[MarkusQ]

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.

[robin_reala]

people living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats

Historical sea levels were wildly different at different times, so not necessarily. For instance, the British isles were settled at a point when it was a part of the mainland: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland.png

[MarkusQ]

Certainly. Land bridges are also a thing. As is swimming, in some cases.

[andrewflnr]

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]

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.

[mmooss]

But what does the negative space indicate? It says something is missing - which few will dispute - but there are many possible answers in a sort of superposition. Speculation about this answer or that one isn't reliable. It resolves to one answer (or a few) when you have actual evidence.

[twodave]

Sure, you can’t always make a definitive statement, but you can at least determine classes of things. Same way we can determine a murder occurred without recovering a weapon or sometimes even without finding a body. Maybe we can’t be very specific about the how, but IME it is also OK to draw comparisons to modern tools so long as those comparisons are helpful.

[mmooss]

Speculation may usefully provide leads to investigate, but it's meaningless as a conclusion and won't be accepted by scientists or anyone else serious (including courts); they require evidence.

> you can’t always make a definitive statement

It's far short of that. Human speculation is wildly unreliable and we seem to always overestimate it, perhaps because it's emotionally satisfying: What other speculative answer would we choose but something that satisfies our emotions? Lacking evidence, nothing compels us to face the unpleasant or unexpected. Look what our understanding of nature and the world was before we required evidence (before science).

[legulere]

The problem is that you get a vastly distorted picture because of different survivorship rates of artifacts. In the Stone Age people used mostly wood tools but stone tools didn’t rot away.

[andrewflnr]

Quite.

> Balance would be nice, yes

[dev_l1x_be]

What is more sensational:

a, you can drill a hole and cut a 100 ton stone block with a chisel

b, you create a hole with a drill, you use some for of stone cutting technology that supports cutting 100 ton stone blocks?

[pinkmuffinere]

It can be legitimately unclear. Relatively-advanced technology being available to early humans is remarkable. Likewise, achieving difficult tasks without the relatively-advanced technology is remarkable. Some prototypical examples of this:

- Incan stonework with stones 'perfectly' cut to fit without mortar -- did they have advanced tools to support that? Or just persistence?

- Greek fire -- is there some lost mechanism here? Or just the growth of legends?

- the pyramids (I think not so controversial among academics, but certainly in pop culture)

[andrewflnr]

Neither of those is particularly sensational. What's your point?

[mojomark]

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.

[andrewflnr]

Quantify the belief that humans are biased toward sensationalism? No, I have no idea how to do that. Actually you could make an argument that it's a bit circular, that "sensationalism" is defined as the kind of ideas that humans are biased towards and which are therefore more able to cause a "sensation".

But if you don't see how people yearn to believe in big dramatic things like conspiracies, aliens, bigfoot, or even simple narratives about single people changing the course of history, and how they only accept the complicated and/or boring reality with conscious effort, then, well, you seem to be living in a better universe than I am.

[MarkusQ]

Unfortunately, you also sometimes throw out explanations like "they did X in substantially the same way as their descents were doing X up until the late 1800s" or "they used it for Y, just at it was used at other sites throughout the world."

At least in the case of things like migrations, we're starting to get overwhelming genetic evidence.

[andrewflnr]

I agree that's an overcorrection. People doing things the same way they have for centuries should be high on the list of plausible, boring explanations.

[beloch]

It's possible to put holes through things without a drill. People can get onto islands without boats. How do you define rope, and what else might cause similar wear? Are you certain you can distinguish them?

Archaeology has come a long way over the last couple of centuries. It used to be little better than grave robbing and crackpot (often racist) theories. Archaeologists made all sorts of assumptions that turned out to be ridiculously (and sometimes tragically) wrong. Excavations once involved dynamite and bulldozers. Things have changed. Techniques for re-analyzing and extracting new information from old finds are allowing archaeologists to make discoveries without digging at all. Even a careful, modern dig is a destructive act that can only be conducted once.

It's not frustrating. It's progress.

[buran77]

If you find a man made hole with a perfectly vertical shaft and high aspect ratio (tall and narrow), it was drilled. Individuals can float or be washed ashore on an island, populations can't. If you find entire civilizations on distant islands, they got there by some sort of boat or advanced raft. Rope generally implies twisted or braided fibers, so maybe it's difficult to tell if this was artificially twisted or a natural one like a vine. But if it looked like a rope, and was used like a rope then it was a rope.

[mmooss]

> archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example".

Could you provide some evidence of your own? Archaeology has always been tied to evidence, as any scholarship is.

[Intermernet]

This is true, but archaeology has been settled for a while now on what constitutes sufficient evidence. Believe it or not, it's actually a pretty new science.

[MarkusQ]

Or will be, soon. :)

[saidnooneever]

they dont even accept claims with properly documented and preserved samples. your methodology doesnt matter if it disagrees with the common accepted 'truth'.

archeology is a cesspool.

not to mention tons of hings being twisted into weird shit only to try and push colonial agendas!

[Intermernet]

This has been less true for the last 50 years. Archaeology as a field is very aware of this cultural bias, and the old school are mostly dead. Think of it like the doctors of 150 years ago prescribing "cucaine for ill humors". It's a pendulum, but it's settling.

These days it's seen as a dynamic decision tree. If such and such people had so and so technology, then the logical ways to achieve that are x, y and z methods. Let's look for evidence for those things and weigh up the probability of each. Importantly, let's not allow cultural bias to cloud that analysis by consulting with the closest living relatives of said people.

The problems are, amongst others, maintaining that lack of cultural bias, recognising that you have to allow for unknown paths to technology, and being aware that every deductive step exponentially expands the decision tree whilst simultaneously clouding the certainty.

This is why modern archaeology is actually highly averse to saying things are "true", but it's also very strong on saying other things are almost certainly "false".

Most things in this tree of dwindling probability are "false" , and it takes serious evidence, linking a bunch of deductive steps, to flip the consensus to "true".

[tephra]

Do you have any examples of this?

[FranklinJabar]

> we'll believe anything

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

[MarkusQ]

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.)

[AlotOfReading]

Piltdown was rejected 70 years ago, so hardly a current example. Kamitakamori was someone taking legitimately old artifacts and putting them in other places. You can detect that (as people did), but it's much less obvious than you're suggesting.

There are also numerous examples where physical artifacts haven't been immediately accepted. The white sands footprints. Monte Verde II. Others like Monte Verde I, Buttermilk Creek, and Cooper's ferry still aren't accepted despite physical evidence.

Consensus generally has high standards for anything that pushes boundaries. It's very easy to construct an "obvious" explanation that's totally wrong. We call these "just-so" stories. A narrative that's supported by physical evidence is a lot more verifiable.

[cyphar]

> Piltdown was rejected 70 years ago, so hardly a current example

Well of course it wasn't a current example -- to quote their original comment:

> 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 ... [emphasis added]

In other words, they feel that historical examples of fanciful theories being mainstream has resulted in an over correction to modern archeology requiring unreasonably strict proof standards.

(There is a certain irony in a user called "AlotOfReading" not reading a fairly short comment carefully...)

[MarkusQ]

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.

[mmooss]

> 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)

Two examples from over a century is not evidence of unreliability.

> if you have a theory that explains facts (e.g. drilled holes) but no physical artifacts (in this case drills) it will be rejected".

Evidence is a requirement in all scholarship; the rest is speculation - which can be useful as a direction for searching for evidence, but is not sufficient to be accepted in any field. What field accepts claims without evidence?

[andrewflnr]

They didn't say things should be accepted without evidence. That's a laughably bad-faith reading. They proposed a different standard of evidence that they think is less infeasibly high while still not accepting nonsense. I don't totally agree but it's a reasonable direction to argue.

As for the examples, when they start with "swings over the years" they're clearly taking a long-term perspective, and not trying to claim that modern archaeology will "believe anything" (especially not when their more prominent claim is that modern archaeology believes too little).

[mmooss]

> laughably

Ridicule is the refuge of those without an argument. Maybe try standup or Twitter.

[andrewflnr]

Maybe try actually reading what the person you're arguing with is saying and responding to that.