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Scientists Debunk themselves into a corner

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cyberdora
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05 May 2025, 5:11 pm

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
That's not science though. That's what historians do. Part of why science is the sort of mess it is now is that things that either aren't science have been allowed to pretend to be or things like psychology have been allowed to have super low standards.

Historians generally don't do statistical analysis of data. Scientists do.



cyberdora
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05 May 2025, 5:26 pm

kokopelli wrote:
So 9,000 years ago, it was warmer and wetter until now. By about 5,000 years ago it was cooling back off a bit and was more similar than today.

There is nothing that makes any sense about the idea that Egypt magically got more rainfall during the end of the Younger Dryas. The evidence shows that northern Africa received significantly more rainfall during the Holocene Climatic Optimum.


I'm fairly certain we can go with 9000 + just looking at the undulating erosion trails along the walls of the Sphinx enclosure.
Image

Just because the heaviest rains stopped at 9000 years it doesn't mean the erosion patterns were not a product of continuous exposure from an early era. I am triangulating with a) archaeo-astronomical patterns of Orion and the position of the pyramids and b) the total lack of cartouche's inside the pyramid which is also typical old kingdom and pre-dynastic megalithic structures which lack the vanity decorations made by the pharaohs who wanted their imprint all over major monuments.



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05 May 2025, 9:57 pm

cyberdora wrote:
kokopelli wrote:
So 9,000 years ago, it was warmer and wetter until now. By about 5,000 years ago it was cooling back off a bit and was more similar than today.

There is nothing that makes any sense about the idea that Egypt magically got more rainfall during the end of the Younger Dryas. The evidence shows that northern Africa received significantly more rainfall during the Holocene Climatic Optimum.


I'm fairly certain we can go with 9000 + just looking at the undulating erosion trails along the walls of the Sphinx enclosure.
Image

Just because the heaviest rains stopped at 9000 years it doesn't mean the erosion patterns were not a product of continuous exposure from an early era. I am triangulating with a) archaeo-astronomical patterns of Orion and the position of the pyramids and b) the total lack of cartouche's inside the pyramid which is also typical old kingdom and pre-dynastic megalithic structures which lack the vanity decorations made by the pharaohs who wanted their imprint all over major monuments.


There is plenty of variation in the estimates of the peak of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, but none seem to be at 9,000 years ago. I think that much of the variation depends on the source of the data for the estimates. That said, 8,000 years ago is one common estimate for the peak another peak is sometime after 6,000 years ago. At 9,000 years ago, the climate was still warming up.

How can you look at a picture and claim to know from when that erosion was? Was earlier rain more erosive than later rain? That does not seem at all likely.



cyberdora
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06 May 2025, 2:00 am

kokopelli wrote:
How can you look at a picture and claim to know from when that erosion was? Was earlier rain more erosive than later rain? That does not seem at all likely.


Schoch and others have addressed the undulating erosion patterns as clearly due to heavy rain which stopped abruptly leaving the erosion patterns as a permanent snapshot from 9000 years ago or before.



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06 May 2025, 2:03 am

kokopelli wrote:
There is plenty of variation in the estimates of the peak of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, but none seem to be at 9,000 years ago. I think that much of the variation depends on the source of the data for the estimates. That said, 8,000 years ago is one common estimate for the peak another peak is sometime after 6,000 years ago. At 9,000 years ago, the climate was still warming up.


I do agree the error is sufficiently large enough that you can't entirely discount more recent rain events. So I guess the jury is out and there is no way to firmly date the sphinx either way.



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06 May 2025, 3:34 am

cyberdora wrote:
kokopelli wrote:
How can you look at a picture and claim to know from when that erosion was? Was earlier rain more erosive than later rain? That does not seem at all likely.


Schoch and others have addressed the undulating erosion patterns as clearly due to heavy rain which stopped abruptly leaving the erosion patterns as a permanent snapshot from 9000 years ago or before.


What evidence is there, if any, that there was heavy rain ending at 9,000 years ago and no heavy rain when the rest of North Africa and much of the world was seeing significantly heavier rain?



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06 May 2025, 4:19 am

kokopelli wrote:
What evidence is there, if any, that there was heavy rain ending at 9,000 years ago and no heavy rain when the rest of North Africa and much of the world was seeing significantly heavier rain?


Well for one thing the Sahara desert. It used to be green. It's also a highly under-explored region for excavating lost civilisations due to the intense heat, sand storms and long distances/cost to travel.



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06 May 2025, 9:46 am

cyberdora wrote:
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
That's not science though. That's what historians do. Part of why science is the sort of mess it is now is that things that either aren't science have been allowed to pretend to be or things like psychology have been allowed to have super low standards.

Historians generally don't do statistical analysis of data. Scientists do.


Sure they do, they focus more on primary sources of information because there's more of that available across the breadth of time, but you make it sound like they just ignore the numbers and statistics when there is sufficient information to work with. The reality is that they do use statistics like anybody else when there's adequate data to work with. It just seems really stupid to be studying something like the model T and not think at all about the various statistics related to car ownership versus later periods. Or, when comparing the impact that various vehicles have.

You seem to have some very wrong ideas about what science is. And yes, it can be somewhat of a challenge to determine the exact line between science and not sciences, but in general there will be some formulation of the scientific method, experiments, replication studies and efforts to make future predictions. The use of statistics, or lack there of, isn't a specific indicator of whether or not it's science. Statistics didn't come around until long past the beginning of scientific study, no matter where you want to put the timeline to start.



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06 May 2025, 3:50 pm

cyberdora wrote:
kokopelli wrote:
What evidence is there, if any, that there was heavy rain ending at 9,000 years ago and no heavy rain when the rest of North Africa and much of the world was seeing significantly heavier rain?


Well for one thing the Sahara desert. It used to be green. It's also a highly under-explored region for excavating lost civilisations due to the intense heat, sand storms and long distances/cost to travel.


It did use to be green. (I believe I mentioned that earlier.) Desertification is estimated (within ranges) to have returned about 5,000 years ago.

So what evidence is there, if any, that there was heavy rain ending at 9,000 years ago and no heavy rain when the rest of North Africa and much of the world was seeing significantly heavier rain?



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06 May 2025, 3:54 pm

Ok analysis/review time

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
Sure they do, they focus more on primary sources of information because there's more of that available across the breadth of time, but you make it sound like they just ignore the numbers and statistics when there is sufficient information to work with.


Historians rarely if ever collect primary data and conduct statistical analysis because - history is a study that interprets the past and it's application is to understand what we can learn and apply it to the present and future.

the numbers they (historians) therefore use is in the context of government records/reports. Archaeologists, however, might collect data in the context of finds (from digs) looking (for example) at geospatial distribution patterns and triangulate this with paleoclimate data and written/oral sources. the former is investigative, the latter is applying the scientific method.



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06 May 2025, 3:58 pm

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
It just seems really stupid to be studying something like the model T and not think at all about the various statistics related to car ownership versus later periods. Or, when comparing the impact that various vehicles have.


Do you mean descriptive statistics? sure historians do that all the time. For example ownership statistics, production costs, throughput from the assembly line etc etc...

But, can you give specific examples of where a car historian would use statistical analysis? do you have a paper?



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06 May 2025, 4:15 pm

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
You seem to have some very wrong ideas about what science is. And yes, it can be somewhat of a challenge to determine the exact line between science and not sciences, but in general there will be some formulation of the scientific method, experiments, replication studies and efforts to make future predictions. The use of statistics, or lack there of, isn't a specific indicator of whether or not it's science. Statistics didn't come around until long past the beginning of scientific study, no matter where you want to put the timeline to start.


I think (at the risk of being accused of making personal accusations) you might be misinterpreting the use of the word "statistic". You can speak about the impact/magnitude of an enterprise (Like the Ford Motor company) by using broad numbers which are classified as descriptive statistics. For example comparing the number of Ford motor cars produced in the 1920s and compare it production of BMWs and Mercedes produced in Germany as an indicator used in an argument that Germany in the 1920s was industrialised on par with the United States. this makes sense for a historian to discuss comparative numbers in descriptive terms, but you never see a historian do a t-test to compare statistical significance between car numbers.

Experimentation under controlled conditions (what you call proper science) often uses data collected from samples to make extrapolations to the wider population. Historians are unable to re-create conditions from the past and make controlled experiments but rather investigate the past. But archaeologists can use biological, chemical, geospatial, climate and geological data and create complex models and often do.

I do acknowledge many archaeologists and botanists are more like historians and rely on descriptive information so it would be fair that archaeology relies more on descriptive analysis > chemical researcher but nobody goes around saying archaeology as a field is less valid than engineering or chemistry, it has its specific intrinsic value to society.



cyberdora
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06 May 2025, 4:24 pm

kokopelli wrote:
So what evidence is there, if any, that there was heavy rain ending at 9,000 years ago and no heavy rain when the rest of North Africa and much of the world was seeing significantly heavier rain?


I acknowledge the climate data is variable so it does put some doubt into the accuracy of Schoch's hypothesis. It doesn't however close the door to future re-interpretation of dating of older structures on the Giza plateau.

the level of skill in the oldest structures is not seen in later structures, that is clear. It suggests lost technology/skills that are unlikely to have arisen out of the desert, more likely inherited from earlier civilisations that thrived in the greener period of north Africa's history. there is agreement that climate change in the past saw people move from drying lands to the Nile valley which sustained food production for these refugees. In India this same thing happened when the Saraswati river dried up resulting in the people of the Indus valley escaping dry lands to move further south where monsoon rains allowed agriculture food production to be more stable.



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06 May 2025, 4:30 pm

cyberdora wrote:
the level of skill in the oldest structures is not seen in later structures, that is clear


<citation needed>


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MatchboxVagabond
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06 May 2025, 10:56 pm

cyberdora wrote:
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
It just seems really stupid to be studying something like the model T and not think at all about the various statistics related to car ownership versus later periods. Or, when comparing the impact that various vehicles have.


Do you mean descriptive statistics? sure historians do that all the time. For example ownership statistics, production costs, throughput from the assembly line etc etc...

But, can you give specific examples of where a car historian would use statistical analysis? do you have a paper?

First off, I'm pretty much losing interest here. Archeology isn't generally a science, it's more or less the same thing as history other than that it's dealing with civilizations that are typically too old to have written or oral records available for study. If we're saying that archeology is in general a science, the history would also be. And, I think it's pretty clear that history isn't a science. There is an experimental branch that concerns itself with actually doing whatever it is that people think ancient people were doing based on the materials and markings that were found, but that's really not enough to make archeology as a whole a science any more than the existence of engineering focused researchers existing makes engineering a science.

As far as statistics go, of course it's descriptive statistics. Things like how many cars there were in various areas is going to be a contributing factor into things that happen. If the Ford V8 hadn't been relatively common, but not too common the bank robbery sprees that led to the formation of the FBI probably would have ended earlier and possibly with different outcomes. And, having a bunch of people dying due to various diseases by people on both sides of a war is going to be something that a historian is going to consider when studying particular battles and campaigns. There just isn't really any way around it when that information is available.



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07 May 2025, 2:20 am

funeralxempire wrote:
cyberdora wrote:
the level of skill in the oldest structures is not seen in later structures, that is clear


<citation needed>


Ok noted. The oldest predynastic Egyptian pottery demonstrates advanced lathe turning and dates back to the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613 – 2494 BC).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 9X21002017
The exact techniques and tools used for lathe turning in this period are not known and the skills involved were lost during the start of the pharaonic era.