It's what a lot of engineers have been saying for decades: Looking at the surfaces of the artefacts, it's obvious more advanced tooling, than what was claimed by archaeologists, must have been used. Oh irony, the bits were already lying about in the museum's archive for a century.

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MarkusQ 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Quite frustrating how archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". While some of the excesses of the past were clearly excessive, drilled holes should have been sufficient evidence of drills, people living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats, rope-worn bones should be considered evidence of rope and so forth.

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FranklinJabar an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> we'll believe anything

Can you explain what you're referring to? Obviously "ancient aliens" does not count as archaeology, despite your insistence otherwise.

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MarkusQ 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

The Kamitakamori tools? Piltdown fossils? The pattern roughly seems to be "if you have physical artifacts that support a theory / fit a pattern they will be accepted (even if bogus) but if you have a theory that explains facts (e.g. drilled holes) but no physical artifacts (in this case drills) it will be rejected".

(Just saw the snark about ancient aliens; no idea where that came from. If you're going to try to imply that that's my position you'll need to produce some artifacts to back it up.)

	▲	MarkusQ 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And for the record, my grump here is about soft / organic tools and artifacts and coastal / high weathering sites being discounted while everyone falls all over themselves for rocks and bones, even if fake. No aliens, just weavers, sailors, and the like.

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andrewflnr 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Balance would be nice, yes, but I think the conservative approach is closer to correct, especially given the natural human bias toward believing sensational theories.

	▲	twodave 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Maybe not closer to correct, but definitely less likely to admit errors. But sometimes the negative space around a particular thing becomes overwhelming. To me this is like circumstantial evidence—in general it’s weaker than physical evidence, but in high enough numbers it can serve.
	▲	mojomark an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's an interesting thought. I wonder if you can quantify this belief? That Weibull (presumably) distribution would be an interesting and useful thing to know.

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FranklinJabar an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is true in many, many, many, many places. It takes a significantly higher bar of evidence to put forward specific tooling than an engineer's intuition to make the mark in archaeology.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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