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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Now I come to think about it, my original date for Europe was indeed c 25000 or thereabouts. If you look back to the diagram at the start of this Treasure Hunt you will see that this rather increases the strength of the argument!
As for the earlier dates, my AE pricked up constantly. As far I could see the only actual carbon dates were excellent for me but all the earlier ones turn out to be unbelievably iffy. Take this
| Restudy of the Goat's Hole lithic collections has confirmed material ranging from about 40,000 BP to about 13,000 BP (including Mousterian, leaf point, late Aurignacian, early Gravettian, Creswellian, and Final Upper Palaeolithic phases) |
I just find it suprememly unlikely that "a hole" would be used by humans over a period of 27,000 years.
| although the earliest and latest phases are not dated by radiocarbon. |
See, told you so.
Some years ago I issued a challenge for anyone to come up with an early carbon date for either Europe or Africa. Nobody ever has. And yet everybody in the world and his dog believes in Out of Africa and they also believe in Early-Into-Europe. Both are highly political assumptions of course.
Red Ochre is mined and processed?
Red Ochre is associated with Neanderthal? |
I urge you to explore the middens of Labrador if you want to find out about red ochre. As for the rest, it would be much better to post something precise (however speculative) rather than go in for this kind of freestyle coat-trailing.
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In Britain there is one intriguing, but fragmentary, human fossil that falls into a critical period between 42'000 and 30'000 years old. The fragment found in Kent's cavern Devon, Yngland, is an upper jaw with heavily worn teeth.
It was originally described as an early modern fossil and associated with Aurignacian tools, but recent AHOB research suggests that it is earlier. In which case it is unique.
Not famous yet?
Was it Neanderthal or Modern or mixed?
The fossil is now being subject to a battery of different techniques, including attempts at DNA extraction to determine its affinities.
In another highly controversial case, the burial of a child from Lagar Vehlo in Portugal, dated around the same period as Goats Hole Cave, Paviland, Wales and showing treatment with Red Ochre show signs of mixed Neanderthal-Cro-Magnon ancestry.
Source 'Homo Britannicus by Chris Sringer'
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Mick Harper wrote:
| I just find it suprememly unlikely that "a hole" would be used by humans over a period of 27,000 years. |
Why? or Why not?
Mick Harper wrote:
| Some years ago I issued a challenge for anyone to come up with an early carbon date for either Europe of Africa. Nobody ever has. And yet everybody in the world and his dog believes in Out of Africa and they also believe in Early-Into-Europe. Both are highly political assumptions of course. |
I totally accept your point!
Mick Harper wrote:
| As for the rest, it would be much better to post something precise (however speculative) rather than go in for this kind of freestyle coat-trailing. |
Limited to time and resource, however, I totally accept your point!
By the way, I don't dispute your claim, as I do recognise some affinities, although speculative!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| The fossil is now being subject to a battery of different techniques, including attempts at DNA extraction to determine its affinities. |
My child, do you not understand anything? Here we have, as you say, potentially the most important fossil ever discovered if it is indeed 40,000 years old. Yet it is still 'being tested'. A carbon test takes about twenty minutes (though there's a waiting list of a coupla days in the summer). So how long do you propose we wait? Come back to me in twenty years' time and you will find it is still 'being tested'. We call this behaviour 'careful ignoral'.
Chris Stringer, by the way, is the Anti-Christ.
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Mick Harper wrote:
| My child, do you not understand anything? Here we have, as you say, potentially the most important fossil ever discovered if it is indeed 40,000 years old. Yet it is still 'being tested'. A carbon test takes about twenty minutes (though there's a waiting list of a coupla days in the summer). So how long do you propose we wait? Come back to me in twenty years time and you will find it is still 'being tested'. We call this behaviour 'careful ignoral'. |
As stated above, potentially the most important fossil ever discovered, and we are still waiting.
Yet your evidence, which, you do not wish to divulge to an infantile minion, or any other minion, is equally the most important evidence.
'we call this behaviour'?
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AJMorton
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| wizard wrote: | | 'we call this behaviour'? |
Suspenseful Dramatics.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I fear you misundertand my motives. Generally speaking we don't divulge Treasure Hunt material to people who haven't but might go on one. That's obvious enough. You are in an in-between position so I invite you, as I have done others who have emailed me privately, to access a fully-finished TH in a month or so when the present business has been dealt with.
However it is true that we are a little secretive about our theories but this has (among others) a commercial motive since we are in the process of making DVDs with the material.
But whatever you call it, we are proceeding for clear, purposive reasons. This is not the case with 'careful ignoral' which is an unconscious (or at any rate a non-deliberate) process to ensure that anomalies do not see the light of day. Curiously, a Treasure Hunt is a procedure where it is almost impossible to mount a decent careful ignoral ploy because of the baying of the hounds. As you yourself have seen in just this one short level.
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On the subject of Ignoral -- I found the article below in World Wide Words. Although the article is not directly relative to the Treasure Hunt, it is relative to (Ignoral), a word that I had not come across before and a word, I assume, unfamiliar outside Epistemology circles.
For newcomers, like myself, to Epistemology, the following article may be of interest.
IMPACTFUL IGNORALS
New terms that blush unseen. Michael Quinion writes on international English from a British Viewpoint.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/exceedance.htm
A subscriber asked me whether the word is spelled exceedence or exceedance. It was a surprisingly hard question to answer, since many people would say there's no such word, and it appears in very few dictionaries (the Fourth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary being the only one, so far as I know). An online search through AltaVista, however, produced the remarkable information that there were more than 30,000 examples of it recorded (most spelling it exceedance, a form that one might expect from related compounds).
If the word, however spelled, is so common, why isn't it in most dictionaries? By one of those odd coincidences, a similar question was asked by another subscriber in reference to impactful; yet another commented on the noun use of strive, as in 'our strive towards profitability', found quite often online but which is also unnoticed by lexicographers.
The opinion of many people, especially those who have been trained in conventional writing environments, would be that such usages are a reflection of the dumbing-down effect of the Internet, in which badly written, badly spelled, and ignorant text is widespread.
Many dictionary writers and other specialist language watchers take a more positive view. They would argue that what we are seeing here is a genuinely new and fascinating phenomenon. For the first time in history, large numbers of people, of widely varying educational standards, are able to make the results of their writing available to anyone who cares to enquire. For the first time, too, through the medium of computer databases, it is possible to search for, collect and summarise what is being written.
This unique combination is producing lots of examples like the ones quoted above. Some are certainly just ignorance. Some seem to be the result of a short-term failure in the brain's processing, so that a writer can't for the moment think of agreement, and invents agreeance.
BW (Before the Web), when writing that became publicly available had first to pass under the watchful eye of a sub-editor, such formations would have been blue-pencilled into conventional forms. What we are seeing is surely not a new phenomenon in itself, but an apparently accelerated evolution of word creation, a sudden outpouring of large numbers of unmediated examples of a process that has been going on for as long as we have had language. Some such words are certainly not as new as they seem: the Oxford English Dictionary database has an example of exceedance from 1836; impactful is known from a learned journal of 1973 and is probably older still.
So why do so many people dislike such creations? It may be a hang-over of an older view, that the creation of new words was a mark only of badly-educated writers. In the nineteenth century, for example, good writers took great care to avoid seeming to invent new terms, though they sometimes did so unwittingly. Mark Twain claimed never to have coined a word as far as he knew, though historical dictionaries list him as the first user of many. Thomas Hardy once wrote: 'Once or twice recently I have looked up a word in the dictionary for fear of being again accused of coining, and have found it there right enough -- only to read on and find that the sole authority is myself in a half-forgotten novel'.
Many of these words cannot be regarded simply as mistakes, because they serve a useful purpose. There's no simple alternative to impactful, for example. To avoid exceedance one has to write a rather awkward construction involving the verbal noun exceeding. Though the noun strive could be replaced by synonyms such as effort or attempt, it suggests a great and sustained effort that the alternatives do not quite convey. Another example is ignoral, the quality or state of being ignored. This was championed by the British writer Richard Boston in the 1970s on the grounds that nothing similar existed; this is rare, and often used facetiously when it does appear.
If these words are useful and are of some age why aren't they in most dictionaries? It's not that lexicographers are slow to catch on to them (their reading programmes flag them quickly enough), nor that they dislike them (dictionary makers, in their professional capacities, have no views on the relative desirability of words) but rather that such words are still uncommon off the Net (though this is changing). If that suggests a prejudice against online sources, even if an unconscious one, you may well be right.
Since small dictionaries are hard pressed for space, and regularly weed out less frequently used terms to make room for the continual influx of, for example, new technical terms, it's unsurprising that a term like ignoral should be left on the discard pile. It is less obvious why exceedance should be, since it has a useful specialist meaning -- it refers to the amount by which some quantity exceeds a permitted maximum or a stated norm. Its editors tell me that the big Oxford English Dictionary will certainly notice all of them, though it will take a while, since the current revision is working forward from M and it will be a year or several before its researchers get to them. | |
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Mick Harper wrote:
I fear you misundertand my motives. Generally speaking we don't divulge Treasure Hunt material to people who haven't but might go on one. That's obvious enough. You are in an in-between position so I invite you, as I have done others who have emailed me privately, to access a fully-finished TH in a month or so when the present business has been dealt with.
However it is true that we are a little secretive about our theories but this has (among others) a commercial motive since we are in the process of making DVDs with the material.
But whatever you call it, we are proceeding for clear, purposive reasons. This is not the case with 'careful ignoral' which is an unconscious (or at any rate a non-deliberate) process to ensure that anomalies do not see the light of day. Curiously, a Treasure Hunt is a procedure where it is almost impossible to mount a decent careful ignoral ploy because of the baying of the hounds. As you yourself have seen in just this one short level. |
Thank you Mick -- understood!
On the subject of the Torquay, Kent's Cavern fossil, I will pass on further information as soon as I know more, hopefully not twenty years.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As far as I know, and Dan will correct me, the word 'ignoral' was coined in error by an American Secretary of State (Gen Haig from memory) who was trying to use diplomatic-speak but without having been trained as a diplomat.
I adopted it in the phrase 'careful ignoral' assuming that everybody would understand that the word (though not the term) was being used ironically. But mostly people think it's a real word. As, of course, when our work is done, it will be.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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| Mick Harper wrote: | But Wizard I have already told you all the dates are reliable. The secret, when faced with a series of anomalies, is to make a single radical shift and see if that solves everything rather than do what the Academy always does in such circumstances, and what you have slightly done, which is to make a whole series of Procrustean adjustments to make everything fit a given assumption.
I accept you did make a radical shift but it didn't solve the problem. So try another one. One other thing: I have told you the dates we have are to be relied on...but they are not the only dates...there are the ones we haven't got. |
Several things strike me as odd about these figures. Firstly these are known dates from 'finds' - a spread this wide and with such a wide spread at so close a chronological proximity must imply that the CM people must be much older than the dates given and that the population levels must have been exceedingly large.
People do not up and leave where they live for no good reason. Population pressure could cause small groups to split off and move several miles up the road - but still remaining in contact with the original group. Also where and how would they travel? Surely they would follow rivers or coastal lines rather than head into upland regions or vast and impractical areas. If this is so then it seems strange that western Europe would be so late a settlement area, in preference to central and north eastern Asia and especially to island hopping and Australia.
Also, if CM was at the NE tip of the continental landmass in 34k bp, then why the long pause to make the small hop into N Americas? This would be no harder than the sea journeys involved in making it to Australia. But the move NW would still be easier and more likely.
Where have these remains been found? In what areas / regions / environments are the 'experts' looking?
I like Mort's idea of older / original populations being the younger, it makes some sense that the regions with the largest population of CM would be the original region - as a result this area would have the most evidence as well as the most recent examples..... but then that would mean South America / North America and NW Europe being the potential homelands. This may be the case, so are we perhaps dealing with an Atlantean diaspora?? Graham Hancock have anything to say about this???????
_________________
Question everything!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Several things strike me as odd about these figures. Firstly these are known dates from 'finds' - a spread this wide and with such a wide spread at so close a chronological proximity must imply that the CM people must be much older than the dates given and that the population levels must have been exceedingly large. |
You are right to suppose that Cro-Magnon must be as good deal older. It is one of the more baffling assumptions of orthodoxy that they can believe that CM who is wildly different from Neanderthal could possibly have arisen fully formed in or around 40,000 BP. In fact the present tendency to push him back to 100,000 BP is a reflection of this. Though when you actually look they don't have the evidence for these assertions. Just quoting one another with approval (and adding a coupla thousand years each time for luck!)
Somebody here might like to try an amusing exercise: try to discover the earliest CM bone. Obviously the earliest surviving bit of our species is just about the most important fossil that could ever be found, and its date and whereabouts would be burned into everybody's mind somewhat like 'Hastings 1066' but no, you will find that everybody treats this vital fact with careful ignoral.
| and that the population levels must have been exceedingly large. |
It would except you are ignoring one possibility. If very early CM was limited to a narrow econiche then his rapid spread would not necessarily reflect large numbers.
| People do not up and leave where they live for no good reason. |
Actually I think this is wrong. Animal studies show that every generation 'ups and leaves'.
| Population pressure could cause small groups to split off and move several miles up the road - but still remaining in contact with the original group. Also where and how would they travel? Surely they would follow rivers or coastal lines rather than head into upland regions or vast and impractical areas. If this is so then it seems strange that western Europe would be so late a settlement area, in preference to central and north eastern Asia and especially to island hopping and Australia. |
Unless the eco-niche dictates it.
| Also, if CM was at the NE tip of the continental landmass in 34k bp, then why the long pause to make the small hop into N Americas? This would be no harder than the sea journeys involved in making it to Australia. But the move NW would still be easier and more likely. |
You have not been paying attention. There was an enormous ice mass between Alaska and the rest of the Americas.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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Econiche...... what would they have been hunting? Perhaps they let us know in their drawings - were they hunting horses or riding them? Horses were probably rarer in NW Europe than in the plains of Asia etc...... maybe that explains how they got so far in such a short time.
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Question everything!
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| were they hunting horses or riding them? |
Horses are only used for riding aren't they? For herding or hunting other animals perhaps but they themselves aren't hunted.
| Horses were probably rarer in NW Europe than in the plains of Asia etc...... |
There was a discussion about where horse ancestors originated but it was inconclusive, horses being so widespread that it's hard to determine which was the earliest known species but the Mongolian pony is considered to be a prototype I think. Horse skeletons were found in royal kurgans, tombs, which seems to indicate their importance in terms of the prevailing social hierarchy.
| maybe that explains how they got so far in such a short time. |
Not just as a means of transport but a sign of supremacy perhaps, like the distinction between knights and squires, cavalry and infantry, etc.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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People were supposed to be eating horses in the lower Palaeolithic, so why not later?? If they're a good source of meat and abundant then why not ride them and eat them??
But the dates on Mick's map seem to be in two halves, so are we dealing with two types of people, one east and one west?? Different 'Cro Magnons' perhaps?
_________________
Question everything!
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