Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 1161897" data-attributes="member: 5990">I wouldn't say snide so much as sarcastic.  The idea I'm lampooning is the idea that deduction is somehow an invalid way of analyzing the past.  If that doesn't deserve some sarcasm, what does?  I mean, come on.  Deduction is such a basic element of thought that disqualifying information derived from deduction is like disqualifying a runner from a race because he used his feet.   If you can think of a way to conduct rational thought that doesn't involve deduction, I'd certainly be glad to hear this intriguing new theory of logic.As to uncertainty over "when," have you ever heard of Kow Swamp, Lake Mungo?  Yeah, it's uncertain when people first arrived - it always is.  You have an earliest specimen, and that tells you at least how long people have been there.  (Oooh - look out - it's deduction!)  How long before that, who knows?  However, some Kow specimens are at least 13000 and Mungo Man was dated to 28000 by radiocarbon and 62000 by several other techniques (<a href="http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Mungo_Man.html" target="_blank">http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Mungo_Man.html</a>), which easily puts us well into the 30000 age, especially when you consider the mtDNA evidence, and various other specimens.  Are the exact dates uncertain?  Once again, "well, duh."  We will never know every date down to the last nanosecond - that doesn't mean appriximate dates and limit dates don't tell us important things.And uncertainty over how they got there - what alternatives do you propose to watercraft in the Upper Paleolithic?  Or do you propose that the aborigines (or whoever they were) are autochthonous?  (Yes, I do note the etymological irony there <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) Perhaps you think the information that human beings more than 60000 years ago somehow figured out how to cross the ocean with a technology that was at least 50000 years away from the invention of the bow and arrow is "very, very little," but I personally find it to be an astounding bit of information that I'm privileged to have been let in on.  I'd like to see you guys do that with a pile of chert and some animal sinews.</blockquote>

Verification