Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[abaddon]

I had never seen that before! The ingenuity of people is what is the amazing technology IMO. It never ceases to amaze me how if you take a man who is good at his job and present him with a challenge how often he will find an elegant and effective solution.!!

Kudos to Wally!

I only hope that when I retire, that I will remain so productive in my thinking.

It is truly amazing how he moves enormous masses around.

 

[Roboramma]

The one I like goes like this:

1) Humans reached the continent
2) All the megabeasts went extinct
3) Why?
4) Climate change

I'm swayed to some extent by the arguments in favour of the over-hunting hypothesis, but it's worth mentioning that climate change was also what allowed those humans to get to the continent.

If A --> B
And A --> C
it's not surprising that B and C will be correlated.

(where A is climate change, B is human migration, and C is climate change)

 

[Dancing David]

I'm swayed to some extent by the arguments in favour of the over-hunting hypothesis, but it's worth mentioning that climate change was also what allowed those humans to get to the continent.

If A --> B
And A --> C
it's not surprising that B and C will be correlated.

(where A is climate change, B is human migration, and C is climate change)

And it is not climate change, it is the rapid shifts in temperatures approximately 8,000-9,000 years ago, the temperatures varied widely over very short time periods, so mega fauna did not always have the time to shift with the temperatures.

Humans came over the bering lang bridge and then much later some of the mega fauna died out.

The climate change was already occurring, it was a something that would not normally be called climate that may have led to the death of the mega fauna.

 

[tsig]

LOL, U R askng what I have asked this forum as a entire whole. My answer is clearly OF COURSE, if I has access to the the tech used!!!

Maybe those who have interest should move on from this site alone (this thread alone) and start to research Coral Castle made in the 1900's by only one weak person. I warned not only in this branch of science, but in many BTW, scientists lacking of answers to questions and logical explainations stemming from what can be seen and proven, would give rise and profit to those promoting 'crackpot psysics'. These examples are but a few proofs of this.

This works against your argument.

 

[BravesFan]

here's a picture of the "amazing technology" being used at the Coral Castle site.

and another

 

[tsig]

That is an argument from incredulity and/or an argument from ignorance.




If you're just saying you don't understand how such structures could be built, fine. You've made that abundantly clear and you don't need to keep saying it.

If you're trying to suggest there's some particular alternative explanation which works better than the one we have now, the one that says humans constructed these ancient sites with materials and technology available to them at the time, then to advance the discussion, get to the point.

Saying you understand less about technology than a human who lived 11,000 years ago would embarrass most people.

 

[Farsight]

I'm swayed to some extent by the arguments in favour of the over-hunting hypothesis, but it's worth mentioning that climate change was also what allowed those humans to get to the continent.

If A --> B
And A --> C
it's not surprising that B and C will be correlated.

(where A is climate change, B is human migration, and C is climate change)

Fair enough. But there has been plenty of climate change in the past. See wiki re ice ages:

"The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene, when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacial periods..."

It's worth reading up on. See the two science daily articles that come in positions three and four on the list. Faith based credo, LOL!

 

[Roboramma]

Fair enough. But there has been plenty of climate change in the past. See wiki re ice ages:

"The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene, when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacial periods..."

Yeah, that's the argument that makes me lean toward the human induced extinction idea. If they survived for so long, through many bouts of climate change and whatever else, why is it this time that all these large animal species went extinct?

 

[Dancing David]

Because when you have a change in average temperatures of 20 degrees for a century and then swinging another direction for another century it really makes it hard fro some creatures to adapt. Obviously it was just some of them, bears adapted as did the caribou.

The mega fauna that died were not exactly ideal prey species, that is the main reaosn I don't think they were over hunted.

ETA: my knowledge is very old and out of date as well. From 1988

 

[catsmate]

here's a picture of the "amazing technology" being used at the Coral Castle site.

http://www.crystalinks.com/coralcastlelift.jpg



and another

http://www.crystalinks.com/coralcastlelift1.jpg

How many of the Simple Machines can you spot?

 

[dlorde]

Yeah, that's the argument that makes me lean toward the human induced extinction idea. If they survived for so long, through many bouts of climate change and whatever else, why is it this time that all these large animal species went extinct?

You may find this article of interest.

 

[Farsight]

This bit of wiki isn't bad either: megafauna mass extinctions.

 

[CORed]

Meaning their known available tech was not far from that sir 11K years ago. How do you you propose the site was built? Clearly at least you have the brain enough to dismiss flint tools! The issue even the poster above you fails (yet again) to see as the primary issue in my responce.

Why would we dismiss flint tools? You can do damn near anything with flint tools that you can do with metal tools. The primary advantage of metal tools is that they can be made faster and are much easier to maintain than flint. But flint is very hard and a very sharp edge can be put on it (it's better in both respects than bronze).

 

[dlorde]

... But flint is very hard and a very sharp edge can be put on it (it's better in both respects than bronze).

Indeed - obsidian, which can make an equally sharp, but less brittle edge, is still used for the sharpest surgical scalpels.

 

[CapelDodger]

I had never seen that before! The ingenuity of people is what is the amazing technology IMO. It never ceases to amaze me how if you take a man who is good at his job and present him with a challenge how often he will find an elegant and effective solution.!!

Kudos to Wally!

Seconded.

Sadly, the usual response from the previously incredulous is "Oh, that's just a simple trick! Anybody could have thought of that!".

Practical archaelogy has been a great advance of the last century or so, after a long period of ivory-tower theorising by deeply impractical men.

 

[TjW]

Seconded.

Sadly, the usual response from the previously incredulous is "Oh, that's just a simple trick! Anybody could have thought of that!".

Practical archaelogy has been a great advance of the last century or so, after a long period of ivory-tower theorising by deeply impractical men.

The annoying thing is that for some reason the previously incredulous don't see that the bolded part is the whole point.

 

[ben m]

Sadly, the usual response from the previously incredulous is "Oh, that's just a simple trick! Anybody could have thought of that!".

Yep. It is just a simple trick, but simple tricks are *not* easy to think of.

 

[Farsight]

This is very true. But there's a bit more to it than that. For some reason people seem to like wallowing in mystery. They cling to it. When you get busy with logs and levers and say "Look, you shift a big rock like this", they don't want to know. You show them the simple trick, and they find some reason to say "Nah, they didn't have the tools" or something. Sure, some people will say "Oh gosh, I got it", but some won't. Give it a week or two and they're back prattling on about aliens and Atlantis. They like the crackpot stuff.

 

[Complexity]

This is very true. But there's a bit more to it than that. For some reason people seem to like wallowing in mystery. They cling to it. When you get busy with logs and levers and say "Look, you shift a big rock like this", they don't want to know. You show them the simple trick, and they find some reason to say "Nah, they didn't have the tools" or something. Sure, some people will say "Oh gosh, I got it", but some won't. Give it a week or two and they're back prattling on about aliens and Atlantis. They like the crackpot stuff.

I couldn't find the broken irony meter, so you get bunnypan.

 

[Dancing David]

I couldn't find the broken irony meter, so you get bunnypan.

You can borrow mine