The Ice Age information gap.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: peter vlar

originally posted by: crayzeed
a reply to: bloodymarvelous
One must understand todays anthropologists and archaeologists are more than happy to push their own agenda on how ancient history was.

As a Paleontologist, I couldn’t disagree more with this overgeneralized and stereotyped line of rhetoric that’s Just your personal opinion presented as if that somehow makes it factual.

Paleontologists are different from Anthropologists, though.

The Anthropologists are always looking for cultural context.

Had you read my next reply you would have seen that it was an autocorrection typo that I had missed. I’m actually a Paleoanthropologist and my specific area of study was Pleistocene Hominids. In other words, I specialized in European Ice Age cultures and potential points of admixture prior to genetics proving that we did indeed mate, feed and kill anything we thought resembled us when encountering new and distinct groups of Hominids. Not only did we mate with Neanderthal, but we learned from them as they had the superior lithic tool kit when H. Sapiens first encountered them in the Levant, we buried our dead together and cohabited sites together.

Prior the Younger Dryas there isn't much of that, because the cultures that arose afterward villified their ancestors by spreading the flood myth about a wicked world being wiped out by the gods. So the cultures won't connect.

I think you’re confusing culture with civilization. 2 very different things. To imply that there was yes culture simply because there was a lack of known written language to reflect them based on your modern interpretations of how things should have been without looking at the evidence for the variety of cultures existing during the LGM

Personally I'm interested in the ice age because I want to understand human genetic evolution. Like why we are instinctively driven to violence, and why hunting and gathering (in the modern world shopping and violent video games) are so entertaining to us.

You’re drastically limiting the potential scope of your learning by focusing solely on the LGM (were actually still in the Ice Age, it’s just an interglacial period). What you attribute to the LGM has been occurring since before Homo was a genus and Continues today In other apes like Chimpanzees who practice open warfare against competing groups and attack smaller monkeys and eat their meat. Contrast that with Bonobo culture where instead of a warring, patriarchal society, Bonobos have a matriarchal society, with yes warfare and most issues amongst members of a group are solved with... Sex. And let me tell you, humans don’t have a lockdown on homosexuality and Bonobos in particular utilize a lot of What we would Refer to as lesbian behavior. Your narrow search parameters

And you can date these floods to the end of the LGM how exactly?

We'll know soon enough, when they finally zero in on a date for the Hiawatha crater in Greenland. It's likely to turn out to be the impact that sparked the Younger Dryas event. (But not certain to be, just yet.)



So you claim it’s connected to the YD but when it comes down to showing your hand, you’re really just bluffing because it’s just hyperbolic conjecture when you’re talking about a crater that might be as old as 3 Ma. Not a lot of facts in that bit of Op Ed

originally posted by: fromtheskydown
To me, the structure in the sea of Yonaguni in no way resembles a natural formation. That's my belief and nothing will sway me from it. It is not inconceivable that it is a man-made structure, swamped by rising sea levels.

ATS won't let me post pics because I use an ad blocker, but maybe this link will work:
Coast of Yonaguni -Jima

It worked.
Now, look at the "structure" of the island and please tell me you don't think that coast was constructed by humans.

Harte

ETA: Another pic of the coast of Yonaguni-Jima

originally posted by: fromtheskydown
To me, the structure in the sea of Yonaguni in no way resembles a natural formation. That's my belief and nothing will sway me from it. It is not inconceivable that it is a man-made structure, swamped by rising sea levels.

Whatever happened at, or was done to, the "monument" - if anything - happened before the site SANK. It's been shown by Kimura himself that the site sank sometime around 2k years ago, and was never "swamped by rising sea levels."

Many things are "not inconceivable." Even lies are "not inconceivable."

You might note that the 2kybp date when the site sank in an earthquake precedes the earliest evidence of habitation on the Island of Yonaguni-Jima by many centuries.

Harte

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: fromtheskydown
To me, the structure in the sea of Yonaguni in no way resembles a natural formation. That's my belief and nothing will sway me from it. It is not inconceivable that it is a man-made structure, swamped by rising sea levels.

Whatever happened at, or was done to, the "monument" - if anything - happened before the site SANK. It's been shown by Kimura himself that the site sank sometime around 2k years ago, and was never "swamped by rising sea levels."

Many things are "not inconceivable." Even lies are "not inconceivable."

You might note that the 2kybp date when the site sank in an earthquake precedes the earliest evidence of habitation on the Island of Yonaguni-Jima by many centuries.

Harte

Yep that pesky problem for all those 'invisible civilizations' no people.......

originally posted by: Hanslune


Yep that pesky problem for all those 'invisible civilizations' no people.......

I think a big part of the problem is what we are expecting "people" to mean.

If a hunter/gatherer society lived in an environment that was sufficiently lush/abundant, certain aspects of their society would be indistinguishable from more modern agricultural societies.

-) There would a group of people in their society that had sufficient leisure time to investigated the arts and sciences. (Indeed, that group would make up a much larger percentage of their population than it does in later agricultural societies.)

-) There would be permanent settlements. (Because there is sufficient forage available to feed them year round, with no need for migration.)

-) There's a good chance there might even be monuments. (Possibly for a functional purpose, such as protection from herds of giant mammoths that are sufficiently numerous that they don't live in fear of the comparatively weak bands of humans, but also can't climb walls.)


What we wouldn't see is:

-) Actual agriculture. (Although we might see evidence of horticulture.)

-) Excessively large populations. (Because they didn't need the labor.)

Possibly we might see:

-) Sonic/Vibration technology. Elephants communicate using low frequency sound waves that propagate through the ground. People who specialized in hunting them would likely become aware of this, and begin studying the phenomenon. At low frequency it's easier to become aware that sound is a mechanical vibration. If nothing else, they would want to create a low frequency detector/amplifier to make an audible noise when mammoth vibrations are happening, so their hunters can get ready.

originally posted by: peter vlar

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous
Prior the Younger Dryas there isn't much of that, because the cultures that arose afterward villified their ancestors by spreading the flood myth about a wicked world being wiped out by the gods. So the cultures won't connect.

originally posted by: peter vlar

I think you’re confusing culture with civilization. 2 very different things. To imply that there was yes culture simply because there was a lack of known written language to reflect them based on your modern interpretations of how things should have been without looking at the evidence for the variety of cultures existing during the LGM

I'm not trying to say there were no cultures.

I'm saying those cultures didn't continue into the modern period.

After the Younger Dryas event, the way of life changed dramatically (due to the scarcity of vegetation), and trying to feel in control about the planetary events that had wiped out so many people by saying those people "offended the gods".

Personally I'm interested in the ice age because I want to understand human genetic evolution. Like why we are instinctively driven to violence, and why hunting and gathering (in the modern world shopping and violent video games) are so entertaining to us.

You’re drastically limiting the potential scope of your learning by focusing solely on the LGM (were actually still in the Ice Age, it’s just an interglacial period). What you attribute to the LGM has been occurring since before Homo was a genus and Continues today In other apes like Chimpanzees who practice open warfare against competing groups and attack smaller monkeys and eat their meat. Contrast that with Bonobo culture where instead of a warring, patriarchal society, Bonobos have a matriarchal society, with yes warfare and most issues amongst members of a group are solved with... Sex. And let me tell you, humans don’t have a lockdown on homosexuality and Bonobos in particular utilize a lot of What we would Refer to as lesbian behavior. Your narrow search parameters

And yet we have no cultural connection to them. We can't even communicate.

But simply due to having common DNA, they share much our behavioral traits.

That is what I'm interested in. I'm trying to tell what is "nurture" and what is "nature".

Anything we share with being that can't even talk with us has to be "nature". It can't be "cultural heritage".

So you claim it’s connected to the YD but when it comes down to showing your hand, you’re really just bluffing because it’s just hyperbolic conjecture when you’re talking about a crater that might be as old as 3 Ma. Not a lot of facts in that bit of Op Ed

I said "we'll know soon enough". I didn't say we know already.

We do know for sure there was a Younger Dryas, but it's not certain that it was tied to an "event". However it has long been hypothesized (but not proven) that a meteor, or nearby passing comet caused it.

Hiawatha crater is a strong candidate because it's located in a place that would have been covered by a huge glacier during the ice age, and the impact was big enough that it would have melted an impressive amount of ice.

But yes. It has only been conclusively dated so "some time in the last 10 million years". Or something along those lines.

originally posted by: peter vlar
[q Not only did we mate with Neanderthal, but we learned from them as they had the superior lithic tool kit when H. Sapiens first encountered them in the Levant, we buried our dead together and cohabited sites together.

I had been wondering about that. Since they had bigger brains than we do, and were able to use all the tools we could, it seems likely they weren't less advanced.

But I'm thinking they probably didn't have the amalyse gene that lets us process starch effectively. So when the bleak times came, and hunting wasn't enough to provide sufficient nutrition all by itself, that probably did them in.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: peter vlar
[q Not only did we mate with Neanderthal, but we learned from them as they had the superior lithic tool kit when H. Sapiens first encountered them in the Levant, we buried our dead together and cohabited sites together.

I had been wondering about that. Since they had bigger brains than we do, and were able to use all the tools we could, it seems likely they weren't less advanced.

But I'm thinking they probably didn't have the amalyse gene that lets us process starch effectively. So when the bleak times came, and hunting wasn't enough to provide sufficient nutrition all by itself, that probably did them in.

They had the gene, just not as many copies (22 to 2.)
Probably only indicates that Neanderthals by and large never made a major dietary switch to carbs over meat, since the theory is that it was this switch that caused the rise of amylase copies in H. Sapiens.

Harte

I see. I had it backwards. The switch to carbs leads to the increase in amalyse, rather than amalyse leading to the switch.

I guess another reason Neanderthals couldn't make the jump is they had lots of muscle mass to maintain. So carbs just wouldn't be enough.


It is interesting to consider that this wasn't the first ice age to come to an end, but for some reason this one lead to more extinctions than the previous ones.

Do you think the rise of farming was to blame? Or was the environment different this time around than during the last warming period? Or perhaps the Younger Dryas complicated it?

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

See you write all this, without providing evidence. Do not do the 'do your own research" cop out. Can you provide evidence for say "it being quite lush". Where? When?

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

See you write all this, without providing evidence. Do not do the 'do your own research" cop out. Can you provide evidence for say "it being quite lush". Where? When?

I apologize. I did research it once. And I thought it would not be considered controversial.

The most obvious evidence is the mammoths. If a creature needs to eat 150 pounds per day, and you see large herds of them walking around, it stands to reason that they must be finding 150 pounds per day of food.

The part about NASA doing a scan of the Sahara and finding deep riverbeds is hard to give a good link to, because I'm going off of a documentary I saw on Amazon prime. If you have Amazon prime, I guess you could watch it also.

www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?keywords=secrets+of+the+sand&qid=1583193135&s=instant-video&sr=1-1


As far as the terrain getting very much the same amount of sunlight as it would get today, despite being colder, that should be pretty obvious. The Earth was spending time a little bit further from the Sun, due to Milankovich cycles, but not a whole lot. The level of average insolation over say, your own back yard, would be very nearly the same as it is today. But there would be cold winds blowing down from the north, so it would still be cold, despite all of that sun.




It's a common misconception that plants grow less when it is cold vs. warm. They do to some degree. But what really drives their growth is SUNLIGHT. The absence or presence of sunlight. Sunlight is food to them.

The reason plants grow less in the Winter isn't because it is cold. It's because the days are shorter.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous


See it works like this. YOU made the claim. YOU bring some evidence. I'm not going to consider what you said, untill you link to the evidence.

hi folks ,

anyone have time to watch the videos i posted on previous page ?

any thoughts ??... as the data within the videos is relevant to what is being discussed in this thread

thanks
snoopyuk

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: bloodymarvelous


See it works like this. YOU made the claim. YOU bring some evidence. I'm not going to consider what you said, untill you link to the evidence.

I gave you some evidence. You're just being greedy.

What you're describing isn't how it works either. If I make a claim, I have to provide some evidence, but I don't have pile mountains of it, truck load after truck load after truck load, until the most ardent of skeptics becomes a true believer.

There isn't going to be enough evidence either way to convince you if you're absolutely committed against, but there is some pretty decent support for the hypothesis.

In documentary I linked (which sadly you can only watch if you have Prime), they discussed the various waterways found under the Sands of the Sahara. Although the dates vary wildly, with some being further back than the Pleistocene. And mostly they were discussing the "Green Sahara" period, which is a whole different matter.

There's some scholarly discussion to consider

www.atmo.arizona.edu...

Some attempts have been made to study tooth decay of herbivores. Wherein it is concluded that, at least the Southern states of present day USA had been pretty rainy.

www.sciencedirect.com...



On the other hand even consider it possible for it to have been a bleak landscape, you would seriously need to find a way to explain the Mammoths getting 150 pounds of food per day. That would be like eating a whole human being every day and a quarter.

There is no debate that they did have to eat that much, and that some of them ate 400 pounds per day. Seriously nobody anywhere debating against that claim.

Either they would need to be really light on their feet and cover miles and miles per day, or the food would need to be concentrated in areas they could walk to, and find something every time they walked.


Another issue is the Natufian culture, which during its pre-Younger Dryas era showed evidence of permanent habitation, despite no evidence existing at all for them to have practiced agriculture. They made bread out of wild grains, though.

It proves that at least one culture was able to live a hunter/gatherer lifestyle and simultaneously live in a permanent settlement.

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

On the other hand even consider it possible for it to have been a bleak landscape, you would seriously need to find a way to explain the Mammoths getting 150 pounds of food per day.

Ujnless you consider tundra "lush," you'll have to explain millennia of mammoths being frozen in tundra without advanced decay.

Harte

You're confusing temperature with sunlight quantity again.

Plants being cold doesn't mean they can't grow (except if they are completely frozen.)

They would have to develop cold weather adaptations, but if the sunlight is there to power photosynthesis, plants can grow in cold environments.

I live in Oregon. I can look up any time I want and see Mt. Hood, with its permanent glacier at its summit. You what else I see on Mt. Hood?

Trees. Quite a lot of trees. They are further down than the Summit, though. There is a location called the "Timber Line", where they stop growing.

There's also a ski resort called, aptly enough: "Timber Line Lodge". I've skied there a number of times myself. In the Summer that is the resort where people go for Summer skiing. There are quite a lot of trees up there.


There is an annual wood cut that I did a couple of times, when I was a young boy scout. Several tons of lumber are cut out of those trees, much of which goes to a cabin where the boyscouts who participated are allowed to stay, and used to heat its wood furnace. Quite an impressive amount of biomass being generated by that forest, every year.

I should be more clear: when I say the world was "Lush", I basically mean that much of the world looked quite a lot like Oregon does today.

We get a lot of rain here, just like the world did back then. It's not terribly warm, either. Not deadly cold, but not super warm. In the ice age, there would be regions around the equator that were still much warmer than Oregon is today, but the average habitable temperature certainly being colder than Oregon. But it paints a good picture.

I'm not thinking like Jungle vines or anything like that. Those aren't cold adapted plants. Just thick alpine growth, of various sorts, but in similar volumes as you might find jungle vegetation to grow in a jungle today.