How would they help?
It would tell everyone the correct level at which to start their explanations.
In a desert, yes. But I’d have thought it extremely unlikely that dinosaurs would have lived in a desert.
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I am quite late to this post, but see this article for example on the Megafauna of Australia…
Given that we can date these fossils to not that long ago as well as modern humans it is not hard to imagine why there were such stories going around. Like with 25 foot lizards or thousand pound kangaroos or 4000 pound wombats as the article mentions… pretty simple explanation, no dinosaurs required and no finding dinosaur bones in the ground required either. Our ancestors literally did fight off 25 foot lizards and we have evidence of us say burning the eggs of the now extinct 400 pound flightless birds from 30,000+ years ago
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@jammycakes
We were talking about the Ica stones, which are found in the Altacama desert. However, the dinosaurs depicted on the Ica stones may have lived in the Amazon jungle farther away. The Nazca civilization (which Dr. Swift seems to think carved the stones) was familiar with organisms from farther away (as demonstrated by the Nazca Line depicting…I can’t remember which spider [or ant] right now, but I’ll update when I do…), so they were familiar with the dinosaurs (as demonstrated by the Ica stones).
How can one look at an ancient work of art and determine whether the animal depicted is real or mythical-imaginary? You seem to be implying that there is a difference such that the Ica stones would indicate whether the animal drawn was real or imagined. I don’t follow your reasoning here.
So how do you know which of those two alternatives applied to the culture which produced the Ica stones in question? (By the way, I didn’t call it an ancient culture because it is not at all evident at this point that they are ancient.)
Lastly, I thought I saw where you asked what paleontologists have to say about the accuracy of the Ica stone drawings in terms of depicting dinosaurs accurately. I hadn’t brought up that topic because I don’t have immediately at hand a citation. But because you’ve asked, I’ll mention an article I read a few years ago that was written by a paleontologist (technically, a comparative anatomy professor specializing in vertebrates). The article discussed several such art works, including the famous Cambodian engravings (the alleged stegosaurus) as well as the Ica stones. The paleontologist said that if the depictions were meant to look like dinosaurs, they showed various fundamental errors. Yet, I actually don’t consider that particularly important because even if they depicted real animals, both ancient and modern artists sometimes work from the reports of others and not a “model” sitting quietly in front of them.
As written previously, the Ica stones have plenty of other problems which are far more serious, such as dating measurements and provenance. It is very difficult to take the stones seriously until provenance issues are addressed, especially when we know that most of them are admitted forgeries/hoaxes. (In impoverished areas, forgeries of these sorts are not entirely rare. Consider the famous Paluxy River Tracks of the Depression Era.)
This has been an interesting topic. It is a good illustration of how scholars go about weighing such evidence and determining likely origins.
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If the dinosaurs were in the Amazon they would not be covered with sand. My point stands: where are the dinosaur carcasses with sequenceable DNA?
Re the Ica stones. The Wikipedia article says that they were mostly fakes. What evidence do you have that the Wikipedia article is wrong, and that any of them were genuine? Specifically, what evidence do you have that the ones depicting dinosaurs were genuine?
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I’m VERY glad you brought this up! Indeed, forgeries are not rare at all, in fact, they can be very common! However…
Irma and Basilio had VERY good reasons for admitting to have forged the Ica stones. If they had said: “yes, we dug these out of ancient tombs” they would be SEVERELY punished by the law. Tomb robbery is a serious crime in Peru (as it probably is everywhere).
There we go. I do not accept your assertion that the Ica stones are admitted hoaxes.
Friend, I had already posted a link to one of my articles on the Ica Stones on this very discussion. Here it is again: www.ce-debate.org/ica-burial-stones
Also, If you are not satisfied, there’s a link to another article that goes more in-depth on the bottom of that page. Enjoy!
It would be super fun to find some carcasses, yes. If they haven’t turned up yet, they might eventually. Those jungles are difficult to explore…but I’m optimistic as to finding something wildly interesting in the near future.
@benkirk
Do you mean “level of hostility?” Do you mean “level of technicality?” Do you mean “level of condescension?” I am a bit confused by your response.
[quote=“J.E.S, post:92, topic:36364”]
Do you mean “level of hostility?”[/quote]
Do you think that you can reduce your level of hostility, given that you’re already made two objectively false accusations against Taq today in this thread?
Of course. On that point, how does one technically distinguish between natural and artificial oxidation?
[quote=“J.E.S, post:90, topic:36364”]
Friend, I had already posted a link to one of my articles on the Ica Stones on this very discussion. Here it is again: www.ce-debate.org/ica-burial-stones[/quote]
It’s all assertions, not a speck of evidence.
[quote]Also, If you are not satisfied, there’s a link to another article that goes more in-depth on the bottom of that page. Enjoy!
[/quote]It appears to have depth to someone who wants to believe that the stones are real, but it’s an excellent example of pseudoscience. How does one technically distinguish between natural and artificial oxidation? The allegedly in-depth article falsely presents that conclusion as an observation. Did it fool you?
So wait a second here. You are telling me that a few stones found in Peru is your world changing evidence, that the original forger admitted were fake. And that’s some of the only evidence, ever in the history of the world that humans supposedly lived with dinosaurs… Common man! That’s insane! Where are the loads of dino bones dated to be close to modern homo sapiens? Why are they never ever buried with human beings? Not once. Like ever? Especially if we rode them like those magic stones.
Here’s an example of real creatures that coexisted with the people of South America:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/giant-jaguars-colossal-bears-done-deadly-combo-humans-and-heat
And some more stuff that lived down there:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018215000899
So if the stones are even real (which they’re not) there is some crazy stuff that ancient humans had to deal with! That’ll give for some nice stories back in the cave. The Genesis Park article just makes me sad. That someone is literally traveling around South America with a few fake stones in a bag looking for non-existant evidence that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.
My thoughts on the article:
- So… when did these stones get made? The point of the article is trying to make an early date… like sometime BC? The earliest traces of any kind of bronze on South America was the Moche culture which lived after 200 AD and probably didn’t get around to it until 500 AD or so (Bronze Age - Wikipedia).
- He compares the magic rocks of Ica to the one the guy made on the spot- Basilio probably whips them up like hotcakes to sell them and make a living (Basilio Uschuya- if you’re here Basilio, hello!) - meaning that is a ridiculous thing to use to prove your point - it’s like trying to prove the Earth is young by looking a globe
- Nobody knows where they come from, sigh… like if that could ever be given it could go a long ways
- Why not make some fakes and throw them in a bunch of random caves for many years seeing how they age? That’s a nice way to test your hypothesis too
- The story about Drum, who is a real scientist is also sad, since it basically is a waste of space in their article giving the reader the impression a real scientist thinks they were old and also magically prove that dinosaurs coexisted with humans (which he doesn’t think or say that at all)
This is the weakest case I’ve ever seen for a real idea and yes, I am being very critical of this. Not because I don’t like you, but the idea is terrible. Especially when the idea is paraded around as if it’s absolute proof that the Earth is Young. It’s a very unsubstantiated claim that if even it was real, also has many reasonable real explanations that are based on actual real evidence (ie the South American Megafauna listed above).
In other news, despite all I just said, this is pretty convincing proof to me:
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My point exactly.
@J.E.S - what criteria do you think something has to meet in order for it to be considered to be evidence? Scientific evidence?
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Considering the relatively recent demise of Terror Birds in South America, the fact we don’t have carved stones of man-eating chickens should be enough to convince that the dinosaur stones are Fakes!
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Tweet! 15 yard penalty for piling on! Seriously, for those of us with less experience in reading the literature, what are some good principles for evaluation of new information? What do you look for before accepting something as likely to be true?
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Corroboration in peer reviewed journals is always a good place to start.
The example I brought up from the “in-depth” paper Jonathan linked to screams pseudoscience:
“The analysis of the Cabrera stone of unknown provenance revealed a fine patina, embedded dirt, and natural oxidation, solid evidence of authenticity.”
First, it’s in the results section of the paper, yet it states two conclusions, which should only be in the Conclusions or Discussion section. There are two general exceptions to this rule: figure titles can state the conclusion, and you can provide a tentative conclusion as a segue to the next section of the results, as in, “Since these data were consistent with hypothesis X, we then did Y…”
Second, I know of no way to distinguish between natural and artificial oxidation. Maybe Jonathan does. Would you care to make a prediction?