Posts

Holliday et al.'s Gish gallop: The end of Clovis

Image
Section 5.7 of Holliday et al. deals with the evidence for the end of Clovis. Specifically, its timing. Was it synchronous with an ET impact, a megafaunal extinction and the onset of the YD cooling? In fact, the YDIH doesn't claim the YD impact ended Clovis culture instantly. It merely proposes it affected the Clovis culture significantly, i.e. it was the beginning of the end for Clovis. Throughout their paper, Holliday et al. continually state that radiocarbon dating evidence for Clovis sites is inconsistent with the YDIH. Let's see what they have to say in Section 5.7 where we find the key evidence. My comments are in italics as always. 5.7. Improved Dating of Clovis Sites and Clovis Archaeology Clovis is a term given to the oldest well-dated, widespread, and recognizable archaeological technocomplex in North America (Haynes, 2002; Smallwood and Jennings, 2015; Meltzer, 2021). Proponents of the YDIH use their perceived connection between the disappearance of the Clovis lithic

Forbidden History Season 7 available in the UK (at last!)

Image
  Season 7, Episode 4 "The Mysteries of the World's Oldest Temple" explores my ideas (among others) about Gobekli Tepe. Available free to view for Now TV and Sky TV subscribers in the UK. Watch Forbidden History Season 7 Episode 1 Online - Stream Full Episodes (nowtv.com)

New York Times Magazine reveals Boslough tried to end the YDIH

Image
  The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) featured on the New York Times Magazine this week. The Comet Strike Theory That Just Won’t Die - The New York Times (nytimes.com) The article is well balanced, giving both sides of the story. The most interesting thing I learned was that Mark Boslough, long-time antagonist of the YDIH, has tried to end research into the YDIH. Apparently, and this is confirmed by those who should know, he wrote to all the editors of journals that ever have published pro-YDIH papers, lobbying them to retract those papers. I don't know of any scientist that would even think of doing this, yet alone actually carry it out. While it is quite normal to seek a retraction if there is good evidence of some kind of scientific malpractice, such as plagiarism or tampered results, it is not ethical to seek a retraction because you disagree with the science or if requests for samples have been denied. This is because writing to all the editors could bias the scientifi

Holliday et al.'s Gish gallop: bias against archaeoastronomy

Image
Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe Holliday et al. is highly misleading . In section 5.2 of their Gish gallop, Holliday et al. take aim against the astronomical interpretation of Gobekli Tepe's symbolism. Let's see what they have to say. My comments in italics. 5.2. Pseudoarchaeological Divined Date of the Impact Event Sweatman and Tsikritsis (2017a, p 233) ask in their abstract, “Is Göbekli Tepe the ‘smoking gun’ for the Younger-Dryas cometary encounter, and hence for coherent catastrophism?”  Correct. No evidence or arguments are provided by Holliday et al. against this. Sweatman in his 2019 book Prehistory Decoded (see also Sweatman andTsikritsis, 2017a,b; Sweatman,  2017; Sweatman and Coombs, 2018; Sweatman 2020) claims the date of the impact event is actually recorded on a carved stone pillar at the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe, Turkey, “Given what is now known about the Younger Dryas impact event, summarised in Chapters 3 to 5, dated by the platinum spike in the GISP2 ice c

Holliday et al.'s Gish gallop: Introduction

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) is first defined in Firestone et al. (2007). “We propose that one or more large, low-density ET objects exploded over northern North America, partially destabilizing the Laurentide Ice Sheet and triggering YD cooling. The shock wave, thermal pulse, and event related environmental effects (e.g., extensive biomass burning and food limitations) contributed to end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and adaptive shifts among PaleoAmericans in North America.” Furthermore, in their text we read; “A number of impact-related effects most likely contributed to the abrupt, major cooling at the onset of the YD and its maintenance for ~1,000 years. Cooling mechanisms operating on shorter time scales may have included (i) ozone depletion, causing shifts in atmospheric systems in response to cooling, with the side-effect of allowing increased deadly UV radiation to reach survivors on the surface (46); (ii) atmospheric injection of nitrogen compounds (NOx), s

I'm presenting at this year's Megalithomania

Image
  Megalithomania Conference, 4th - 5th May 2024