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Satellites Expose 8,000 Years of Civilization
ananyo writes "By combining spy-satellite photos obtained in the 1960s with modern multispectral images and digital maps of Earth's surface, researchers have created a new method for mapping large-scale patterns of human settlement. The approach was used to map some 14,000 settlement sites spanning eight millennia in 23,000 square kilometres of northeastern Syria — part of the fertile crescent of the Middle East. Traditional archaeology has focused on the big features such as cities or palaces but the new technique uncovers networks of small settlements, revealing migration patterns and sparking renewed speculation about the importance of water to city development."
Wilkinson & Ur, the ones behind the project, have been doing this for at least 10 years. Check out the CAMEL project on the Oriental institute of the university of Chicago
How are young earthers going to explain this one?
Eight millennia - that's six since creation, and two more into the future.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The same way they explain all the other evidence for a 14 billion years old universe: by ignoring or misunderstanding it.
Right at the most simple: we can triangulate the distance to a star and determine that what we see is as old as the amount of time light takes to get here. If they deny this evidence they either fail basic math or refute relativity: the scientific theory with the best proof track record ever.
The Barada river area has been settled for at least 11,000, Jericho for at least 11,000, Byblos for at least 9,000.
How are young earthers going to explain this one?
There are all sorts of methods, some more creative and convincing than others(at the low end, if you and your target audience simply don't give a damn about this 'empiricism' nonsense and consider goddidit! to be a valid solution, things of any apparent age are no problem: an omnipotent entity wouldn't have any trouble magic-ing something that looks ten million years old into existence ten seconds ago...).
However, I have heard a number of stories from buddies who got into archaeology and did some fertile crescent digs; that there is an interesting demographic who has a real, visceral attack of this problem:
Your sharper breed of American christian fundamentalists, coming from an area where any evidence of human habitation is either a few hundred years old, max, or fairly subtle and 'radiocarbon dating/the flood/etc/etc. awayed' during their growing up decide that they want to do some biblical archaeology. So, off they go and they find themselves grubbing through masonry that just oozes OLD in a much more immediately dramatic way than some of the subtler isotopic dating results or other inferrential work does. Apparently some of them find it quite traumatic or transformative: The "This wall/building/house/whatever had already been standing for at least a few millenia at the point when God is supposed to have created the earth" thing is much more potent than the "Some scientists say that C14/C12 ratios in cave charcoal suggest timeline... yaddda, yadda..."
While I have been apostate for more than a decade, I can put on my 'Bible Brainwash Hat' (TM) and tell you exactly how they deny it: the light and other EM radiation from those stars was created in mid-'flight' to give the universe the appearance of age. You really can't win arguing science with somebody whose foundation is 'it's magic!' That's why I focus on moral/ethical problems when messing with theists.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
"The method has already renewed speculation about the importance of water to city development. Surprisingly, this study found that a handful of sites are unexpectedly large given that they are not located near rivers or in areas of high precipitation. “The settlement known as Tell Brak, for example, is far too large for what one would expect at such a marginal position,” says Ur. “This is where things get interesting.” I know no one does actually RTFA but here you go so you understand what was actually meant.
I once used the satellite view of Google Maps to look for old train tracks that have been torn up and gone for decades. It's actually pretty interesting. If you go out and visit spots where the tracks used to be, you can't see anything out of the ordinary. But a satellite shot clearly shows the "scars" of where the tracks used to be. Where they cut through forests, the trees are a little shorter. The soil in farm fields is colored differently. Roads bend to intersect the track at a right angle, things like that.
Here's a good example in Washtenaw county. You can see the "ghost tracks" going southwest/northeast. If you follow them northeast, you'll see that a new subdivision was built on an area of land that they used to cut through. Curiously, the developers built no houses where the tracks were. Instead, they added footpaths, gave some houses larger backyards, and left "gaps" where houses could have been built. (I'd love to know why this was done. Any developers in the audience?)
You can follow the tracks southwest as well, but eventually you get to a region where the images were taken with a different satellite at a different time of year and the loss of contrast makes the tracks impossible to follow any further.
Julia Pongratz is the only citation in your listed sources for Gengis Khan's impact on climate. She arrived at this conclusion not through examination of empirical data, but through computer modeling of Khan's actions. It's an interesting hypothesis, but hardly one that can be stated as a certainty.
Right. God, being all powerful, could create all the evidence for an old universe. In fact, the universe could have been created a minute ago with all our memories and everything. Of course, that mean that God was a deceiver, and no different from Satan.
Really, it's all ridiculous bullshit, and if you don't get to children when they are young and vulnerable, you've got a much much harder time making someone believe it.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Look guys, stop messin with my friends. Here's proof:
[root@earth-sim173-265 ~]# uptime
12:17:09 up 2,210,805 days, 20:27, 7,029,298,112 users, load average: 0.90, 0.90, 0.95
[root@earth-sim173-265 ~]#
Now leave me alone, and get back to learning how to be humans/gods without killing each other and destroying the universe.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Except that the Bible says that God is revealed through his creation as well. This would seem to indicate that God wouldn't make things appear to be a way they are not. (I say this as a Christian who does not believe that young Earth makes any sense. I could possibly see an argument being made that human's have only been around 6000 or so years (I don't personally believe this is necessary or accurate either, but I could at least see grounds for the argument (using the Bible, not science)).) Ultimately, those who claim the Bible says the Earth is only 6000 years old fail at both their own religion and science. The term translated as "day" more closely means age or period. Clearly, without a planet yet, you can't have a 24 hour day, so it doesn't even make sense to assume that the "days" referenced were literal.
AJ Henderson
The Mayans were probably not having a significant impact on their own weather (I smell some green cultist with an agenda). Bad weather/seasons can happen to anybody anywhere and have been a common cause of famine and social disruption in antiquity worldwide.
The reality of the Mayan collapse was based on the confluence of population growth and soil depletion. The Mayans never developed crop rotation, so while their society grew their crop yields shrank, and everything collapsed.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
"While I have been apostate for more than a decade"
Congratulations on your first decade of sanity.
The promotion of ignorance under the guise of passionate populism... that's fabulous. Your novel approach of 'HEY GAIZ STOP LEARNING AND JOIN CLASS WARFARE!' has earned you a place on my foes list.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Other than invoking a strange variant of the Adam and Eve story, you sound more like a Theistic Evolutionist to me. Can't really swallow the whole "Adam and Eve were separate creations" bit, but then again, I can't buy the "Jesus rose from the grave after being dead for three days" bit either, so I see no point to get too uptight about it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Creationists agree that starlight is billions of years old. They just believe the solar system, what with its young comets and all, is young. Answers in Genesis does a good job of bringing a lot of creationist articles together. And by the way, they don't refute relativity at all. Relativity's gravitational time dilation is one of the theories as to how the universe can be old while the earth is young.
You can see their articles on Astrophysics here. Don't be surprised to see that most believe in old stars:
Astrophysics
If you would like to read what they believe about the age of the earth and why they believe it is young, Answers in Genesis sums it up here:
Young Age Evidence
Rather than continuing to misunderstand about the creationist perspective, read up and see what they believe. Then, if you disagree with them, you can at least stop with the unfounded attacks.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Except that the Bible says that God is revealed through his creation as well. This would seem to indicate that God wouldn't make things appear to be a way they are not.
Yeah, it astonishes me that some creationists claim that God planted fossils to fool people.
And of course, would never consider that God could have written a book to fool people.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
refute relativity: the scientific theory with the best proof track record ever.
Eh? That'd be Quantum Mechanics.
I'm guessing that the Atomic Theory of Matter has a pretty good track record too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
---- Someone better go read Rene Descartes....
That pedantic ol' windbag? I think not.
<POOF!> <crickets>
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
My "self" is simply the current pattern of my thoughts. Regardless of what "hardware/wetware" they are running on, my thought patterns and memories are my "self". If some all-powerful entity could re-arrange the atoms in my brain (assuming that's what is really running things in here :-), and replace my thoughts and memories with Rene Descartes, _my_ "self" would cease to exist, and my friends and family would testify to that, though my outward appearance would be unchanged.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Because it isn't for laymen. I go out to the library and get a book on geology and planet formation for laymen, it isn't going to use obviously incorrect language to describe an event. It is going to say "the atmosphere was hazy and the sun was not visible until such-and-such-a-time". You know that I know that.
The Bible's terms, if I take your interpretation, are bad word choices. The sun existed before the planet, and green plants could not have lived in a hazy reducing atmosphere that blocked out a good chunk of the spectra, humans bred domesticated animals (and thus they came AFTER humans), and even a liberal interpretation that includes the wild progenitors of cattle, pigs and the like, well, guess what, they evolved in the Pleistocene just like humans did.
Look, if it somehow helps your faith to believe that Genesis is some sort of a Evolution For Bronze Age Dummies, but I doubt you're going to get much traction not only with miserable non-believers like myself, but even with many theologians, who would find the whole exercise misses the point of Genesis, and only creates an ever increasing number of problems as one goes forward in trying to force the Bible to become a science text.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I know we're moving off-topic, but another way to get people to believe it is by being awesome and beautiful. Many fundamentalists are beautiful and successful and kind, and when individuals whose life is not those things can believe that by joining, their lives will improve, they will believe the whole bit.
It's kind of like one of those South Park Mormon episodes.