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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | how the heck do Latin and English know that limestone is made of seashells? |
On this narrow question: from Day One. You can see them embedded. If it was obvious to Bubbles it was obvious to Squeaks. |
Wiki says this about the White Cliffs of Dover:
The sea bottom was covered with white mud formed from fragments of coccoliths, the skeletons of tiny algae that floated in the surface waters and sank to the bottom and, together with the remains of bottom-living creatures, formed muddy sediments.
It is thought that the sediments were deposited very slowly, probably half a millimetre a year, equivalent to about 180 coccoliths piled one on top of another. Up to 500 metres (1,600 ft) of sediments were deposited in some areas. |
All I can think is, "But didn't Mt Saint Helens show that this kind of thing can happen in an afternoon?"
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This all goes to the heart of the great 'Diffusion vs Independent Invention' debate that transfixes so many academic subjects. I am myself presently reading an anthropological paper that claims without hesitation agriculture was independently invented ten different times in ten different places. 'Look, over there.' 'No, that's just Monsanto.'
It needs a thread in itself so more news on this anon. But not Q-anon.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | I am afraid orthodoxy has caught Ishmael up, they now realise that Humans use similar sounds for common words in more than 6,000 languages. |
How discouraging.
The researchers aren't themselves sure. They considered it could be the remnant of some form of "prehistoric protolanguage" that was once spoken by the earliest humans before the evolution of modern languages – but their own analysis suggests it's more likely that biology is somehow at play here. Well. They're wrong.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Ishmael wrote: | | Well. They're wrong. |
Citation needed?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Ishmael doesn't cite, he is cited.
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