My old pal Maju is indulging his fantasies, again, wanking furiously over some Paleolithic whatsit that some other romantic believes was a screw-threaded stopper for a water skin.
Looking at the drawing of this thing, the threads do look plausible, even if their shape seems odd for the alleged purpose. The width of the helical groove is nearly constant throughout, as is both the angle the groove makes relative to the long axis and the taper of the piece as a whole. It is indeed a remarkable piece of workmanship, especially at such an improbable date.
But the photograph of this artifact -- shown by Maju, but not by Don -- tells a much different story. Here we see that in reality the groove does not wind its way so smoothly and evenly at all. It is difficult to say how deep it is from the image but it is not nearly so wide as in the drawing. What once seemed a plausible example of a threaded plug does not seem so plausible at all. In fact, it looks like the groove on what I should take to be the grip, at the top of the piece in the photograph, seems far more precisely executed than the groove that supposedly does all the work!
I suppose it's possible that someday they will find an iceman melting out of a glacier, somewhere, with one of these things slung across his withered shoulder, just as Don and Maju imagine. On that blessed day I shall happily eat my words. In the mean time, I am guessing this might have been an Old Stone Age version of a tapered reamer, perhaps. Maybe they enlarged holes in hides with it?
¿Quién diablo sabe?
However much fun it might be to play these sorts of guessing games, it is difficult to see how they can be more than amusements, at best. They certainly are not science and do little if anything to advance our understanding. Worse, they encourage the substitution of plausible story telling for empiricism, a pernicious evil already rampant in too many quarters. When we should be looking at all the data and asking, what is this telling us? we instead argue over who tells the most plausible story. It is a waste of time and worse.
When history and anthropology may be so easily twisted to such nefarious socio-political ends, strict adherence to rigorous standards and sound methodologies becomes more than just good practice. Such standards become our moral obligation.
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Poor old Maju. I've taken to calling him 'your Majusty'. I think he rather likes it. He is a man of few, but strongly held, prejudices. Absolutely committed to 'the great southern coastal migration theory' and will not countenence any alternative. One day the evidence will become overwhelming against him on this but I'm sure he will adopt any new theory as obsessively as his present one. He is also committed to a undirectional theory of human movement. He cannot accept that hauman groups have been moving backwards and forwards around the world since Homo erectus left Africa. He is also absolutely committed to the belief that there was no interbreeding betweeen Homo sapiens and any archaic humans, although the mounting evidence is gradually forcing him to backtrack on that one.
ReplyDelete"When we should be looking at all the data and asking, what is this telling us?"
At present I am engaged in a heated discussion with his Majusty regarding the expansion of what comes down to the Mongoliod phenotype. I presume you've read some of it in his post on the EDAR mutation. He absolutely refuses to consider 'all the evidence'.
I agree with your comments regarding the Paleolithic auger, by the way.
Apologies for missing your comment. I'd thought that I would be notified and wasn't.
DeleteOne thing that impresses about Maju is his consistency. He has been just as maddening in discussions with me as he is with you, both in public and in private.
Best I can tell, and if I may be so bold, Maju is heavily burdened by his political ideology, the chief organizing principle of which is Basque nativism. He sees himself as part of an oppressed indigenous people and everything is made to support that narrative, by force if necessary. For what it's worth, I don't think that it is deliberate. I rather doubt he is sufficiently self-aware for that to be true.
I had no idea that the EDAR debate still raged after more than two weeks. Kind of impressive, in its way.
"He has been just as maddening in discussions with me as he is with you, both in public and in private".
ReplyDeleteYes. I've seen it. I haven't commented in some places off course.
"I had no idea that the EDAR debate still raged after more than two weeks. Kind of impressive, in its way".
Maju just cannot cope with the consequences of accepting the authors' conclusions at face value. I hadn't thought of many of the points you raise concerning the reasons for his attitude. but one thing I did forget to mention: Maju is the sort of person who overturns the board if his opponent is about to say, 'checkmate'. I'm sure you've met such people. I think that is exactly what he has just done at his Marianas post. I presume he's done the same at his EDAR post. I haven't looked at the latest developments there yet.
"Maju is the sort of person who overturns the board if his opponent is about to say, 'checkmate'."
DeleteYes, indeed, that seems to be the case. It may have been when we were discussing the arrival of metallurgy in China, I don't quite recall without looking, but Maju claimed a very early date, citing Wikipedia as his source. When I pointed out that the underlying data did not justify such a claim, he countered that the subject didn't really interest him and he could not be bothered about whether the claim was true or not. It was astonishing.
But the joke is on him, I suppose. He still believes that the jade plaques found at Shimao -- depicted here in a photograph, at the end of this blog post -- are actually bronze swords!
Tapered reamer... interesting possibility
ReplyDelete