New study suggests early humans 250,000 years ago were more advanced than thought.

originally posted by: peter vlar
I'm reading that right now actually. It was recommended by Punkinworks, based on your earlier recommendation. It's pretty interesting so far.

I have the added fun of knowing some of the players.

originally posted by: Drawsoho
a reply to: Harte

Ah, yes, my facts were not right, but some physicist did date one
of the artifacts to 450,000 years old, and that is where I got that
number from. Good thing she didn't lose her career after all.

Do you have a citation for that by any chance? The oldest possible dates I've seen for Hueyatlaco came from Geochemist C.W. Naeser who dated samples of ash from Hueyatlaco's tool-bearing strata to 370,000 ybp (+/- 240,000 years) using the zircon Fission track dating method. While still old as hell, and older than the initial Uranium series testing done by Cynthia Irwin-Williams team in the late 60's, it's still not quite 450 Ka BP, especially at the younger end of that very wide margin of error.

Now that that is said, the underlying feature still is present: Human
settlements existed maybe 1/2 a million years ago. That is far from
the story they teach e.g. the recent (within 15000 years) Clovis migration.

Except that "Clovis First" isn't what is being taught and hasn't been taught as a definitive fact for at least 20 years. Even when I was in high school in the late 80's we were taught that while the definitive evidence still looked like Clovis First still had legs, there was enough new evidence to close the door on it and we were just waiting for the right data to come in and nail it shut. That door is most certainly closed for good and has been There are enough sites in North and South America now with dates of at least 20 KA that there is no going back. Yes, there was a lot of resistance initially to older dates but due diligence and facts, as they always will, won out.

Any conclusions about these pre ice-age people have to be based on
the megalithic sites around the world.

Why do conclusions about a New World archaeological site that would, if even the more recent 80 KA dates prove out, predate all old world megalithic sites by tens of thousands of years and has no Megalithic architecture of its own, be based on Old World Megalithic sites? That doesn't make any sense at all.

So much of history is not
known, perhaps 99% of all of history has passed and not been
recorded. Time erases all signs of human presence with wind,
rain, ice and earthquakes, but the megalithic sites withstand time
enough for us to see the structures made with multi-ton granite
blocks. These must have been created many 10's of thousands
of years ago. Since the sea was 200 ' shallower at the time of
the last ice-age, much evidence has been covered up in
modern times such as the Bahama road and the Yonaguni
structure.

You make it seem as if sea levels were entirely stable until the end of the LGM and that just isn't the case. Sea levels have been rising and falling for hundreds of millions of years and the last couple hundred thousand years are no exception. The sea levels, just like the environment that feeds or starves them, arein a constant state of flux, at least on a geological time scale. As for the so called Bimini Road, its not a road at all. The regularity of the beachrock(a type of limestone encrusted with carbonate cemented crustations found only in the Bahamas) is greatly exaggerated. All of the pictures you see presented by people who are pushing are showing only very small portions with no greater context because if the proper context were shown, it is easily discerned that the size and shape of the blocks making up this "road" are in no way uniform, possessing no regularity at all and the longest contiguous feature is barely 50 m long. Hardly a megalithic structure or marvel of engineering. Furthermore, they don't actually lead to anything. Yonaguni has been called a natural formation by Robert Schoch, darling of alternative Archaeology proponents like Graham Hancock and most famous for his controversial and misleading dating of the Sphinx and its enclosure wall. In Schoch's own words-

"I'm not convinced that any of the major features or structures are manmade steps or terraces, but that they're all natural," said Robert Schoch, a professor of science and mathematics at Boston University who has dived at the site.
"It's basic geology and classic stratigraphy for sandstones, which tend to break along planes and give you these very straight edges, particularly in an area with lots of faults and tectonic activity."

I know I come off as if I'm just towing the party line but I would love nothing more than for there to be some truth to some of these "alternative" hypotheses. And I still hold out hope that evidence supporting a less than mainstream explanation one day presents itself. Until that day comes though, you have to go where the data leads, whether one likes the answers of that outcome or not.

It is not hard to believe people lived rich lives many thousands
of years ago and all trace of them has been covered up by sand
and in time these traces have disappeared forever.

Except that there is copious amounts of evidence for many cultures exhibiting a wide array of complexity going back to before the emergence of Homo Sapiens in East Africa ~195 KA. Just look at Mousterian Culture as an example. While there is a fairly consistent representation of lithics across wide expanses of both geography and time, there are still enough differences that it can be discerned where some artifacts originated from based on their design. And that's just their lithic industry. There are some amazing examples of "high culture" demonstrated in their burial practices, how they cared for the infirm and elderly who were in no way able to are for themselves in some instances, their medical practices(individuals who survived amputations). And on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have found groups of Neanderthal from more recent time periods who exhibited more archaic practices than older groups such as cannibalism, little or no regard for the disposal of their deceased. There is no question that various members of humanity(though what is considered human can vary from one researcher to another, many PaleoAnthropologists consider all members of our genus to be Human) lived very rich lives for countless millennia, including art, music and personal aesthetics. It's a little naïve though to state that its some secret and covered by the sands of time when there is a vast wealth of artifacts and other information about these people.

originally posted by: SLAYER69
Yet.

Supposedly...

We just blossomed about 10,000 BCE, into agriculture, math, writing, etc etc etc.

But!

We stayed primitive far longer than previously thought. I mean, were more 'Advanced' earlier than previously thought. Then we blossomed 240,000 + or - years later. I guess it's a matter of perspective?

Actually, its amatter of reading comprehension
This wasn't Sapiens, we hadn't evolved yet

It's not clear which hominid species used the Azraq tools. They were made about 50,000 years before we Homo sapiens evolved. At that time, the Jordanian desert was something of a "Paleolithic bus station," as Nowell put it. Long-legged Homo erectus and the skilled hunters Homo heidelbergensis passed through the region en route from their birthplace in Africa to the unexplored landscapes of Europe and Asia.

www.washingtonpost.com...
better luck next time

originally posted by: peter vlar It's a little naïve though to state that its some secret and covered by the sands of time when there is a vast wealth of artifacts and other information about these people.

Its a dishonest debating tool used by fringers who are trying to create a gap of the godsargument. Its based on two things
1. An absolute inability to do any research themselves/laziness
2. the lies told by pseudo history authors, also trying to create a gap to push their crap through

Historical artifacts that are covered up by sand is the same thing
as lost History including the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
How do we know the pyramids are at least as old as the end of the last
ice-age? Observe the eroded limestone - clearly water damage eroding it.
Several blocks have disintegrated but that is due to weathering. The old
ones with holes in them are the eroded ones.
www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: Drawsoho
Historical artifacts that are covered up by sand is the same thing
as lost History including the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
How do we know the pyramids are at least as old as the end of the last
ice-age? Observe the eroded limestone - clearly water damage eroding it.
Several blocks have disintegrated but that is due to weathering. The old
ones with holes in them are the eroded ones.
www.youtube.com...

Well firstly, the stone of the pyramid you see today are not the exterior, that was Tura limestone that was removed to build Cairo
secondly, "water damage" I didn't know you were a geologist making a new claim about the durability of limestone, when limestone is easily degraded by frost and pollution...
Are you unaware that Khufus name was found written on some of the blocks which weren't accessible until the Victorians started using dynamite to explore, including his name in a cartouche which wasn't understood by Egyptologists when it was discovered
And just for you
www.aeraweb.org...
please feel free to disagree and post some made up stuff from young earth creationists to claim that radiocarbon dating isn't accurate

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: Marduk

Yeah, they dated it using the potassium argon method and then later with the more accurate argon argon method.

Its accurate up to 1.25 billion years

Why would we use a less precise dating method to disprove a more precise dating method? all I am saying is this - carbon date these supposed million year old fossils; if there is no C-14 remaining then that supports the case of the very old earth, but if there is C-14 remaining we have to reconfigure our ideas of history.

To mock this proposition is exactly the attitude that hinders scientific progress.

Ok, then well I can assure you that there is no C 14 left in any fossil ever discovered
If you don't know why that is, then I weep for what you think of as science

probably think its something to do with Satan don't you...

a reply to: Marduk

I've tried to explain to people in the past how the process of permineralization works and why there can not be organic material left in an actual fossil. But time after time,science is ignored and then rebutted with the fraudulent "14C found in dinosaur fossil" b.s. Where nobody seems to understand exactly why the results are garbage and the method in which the researchers obtained samples was also completely fraudulent. It's really sad when confirmation bias becomes so important that reality plays no longer plays a role.

originally posted by: peter vlar
a reply to: Marduk

I've tried to explain to people in the past how the process of permineralization works and why there can not be organic material left in an actual fossil. But time after time,science is ignored and then rebutted with the fraudulent "14C found in dinosaur fossil" b.s. Where nobody seems to understand exactly why the results are garbage and the method in which the researchers obtained samples was also completely fraudulent. It's really sad when confirmation bias becomes so important that reality plays no longer plays a role.

Cooperton is one of those YEC that you don't want to hear so much about, he wouldn't know a fact unless it was written down by a rabbi 2500 years ago

a reply to: SLAYER69

While this clothing is really non-sense, it's another good hypothesis.