That book is considered interesting and well written, but it is by no means a scientific book, A decade since ‘Sapiens’: Scientific knowledge or populism? | Science | EL PAÍS English. Sapiens has the prestige of a scientific work, but it’s not a scientific work. And this, understandably, has bothered scientists. For in science, there are no Hararis and there are no authorities. There are only informed arguments.
Sapiens is a historian’s book. It shines more in the areas of its competence — the last 5,000 years — than in its forays into the mists of time. Harari believes that humanity — what makes us truly human — is the product of a “cognitive revolution” that occurred 70,000 years ago in the Middle East. This hypothesis is old and clumsy, already discarded and buried when he wrote the book, because half of humanity would be left out of this “cognitive revolution.” Harari disregards — or simply ignores — the deep evolutionary roots of our brain (and the rest of our body). The evolution of the human mind didn’t begin 70,000 years ago, but 500 million years ago, on the coasts of the Cambrian continents. Talking about evolution without having some notion of biology is audacious, usually leading to confusion among the public.
Humans learned to speak at least 150000 years ago. Maybe 300000 or more.
You are correct sir, at least that is what the scientists think.
Flint tipped spears go back around 500000 years or so.
Sure, but if humans arrived 15000- 30000 years ago in North America- and the extinction of quite a few species of megafauna occurred around 10000 years ago (whence cam a major climate change) - hunting was likely not the prime cause. Human manipulating the environment- mass fires- would be a better, but also look at the the other invasive species- the Grey wolf displaced the Dire wolf- likely because it was a more successful hunter. Bison latifrons- the long horned bison was replaced by Bison antiquus then the Bison bison- which existed in huge numbers. I mean- like 60 million of them. until fairly recently There are only a handful of Mammoth kill sites in the Americas- vs thousands in Europe- showing the the early American natives didnt hunt mammoths that much.
And your basis for choosing the end date of the known date range is…?
Under that theory, no such headline is worthwhile. By the time you could report that that there’s some history-shifting revelation that’s gone undiscovered or that someone didn’t put all the pieces together - if you have to wait until it’s already displaced the old idea as the accepted answer - then it’s not much of a headline.
If I was to say, “Platypuses are discovered to have actually been real, all this time!” And report on the discovery, 100 years ago, that the example platypuses sent back to Europe were not, in fact, fabrications then that would be a truthful report on a shift in the popular understanding of the world. But it’s not newsworthy because we waited to report on it after the matter was long settled. No one, these days, doubts that platypuses are a real creature.
There have been lots of discoveries that changed history. The Rosetta Stone changed history. Reporting on those as the new hotness, though, doesn’t make sense.
Except the discovery here is not particularly earth shattering. If you aren’t arguing from the point of view that the Jesus is the literal son of God and so the events of his life are the most important thing ever to happen, what does this change? It clearly didn’t have any effect on Christian beliefs during the centuries when Christianity had a massive effect on huge swathes of human society.
Even if you do accept that early Christians did have this gospel and think it was canon (which is pretty dubious), how much does that change history? A small monotheistic sect in the Greco-Roman eastern Mediterranean, that was one of many at the time, believed a few new things in their central canon. How does that change history drastically?
A better analogy would be what if some previously unknown detail about the life of Brigham Young and the very early LDS Church was discovered. That would be a huge deal for believers in the LDS, but would it “rewrite history” for the rest of us? I’d argue no (sure it would change a small part of North American 19th century history, but I’d argue that is not “rewriting History”)
Let’s say that society agrees that Jesus’ official position is not and never was, “Women need to keep them yaps shut.” Personally, I expect that the modern Christian is ready to hear from women and would prefer a pro-equality message to be what was given to humanity by the founder of their beliefs, presumably transmitting the guidance of the guy who created everything.
But, the large body of the modern Bible - the thing that forms the basis of their religion - was largely based on the message that Jesus’ intent was being strictly passed over to us, through divine revelation, by St Paul. If Paul is saying, “Shut it at the door, ladies.” And we strongly doubt this to be a true and faithful representation of Jesus and God’s beliefs, then that basically means that you need to go back to the drawing board on the Bible because nearly all of the decisions made in the centuries following Jesus’ death was to that the strong written records developed by Paul and and a basic faith in his honesty.
If we doubt Paul and trust that Jesus thinks women can have ideas, you effectively need to write a different New Testament. All the little fragments of information that survived through various purges over the millennia need to be tracked down and some serious work put into detangling the different sects and leaders who corrupted the teachings in their own ways, away from Jesus’ original. All of those fragments stop being a curiosity and instead become a necessity - as horrible and incomplete as they may be.
But that hasn’t happened, has it? The OP is not a hypothetical; they’re asking about scientific or historical discoveries that radically changed our understanding of a field - things like finding the historical Troy, or the helical structure of DNA. The discovery of the Gospel of Mary was certainly interesting and important - if only because before the 19th c, scholars only knew of the beliefs of variant Christian groups through the writings of their orthodox opponents. But did it radically change our understanding of early Christian history? I’ve been Googling that question, and can’t get a solid answer. I suspect not, as New Testament and early-Christianity scholars were certainly aware of the existence of variant, quote unquote “heretical” Christian communities.
I’d point you to the history of the germ theory of disease and also that whole question of the Earth being flat versus being spherical. As said in my first post, history is individual and we each weight the evidence and arguments on our own. If you need others to approve your choices, regardless of the weight of the evidence and the value of the argument that’s your freedom. If you find the evidence and the argument non-compelling, that’s also your freedom. But what changes history for you and what changes history for someone else are different things.
I’m reasonably willing to believe that I’ve blown at least one mind and given them a “History has been rewritten vibe”. That that’s not you isn’t an argument pro nor con of anything. You’re free to decide your own criteria. Maybe the most reasonable course is, in fact, to wait for the consensus to shift - however long that takes - before giving any consideration.
But I would say that when someone is rejecting the accepted dating and giving zero rationale for it, I’m skeptical of their firm belief in their stated reason for denial.
Those are obviously very important milestones in human history, but they don’t rewrite history. It’s not like everyone thought we always believed in germ theory, until one day someone discovered a document that describes how we used believe in miasmas and unbalanced humors.
There is the idea that no one believed the earth was round in until Columbus but AFAIK no serious historians ever thought that (the idea was spread by pro-Columbus efforts in the US in the late 1800s, primary by the Italian American community, it was never a serious historical theory). There was certainly never one discovery that led people to realize people knew the earth was round before Columbus (that would be obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of the historical sources)
