I object to this characterization of Heyerdahl. I read Kon-Tiki as a kid (I was precocious), and it was clear to me even then that Heyerdahl never said that he proved that the Polynesians colonized from South America – it was perfectly evident to me that he was showing that it was possible, something his critics had been saying it was not. His actually doing the voyage turned up the interesting fact that the Humboldt Current helped you along, and provided a bounty of flying fish as well.
i was also impressed by his showing that the very words for food plants were the same in Polynesia and South America (Plants can, perhaps, cross oceans, but their names won’t)-- Heyerdahl bolstered his physival argument of the raft with other arguments, and if you don’t know this, read his scholarly book American Indians in the Pacific.
Heyerdahl’s work hasn’t fared well over the years – the philological arguments don’t seem to be as well-rooted as they did at first. I don’t doubt that colonization proceeded from the West, not the East, and this is certainly the most widely-held and respected view. But don’t mischaracterize Hererdahl’s thought and methodology.
I don’t know about many of the shows you’ve seen, but knapping has been around for a long time, long enough for people to know that’s more then likely how stone tools were made. Of course one could never say 100% how something was made, but by comparing modern points to older ones they pretty much know how they were made. They have also figured out, by cutting objects and compairing the points under a microscope, what each type of point could be used for.
I didn’t read the article in the OP, but I don’t think of such things as science simply because there’s no way to prove how they sailed. I guess I think of it as a step down from science if someone says, I think they did it this way because it’s been proven that it can be done.
But how then can you argue for the possibility of a practice if there is no other way – if no one has left records because there are few records, or if writing hasn’t even been invented.
Surely it’s not unscientific to propose a mechanism or procedure and argue for its plausibility. Nothing requires you to not speculate in the absence of proven information. I’ve done plenty of this, and don’t regard it as “a step down from science” at all. But I don’t regard such speculation as proof, either.
I guess I see science as being able to prove something, while something like the OP is all theory and can’t be proven 100%. I’ll admit that it may not be the best way to define it, and saying it’s a step down might not be correct. I don’t even know how to phrase it, I just see the two as different, but almost equal. And this is coming from someone who reads a good amount of archaeology and in a couple of months I get to learn how to knapp I hope.
Yep. Thor built two Ras. The first one was abandoned in a sinking condition when near South America. Apparently they’d left off part of the reed boat, not knowing what it was for, and that eventually caused it to fall apart. Ra II made it all the way.
On the subject of “making shit up”, I was amused and slightly annoyed by a New Scientist article on the subject of the “intelligence gene”. Briefly: it is recessive and carried on the X chromosome, so its effects aren’t expressed unless both X chromosomes have it, or unless you have only one X chromosome. Of course it has proved such an evolutionary advantage that something over 99.999% of X chromosomes do have it, making gender differences in intelligence rather trivial these days.
But the article addressed the question of how the gene propagated. (Obviously, a man can’t pass intelligence on to his son, but he could pass it on to his grandsons.) They baldly stated that “women obviously found intelligent men more attractive and selected them preferentially as mates”, which drew a huge :rolleyes: from me for a variety of obvious reasons. My objections boiled down to the proposition that there are a number of ways in which intelligence can be a survival trait without invoking the unproven supposition that proto-women did the mate selection in the first place, or (intelligence not yet being widespread) had the necessary perception to tell a bright man from a dummy; and that you have to be ideologically wedded to the “female mate selection” theory to advance it as the obvious explanation, which is bad science.
NS published my letter on the subject, but illustrated it with a cartoon captioned “Who’s more intelligent, the man or the woman who picks him?”. Oh well.
Not as bad as the Sun though, which didn’t understand the part about the gene being recessive and only noted that it was carried on the X chromosome “which women have twice as much of as men!”.
Perhaps I didn’t come across properly there - what I meant was, I blame the popularity of* Kon-Tiki* specifically for leading to things like Von Daniken and the like. In itself, Kon-Tiki was a rollicking tale of adventure, and the archaeological theory was a sideline. But you can’t deny it was a bestseller (and Oscar winner IIRC). Whether Heyerdahl himself believed he’d proved his theory is by-the-by. It’s the popularisation of that methodology of “show that it was possible” that I was getting at. I certainly think it starts with Kon-Tiki, but perhaps there are earlier proponents of the style that I’m missing out on.
Exactly. Coming up with wild or mild hypothesis(es)? is a valid part of the scientific method.
It might be hubris to ascribe “modern” abilities to ancient (or alien) peoples, but it is also quite possible to underestimate them. Some inventions (like the Evolution theory, the explosion engine, or the Periodic system) could only have been done at a certain point in time where enough knowledge had been accumulated. But other inventions that rely less on ready-made materials or techniques, could have been done and redone throughout history. Using sunstones falls in the latter category, IMHO.
Also keep in mind that optical calcite would require very little in the way of processing or technology. Basically, it comes out of the ground that way. Brush it off, strike it a few times to get good transmissivity, and there you have it. It wouldn’t have taken a Viking Einsteinenborgensson to hold a translucent rock up to the sky and notice that the light looks different depending on the angle. Of course, it would have taken some serious ingenuity to systematize that into a useful tool, but human populations have never lacked ingenuity.
Once again, not saying it did happen…only that maybe it could have happened. Not a scientific statement.
You don’t actually need a crystal to see polarization of light. There is a very limited ability of the human eye to detect polarized light. Look up the phenomenon called “Haidinger’s Brush” on the internet. You can build a rotating-polarizer device to make this phenomenon more explicitly visible. I’ve observed it. we may not be as sensitive as bees and horseshoe crabs to this 9their visual receptos are optimized to distinguish polarization), but we can see it to a limited extent.
Undoubtedly some people are better at it than others. It occurs to me that some people might be able to detect the polarization of skylight without needing cordierite , Iceland Spar, or other aids.
So if such people lived among Vikings or other navigating people and could make use of such talents, they’d be pretty special, wouldn’t they? Wizards who could tell where the sun was, even when it was invisible below the horizon, and who could guide your course without any special equipment whatsoever.