is unfair or defensive to dismiss your idea because it either has no evidence to back it up, or frequently because it has been proposed over and over and has already been picked to death, is intellectually lazy. If you want people to take it seriously, you need to provide evidence. There's too much to study to be able to take every currently baseless idea and run with it.

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