Michael Shermer vs. "alternative history" Hancock and Crandall

[Reality Check]

2 lies about "same size and shape as their terrestrial counterparts"

They are the same size and shape as their terrestrial counterparts!

29 November 2017: 2 lies about "same size and shape as their terrestrial counterparts"
First lie:
Your "grid gardens" are the raised pre-Columbian fields that often have a pattern of mounds on them. The paper you based this on was
Pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes, ecosystem engineers, and self-organized patchiness in Amazonia (PDF)
All you have are fantasies about what you see on the sea floor under maybe kilometers of water on Google Earth.

Second lie:
You cite Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental history of the Iguala Valley, Central Balsas Watershed of Mexico which has no "grid gardens" in it. The paper has no images of gardens at all in it !

 

[Reality Check]

A fantasy about "instructions" existing since there are none about his gardens

If you'll just download Google Earth, follow my instructions, you'll see the evidences for yourself.

29 November 2017: A fantasy about "instructions" existing since there are none in this thread about his undersea gardens?

I may have missed these "instructions". You can make me very, very wrong, KOTA, by linking to these "instructions" in your previous posts.

 

[Reality Check]

I was interested and a lie of dating of "grid gardens"

*Because NONE of you are even vaguely interested in reading peer-reviewed material about the dating of these grid gardens-

29 November 2017: I was interested and read the paper which gives a lie of dating of "grid gardens".

Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental history of the Iguala Valley, Central Balsas Watershed of Mexico

Despite its importance, no data relating to early agricultural evolution and associated environmental history are available from the Balsas drainage. Evidence from Guilá Naquitz Cave, located in the semiarid highlands of Oaxaca, indicates that plant domestication in Mexico (C. pepo L. squash) occurred by 9,000 B.P. (10,000 cal B.P.) (9). Currently, however, the earliest evidence for Mexican maize consists of cobs recovered from Guilá Naquitz dated to 5,400 B.P. (6,200 cal B.P.) (10), and pollen and phytoliths from San Andrés, Tabasco, with an age of 6,200 B.P. (7,300 cal B.P.) (11, 12). Both sites are outside of the present distributional range of wild maize, and neither provided evidence for a premaize use of teosinte.

The paper is the dating of general agriculture in the region by looking at pollens in 3 lakes and a swamp and in the very next paragraph.

This article presents the results of paleoecological studies carried out on three lakes and a swamp located in the central Balsas watershed that provide information on the natural- and human-induced changes in vegetation and climate since the late Pleistocene. The sites, called Ixtacyola, Ixtapa, Tuxpan, and Chaucles, are situated in and near the Iguala Valley in northern Guerrero state (Fig. 1). The work is part of a large initiative combining paleoecological and archaeological studies in the Central Balsas drainage. During six field seasons undertaken from 1999 to 2005, we carried out reconnaissance, testing, and coring of the sites reported on here.

.

 

[Reality Check]

Only if you can read.

It is the ability to read which turns your statements about the paper into a lie.
29 November 2017: I was interested and read the paper which gives a lie of dating of "grid gardens".

 

[Reality Check]

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/4957.long

29 November 2017: I was interested and read the paper which gives a lie of dating of "grid gardens".

 

[Reality Check]

...Can we agree up to this point?

No.
We can agree that that you have a vivid imagination and lots of ignorance about the real world such as the basics of presenting evidence (from someone who alleges a legal education !), the impossibility of "historical sea routes" or "guild posts" showing on the sea floor, the depths of oceans, past sea levels, that people have been planting in square fields for thousands of years, etc. etc.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

I am claiming that these grids were artificially created years ago, and that originally they were irrigation canals, NOT firebreaks.

Fascinating. I cant wait until we move onto aerial archaeology, land topology and the introduction of the Roman water wheel.

You do know that water flows down hill?

 

[King of the Americas]

Irrigation canals? Really? In that part of the parish?

My god...you do understand that that part of Louisiana has no shortage of water or need for that many irrigation canals, right? In fact, keeping the water out is a much larger problem than getting it in. That's why it is a reclamation project from wetlands made possible by the US Army Corps of Engineers projects over the last 100 years diverting the Mississippi River through the Atchafalaya Basin. Without their large MODERN projects, none of this would have been possible due to random, periodic and chaotic flooding from the river itself in this area.

I am claiming grid gardens predate Columbus .

 

[King of the Americas]

Fascinating. I cant wait until we move onto aerial archaeology, land topology and the introduction of the Roman water wheel.

You do know that water flows down hill?

I know that information doesn't flow here, at all.

 

[King of the Americas]

29 November 2017: 2 lies about "same size and shape as their terrestrial counterparts"
First lie:
Your "grid gardens" are the raised pre-Columbian fields that often have a pattern of mounds on them. The paper you based this on was
Pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes, ecosystem engineers, and self-organized patchiness in Amazonia (PDF)
All you have are fantasies about what you see on the sea floor under maybe kilometers of water on Google Earth.

Second lie:
You cite Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental history of the Iguala Valley, Central Balsas Watershed of Mexico which has no "grid gardens" in it. The paper has no images of gardens at all in it !

They don't use Google Earth, I have.

 

[King of the Americas]

29 November 2017: A fantasy about "instructions" existing since there are none in this thread about his undersea gardens?

I may have missed these "instructions". You can make me very, very wrong, KOTA, by linking to these "instructions" in your previous posts.

"Follow the lines"

 

[Crawtator]

I am claiming grid gardens predate Columbus .

Couldn't be more wrong.

Use Google Earth in southeast Louisiana. Find "grid gardens". Follow this link:

http://www.lafishblog.com/why-louisiana-is-the-inshore-fishing-capital-of-the-world/

Compare.

A large portion of the delta wouldn't even be there if not for the intervention of the US Army Corps of Engineers in the last 100 years. The Mississippi River wanted to jump through the Atchafalaya Basin (and still does if not for the controls). Much of that coastal reclamation was because modern man forced the river in a more controlled fashion down towards New Orleans rather that a steeper, more southerly route for the river. Much of that area which is heavily farmed was CREATED POST-COLUMBUS.

Stop it. Just stop it. You are making a fool of yourself.

 

[Crawtator]

I did find something oddly appropriate for this conversation. Thanks for making me interested again in my own state.

https://earth.google.com/web/@29.14298298,-89.13815787,0.40408271a,2643.18863549d,35y,-0h,0t,0r

 

[Reality Check]

The idiocy of "Follow the lines" as instructions!

"Follow the lines"

And we get:
29 November 2017: The idiocy of "Follow the lines" as instructions!
How is a "line" different from an artefact in Google Earth? How is a "line" different from an undersea ridge in Google Earth? What insane delusion links gardens with "lines" that cross the sea floor?

From where? To where?
Start at the top of the mid-Atlantic ridge which is many kilometers below the sea surface. Follow the "lines". End up at the bottom of the ridge !

 

[Reality Check]

They don't use Google Earth, I have.

Your delusions on what you see in Google Earth are not your repeated lies about papers, etc. just from the last couple of days:
27 November 2017: A total delusion of " historic shipping routes revealed on google earth".
27 November 2017: A "grid-gardens" lie and delusion
28 November 2017: A lie of "countless submerged ruins I have already posted" when he has posted delusions about the ocean floors.
28 November 2017: A lie of "The trees are fully grown".
29 November 2017: 2 lies about "same size and shape as their terrestrial counterparts"
29 November 2017: I was interested and read the paper which gives a lie of dating of "grid gardens".

86 items of ignorant assertions, fantasies and lies from 9 November 2017 to 24 November 2017

ETA: Emphasizing your hypocrisy is dumb. You are always asking for people to date things (trees!) in specific locations and that is a paper of people dating things in a specific location !

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Fascinating. I cant wait until we move onto aerial archaeology, land topology and the introduction of the Roman water wheel.

You do know that water flows down hill?

I know that information doesn't flow here, at all.

Actually it does. You have failed to look at the archaeological basics
1) Landscape topology,
2) Water sources
3) Dry farming VS irrigated farming,
4) The species of crop being grown,
5) Aerial evidence of previous plowing shapes and divisions,
6) The conversion of small tenant subsistence farming to modern commercial farming.

I'm just enjoying your attempts to get re-posted on the "bad archaeology" website.

 

[Reality Check]

Talking of Bad Archaeology:
Graham Hancock and the ‘Lost Civilisation’ (29 December 2013)

The ‘lost civilisation’ does not stand up to scrutiny
So, why do mainstream archaeologists reject his hypothesis of an Ice Age civilisation? Hancock and his supporters maintain that this is because of the hidebound nature of academic archaeology. This shows a failure to understand how academia works. Careers are made by overturning accepted hypotheses: the person who discovers a previously unknown civilisation would have their future career assured, but only if they are able to provide evidence that it actually existed. This would take the form of remains dating to the period that civilisation flourished.

What does Hancock do? Faced with a complete lack of contemporary evidence for his “lost civilisation”, he claims that it can be detected through its influence on later cultures. In one or two cases, he tries to show that the accepted dates for monuments of known civilisations are wrong and that they are actually from the eleventh millennium BC. In these cases, his redating of the monuments has not been accepted by mainstream archaeologists. I will be working on a detailed refutation of the eight major sections of the book over coming weeks, which will be published on the main site.

Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods, Part I: misunderstanding early modern cartography

Graham Hancock begins his quest for the beginning and the end with that old chestnut of alternative archaeologists: the Piri Re‘is map of 1513.

Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods, Part II Foam of the Sea: Peru and Bolivia

As with his discussion of early modern maps, Graham Hancock begins with something that is depressingly familiar to readers of “alternative history”, the lines and symbols that are scattered across the Plain of Nazca, in the Ica region of Perú.

Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods Part III Plumed Serpent: Central America (part one)

After reading this chapter twice, I still have the impression that there is very little to it. Perhaps I am doing Graham Hancock a disservice, but it seems remarkably data free. We are launched, without preamble, into a description of Chichén Itzá, one of the best preserved (albeit much restored) of the Maya cities of the northern Yucatán. It dates from the Late Classic to early Post-Classic period (around 600-1200 CE), although the surviving buildings belong to the later phases of activity at the site.

 

[Craig B]

I am claiming grid gardens predate Columbus .

What are you arguing here? It is well known that horticulture in the Americas predates Columbus. Nobody has ever doubted that. Grids are a simple way of dividing tracts of land into smaller pieces. So a claim that they predate Columbus is of no significance.

 

[Reality Check]

I am claiming grid gardens predate Columbus .

No one is disputing that pre-Columbian agriculture existed . Or that many different cultures throughout history have planted vegetables in grids, i.e. "grid gardens". That includes my local market gardeners!

ETA: Where your claim goes off the rails is when you state that rectangular fields with no grid are "grid gardens" or that you see them on the sea floor under kilometers of water, e.g. a still unknown location near to Hawaii.

 

[carlitos]

“Pre-Columbian”

Because “500 years” doesn’t sound like a long time in a discussion about 12,000 year-old society.


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