Re: When Burial Begins


Paul Crowley wrote:


We all put forward theories (or, if you prefer,
'imaginary scenarios'). We have an obligation
to set out, as far as we can, how they would be
proved or disproved. Standard PA skips this
duty all the time. It does not even recognise
one. Its supporters have to duck all hard
questions.

My problem is not so much the imaginary scenarios, but the
misrepresenting of the data used for the basis of them. The example of
your using lack of lions in Europe as an argument for reasoning
Neandetals didn't hunt is basic to the type of logic that you are
using. I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you simply forgot
about the evidence for lions in Europe. In your next post you claimed
that evidence of lions simply gave further evidence of your point. This
was moot because smoking gun evidence had already been around for years
that they did hunt regardless of whether lions were in Europe or not.
The fire-hardened tips of spears found at Hoxne, Lehringen, Schoningen
along with direct associations of spears found amongst butchered bones
is smoking gun evidence. There are two cases that I have cited here on
sap of Mousterian points found imbedded in bone of horses found at
Neandertal sites. This proves Neandertal were hunting. So to argue the
presents or absence of lions using theoretical- abstract theory to
refute smoking gun evidence of Neandertal hunting was not correct
reasoning.
What this proves is that you are ignorant of the very works that you
seek to condemn.



One test of a theory is its coherence. Does
it have major gaps? No account is ever
provided of crucial stages in the PA model --
such as when, why and how early hominids
began to sleep on the ground. The only
explanation for most of the major steps in its
model would be 'fairy dust spread by aliens'.

You have a gap of 6 million years for evidence of burials. No
reasonable person is denying that the very first evidence found for
some innovation at archaeological sites is when that innovation first
began. The odds of finding the first bone flute for instance is nil.
But that is not a licence to imagine bone flutes were being used 6
million years ago.


What tests does standard PA propose for
its theory? The finding of fossils is so
haphazard and unpredictable that one can
only say that (a) individual cases will support
one theory rather than the other, and
(b) the overall patterns emerging will support
one rather than the other.

You are generalizing about PA in the same way you generalized about
lack of lions in Europe having some meaning about Neandertals hunting.
You continually start out with a false assumption and spin scenarios
from them. No wonder you can prove these imaginary conditions false,
they never existed in the first place. Get your facts straight before
you make up the hypothesis.


Little Lucy's 'rolled-up-into-a-ball' state
certainly supports mine, and defeats yours.
The 'First Family' supports mine and defeats
yours. The identification of major pathologies
in fossils, providing highly probable causes
of death -- such as the tooth infection of
15000 and the hypervitaminosis of 1808 --
support mine and defeat yours,

The finding of numerous fossils on uplifted,
formerly coastal, land supports mine. Their
rarity and strange nature on inland sites
defeats yours. The predominance of young
males on inland sites defeats yours.

Fossils are not the only evidence for the location of archaeological
sites. You and Marc both suffer from this deficiency. You are now
making the same mistake in reasoning that you did with the Neandertals
didn't hunt because there weren't/were lions in Europe. Your profound
ignorance of the evidence available in the literature is not an excuse
for posting hackneyed theory of burials.


Going back ten years is pathetic. Presumably
you never make mistakes, because everything
you say is copied from a book. You don't
possess a mind, and are incapable of having
your own ideas.

What you don't understand is I'm not condemning you for the mistake,
but for repeating the same error of logic today. You are using false
analogies that are counter to what is known. What happened 10 years ago
is only an example of the fact you are not capable of learning from
your past mistakes. I can show you were using the same kind of
mis-logic 5 years ago also.
BS, you simply are not reading my threads, just like you were not
reading the literature and finding for the evidence of Neandetal
spears, hence hunting.


Neither Lucy's (or later Homo e) habitat was not primarily close to
the coast, but ubiquitous over nearly all of Africa.

Of course. Lucy was a successful species,
and could compete with lions, hyenas, elephant,
buffalo, zebra, hippo and so on. Erectus and its
successors were tens, hundreds and thousands
of times MORE successful. That's why around
1800 A.D. (200 years ago), Africa had a hominid
population in the billions,

Which has nothing to do with evidence that Lucy/all hominids buried her
dead. Who was burying whom has nothing to do with being successful.


You are careful to NEVER confront the facts
of the 1808 case.

Facts of proven disease and mud are not facts of burial anymore than
presence of lions prove Neandertals didn't hunt.


Many human tribes and cultures do not
bury their dead. They are obliged to burn
them, or leave them out for the vultures
(e.g. Tibetans). The reasons are usually
obvious -- such as the absence of suitable
ground (and for Tibetans, the scarcity of
wood). Sun-baked earth is hard to dig.
The Maasai are cattle-herders and not much
use as models for early humans. The Hazda
live in semi-desert, and are just as bad.
Humans did not evolve in semi-desert --
as is very obvious from our anatomy.

So how do you know Lucy was burying her dead if not all moderns can
make this claim also? Yes, I already know what your answer will be,
because you imagine she did and because you said so.

NOW, give me the exact same argument that you are claiming for your own
exclusive domain. Evidence for savanna and desert use is far earlier
than evidence for coastal exploitation by a million years; therefore,
because they are of the same taxon, desert use goes right back to the
split of chimps and hominids. You can not refute this reasoning without
refuting your own.


'Terminally ill' is not the same as 'dead'.
They certainly don't leave corpses to
rot in their camp sites.

Yes--- they do both, dead or alive, they are abandoned. They die in
camp or close to it and do not rot because scavengers normally take
care of the problem. The people are hunter/gatherers, they simply move
on. Do you really belive hunter/gatherers sit in one camp all their
lives without moving constantly? People who do not believe in an after
life simply do not behave in the same way yours does.


A similar fate obviously happened to 1808.

They had looked after her for weeks -- feeding
her soft liver. If they had just abandoned her,
she'd have been consumed by scavengers
(including vultures) within minutes, whether
she was alive or dead. They obviously
waited till she died, and then covered her
body with rocks, or dug a shallow grave,
or both.

Nope, this is not what the Hazda or the Maasai do. So now you have no
way of knowing which way Lucy's group was acting, because you do not
know how all H/G groups today act. Since there are choices, smoking gun
evidence is the only way to resolve the problem. Not all get
scavenged. Those that are floaters escape this fate because a few are
buried by natural causes before they are found by scavengers.
Wildebeest bones are found more often than hominid bones, both today
and in the fossil record. This is because the population percentages of
each group have remained somewhat constant over time. By your logic,
wildebeests buried their dead.





Paul.

.

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