Re: Bad Archaeology

On Sep 6, 2:13 pm, Tom McDonald <kilt...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 6, 12:17 pm, "Michael Kuettner" <mik...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:





"J.LyonLayden" <JosephLay...@xxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitragnews:1189091802.700600.321910@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Sep 6, 10:54 am, "Michael Kuettner" <mik...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"J.LyonLayden" <JosephLay...@xxxxxxxxx> schrieb im
Newsbeitragnews:1188964007.533814.101260@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Sep 4, 2:11 pm, "Michael Kuettner" <mik...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"J.LyonLayden" <JosephLay...@xxxxxxxxx> schrieb im
Well, the 12000 years are only for the dated stratas. They haven't reached
the bottom yet (I suspect that the beginnings are a few ky earlier).
Re. Dolni Vestonice : What do you mean by "decent" ?

You know, something that doesn't look to primitive. A little more
substancial than a circle of bricks and a thatched hut.

Any cool slightly altered caves or Paleolithic Dolmens, or stacked
together stone building remains?

A tower like at Jericho circa 27000 ybp might get me Harry Potter
bucks, you see what I'm sayin'?

I'm afraid that there's no such structure.
You'll have to use analogies.
Take the Mongols (nomads) and their capital, Karakorum.
That way you can postulate that nomads 27000 ybp did the same.
Let the structure be erected from sun-dried bricks.
Place it under a huge mountain-lake. Add earthquake, lake flushes on
structures -
voila, no traces.

Cheers,

Kool thanks.
Would that be ok with guys like McDonald and Weller? Or would my book
be dismissed as rubbish like the later Jean Aule books were for having
isolated "false start" instances of animal domestication?

You seem to have misunderstood something.
Jean Aule is only dismissed as rubbish when those books are claimed to be
scientific.

I disagree. Auel's first book was, to me anyway, wonderful. I think
she truly captured something about Neandertals, fictionalized though
it might have been, that went beyond anything I'd ever read before.
She created a society that I cared about, and that was reasonably
based on the science of the time. I think 'Dance of the Tiger' by
Bjorn Kurten, which I read later, was closer to the facts about
Neandertal, and was, to me, equally fascinating.

My main problems with her later books are that they turned into
Pleistocene bodice-ripping romances, with the clean, white Hss main
characters having detailed sex every 30 pages; and that she abandoned
the Neandertals almost entirely after COTCB. I could have tolerated
her forays into invention and domestication much better had the
surrounding story been both better written and, oddly, more inventive
in the manner of the first book.

Well, they aren't. Sometimes the narrative is closer to scientific reality,
sometimes
it strays far from it. That's the way of fiction.
But that's no reason to not read them or call them "rubbish" .

No. There are other reasons to call the later books rubbish, though.

I like Terry Pratchett; he doesn't write scientific books either.

One of the things I like most about Pratchett (other than, in some
lights, we look somewhat alike) is that it's clear he knows science,
and respects it. That comes through, usually quite slyly, in his
books. His work would be the poorer if he didn't know whereof he
invented.

Your book will be fiction, too. You'll write it to entertain people.
Just don't state things in the preface like "This book is researched with utmost
care
and represents the state of scientific knowledge."
If you write : "I've taken historical and archaeological facts, mixed them and
projected them in a time far before now. Enjoy !", nobody will call the book
rubbish.

Well, they still might. Joe might, after all, be a rotten writer :-).

And of course, people may or may not be able to suspend disbelief if
he strays too far from what is known or plausible, based on what we
know now. Of course, the same can happen the other way: if someone
reads the book and finds something based on actual science, when they
themselves are devotees of pseudo-archaeology, then failure of the
suspension of disbelief may happen as well.

I have often quit reading a book after the third or fourth time the
author gets something wrong that s/he could have gotten right with the
normal amount of research he/she should have done out of self-respect,
and respect for her/his audience. OTOH, I have put up with some dense
or iffy writing when it is clear that the author knows whereof she
speaks, and may indeed come to something resembling an interesting
story if I give him a chance.

Bottom line, if the story is compelling and the writing is good, and
there are no major gaffs, that's what counts. As long as, at the end,
I don't think the whole exercise has been in aid of converting me to
some agenda beyond the story.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You're the guy I need to be talking to then!

So how are you with sun dried bricks 27,000 years ago?

How about people living in a structure like that off the coast of
Okinawa 27,000 years ago?

(I promise not to say that it was man-made. I just won't mention how
it was built, or say that their legends speak of it being made by gods)

.

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