Comments by "Neolithic Transit Revolution" (@neolithictransitrevolution427) on "Stefan Milo"
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@BranoneMCSG if you look through the comments, I have readily admitted that Hancock is out of his tree given just how advanced a civilization he posits is.
But in terms of your breakdown, I think you disprove your own argument. You start from the "theory rests entirely on the fact that it can't be disproved" to "1. Ancient structure is found".
And that was my original point. If we tone down Hancock to a much more reasonable claim like "A Neolithic civilization existed from some point to the end of the ice age, prior to any identified neolithic civilization", I think that's a valid theory. We have data that appears as outlier, but without justification. And we do know that coastal areas tend to be where civilizations form, that there was a global movement in coast lines at the end of the ice age, and that identified neolithic cultures start to form following the recent glacial maximum. The argument isn't "you can't prove me wrong", it's a genuine blind spot in archeology that we don't know what's under the Persian Gulf or the sea of Indonesia, and have very limited knowledge of the Amazon (which we know was a massive and advanced civilization) or the Sahara (which became a desert only contemporary with the first cultures forming around the Nile).
So I think the comment is fair, but in the sense that Graham seems to be looking for a genuine Narnia, and coast or wardrobe you aren't going to find it. But the idea that we don't have a serious bias in our interpretation should be considered seriously.
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@DenysBuryi no, you miss the point. No one argues "lack of evidence so I'm right" the argument is "lack of evidence is causing systematic bias in interpretation".
That was my point of contention with the comment. No one believes magic fairy land exists because we haven't checked everywhere. There is, however, good reason to think the culture's in the Green Sahara gave birth to Egypt, or that cultures now under the Persian Gulf gave birth to the Ur civilization.
His point isn't "there wasn't a culture there so must be one here", it's that we have sites more advanced then the current model would suggest ("you smell like bananas"), most human centers form on a coast ("you have a banana pocket"), and that we have no done significant research into these coast lines, because the water level shifted at the end of the ice age ("you only looked in laptop pocket"). There is a good chance there is a banana in the banana pocket we didn't check, checking the laptop pocket and not finding a banana is not proof there is no banana.
The "evidence" (which input in quotes because it isn't circumspect) for Hancock's "claims" (which I put in quotes because I'm limiting his outrageous claims to a point of reason) is not a lack of evidence, it's the existing sites, oral histories, and cultural similarities. The lack of evidence point is simply that Archeology doesn't have the evidence he's wrong, due to a real and significant bias in research.
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@mnomadvfx I will accept this criticism to an extent, with caveats like the exceptional Norte Chico where fishing (and therefore sea access) predates agriculture, or the obvious reliance of the sea of Neolithic Greece or modern era (but stone age technologically) Polynesians.
I should have specified not just coastal, but River Delta regions where large rivers meet the sea. And if you'll look through my specified examples, you'll see they match this specification; Under the Persian Gulf (where the Tigris and Euphrates would have merged and flowed as a single river until 8k year ago before meeting the Gulf of Oman), Historic Sauhl under what are now the Gulf of Thailand and Java sea (where Thailand's Chao Phraya river would have flowed an additional 1000 km being fed by the Rivera of East Malaysia, North Borneo and Java before emptying near the Riau Islands), or (and I consider this a less promising location) under the sea of Azov where the Don would have flowed reaching the black sea. I'm not suggesting every random point along a coast is of equal importance.
The issue overall being "ancient riverways" are almost inherently low lying land, and are themselves both under modern sea levels and where sea levels advanced inland the farthest. Memphis itself, being 100miles in land, would be under the Persian Gulf had an equivalent been located that distance from the Gulf of Oman, as would the next 600+ miles going upstream. This is also true of Ur, and In fact had sea intrusion been as severe as what's seen in the Persian Gulf, the entire length of the Indus Valley and the associated Harrapin civilization would be lost to the sea. Frankly I can't think of an early neolithic culture so far from the sea an trace above ground would be identified after an event as large as the flooding of the Persian Gulf.
I did specifically reference the Culture of the Amazon as being severely under-studied in both age and scope, which is distinctly a river centered culture and not coastal. And the Green Sahara culture(s), (the last point I made agreeing with Hancock as a location in need of study) while understudied to the point of near total ignorance, don't revolve around either rivers or coasts (to our knowledge, which is dammingly near nothing).
And again looking at Memphis, it's worth considering the distance to the coast in ancient times rather than modern. Until the Aswan dams construction the Nile Delta was expanding into the Mediterranean in recent times, The sea level rise at the end of the ice age would have reduced the delta, while sedimentation (particularly in the wetter green Sahara period) would have re-enlarged it (the same is true of Ur, which was far closer to the coast before sedimentation started pushing the Persian Gulf back southward, and may I add burying anything there previously). The age of the Nile Delta is a somewhat contentious issue. And likewise, the head of the Delta, where Memphis is located, has itself moved into he past 10k years several times.
All to say, I agree, you don't just form a civilization on a coast. But, you do generally form it on a large river and generally near a coast, if only because that is where deltas and therefore the most productive land is. The Persian Gulf I believe almost certainly has a lost culture below it based on the cultures that form on its periphery directly after it fills, and research under the heavy sediment that has since been deposited has not been conducted at any scale. Likewise, what are now the seas around Indonesia were the valleys of some of the largest rivers on earth at the time, and are the land routes used by Native Australians to move south (although Sadly, given the availability of Bamboo, I doubt we will ever find much). The Sea of Azov is potentially interesting, being near civilization near the Trypilian and having neothlic settlements identified below it, and while I doubt findings would be ground breaking, I'd say potentially the wheel was invented here. I'd also say the Modern Adriatic and English channel should be investigated as they were probably far more heavily populated then most of Europe through the ice age based on the rich deltas, but I doubt to find anything more advanced then hunter gathers. And the American West Coast almost certainly holds the answers to the population of the Americas.
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