“Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
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Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#2This is an interesting story I'd like to hear told by a non-crazy person.
Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#3This is an interesting story I'd like to hear told by a non-crazy person.
Gunung Padang is a standard megalithic site.
The site as it is built after 9600 BC (the date mentioned in the article) would be normal. A less sophisticated human settlement prior to 9600 BC would be normal.
If the pyramid was built some millennia before 9600 BC as the article speculates, that would be groundbreaking anthropological news. There isn't that much evidence that that is the case though. The jury is still out, although this speculation is a bit of hype. The Indonesian press will run with it somewhat as it would affirm national pride to be one of the first civilizations.
The speculation that this site was Atlantis is obviously even more far out.
Lots of interesting archaeological sites have been found in the Indonesia jungles, such as the more recently created Borobudur ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur ).
Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#4Warning. That is the same guy whose TED talk was banned because it supported the consumption of DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) and made several rather unscientific claims:
http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hanco...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine#Conject...
Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#5I can't believe this is #3 on hacker news...
Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#6With proper formatting i'd actually give it a read...
Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#7Warning. That is the same guy whose TED talk was banned because it supported the consumption of DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) and made several rather unscientific claims: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hanco... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine#Conject... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYDgmpiE-U0 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdOz0AHRqI8otCpT6_Oewg
I don't know anything about the validity of the facts and would have preferred a third-party or peer reviewed source.
But surely someone's opinion about the consumption of psychedelics, and the credibility of their research as a scientist are quite separate things.
Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#8Warning. That is the same guy whose TED talk was banned because it supported the consumption of DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) and made several rather unscientific claims: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hanco... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine#Conject... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYDgmpiE-U0 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdOz0AHRqI8otCpT6_Oewg
The support of DMT consumption is hardly the most troublesome part of that TED talk, although it might be the political reason TED banned it (it's a TEDx conference, by the way). In that talk, he also discusses in detail the immortality of the human soul, telepathic communication with personal benevolent deities, and mystic healing. While he does hurriedly hedge these claims with the sentence "I'm making no claim one way or another as to the reality state of these entities," the entire talk is very clearly extrascientific, and in my opinion pseudoscientific.
Re: “Everything we've been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong.”
#9This is an interesting story I'd like to hear told by a non-crazy person.
There is some evidence for paleolithic civilization in southern Turkey (which is mentioned in the article but not central to it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
It is relatively unsurprising that there should be bursts of civilization before the wheels really got turning, but crazy people citing Plato's fictions are not worth much attention.