10,000 year old calendar found in Scotland:

Not a paper one like we have, this one is a series of calibrated holes in the ground:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/15/worlds-oldest-calendar-scotland-10000-monument_n_3600432.html

Originally posted by sonhouse
Not a paper one like we have, this one is a series of calibrated holes in the ground:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/15/worlds-oldest-calendar-scotland-10000-monument_n_3600432.html

Yeah, that made fairly big news over here. What's interesting is that it appears to be a Paleolithic monument. The Neolithic didn't start in Britain until 4,000BC. That means that the calendar predates farming, which is interesting because one can easily understand why a farming community would want a calendar, but for hunter-gatherers it's less clear. What they think is that it let them correct the drift in the lunar year, which meant they could predict fish migrations better, of obvious importance to them.

There's no more information than in the Huffington Post link, but for those who want to read it anyway the BBC link is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-23286928
Wikipedia has about 3 lines on this so don't bother following this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crathes_Castle#Mesolithic_calendar

Originally posted by DeepThought
Yeah, that made fairly big news over here. What's interesting is that it appears to be a Paleolithic monument. The Neolithic didn't start in Britain until 4,000BC. That means that the calendar predates farming, which is interesting because one can easily understand why a farming community would want a calendar, but for hunter-gatherers it's less clear ...[text shortened]... bother following this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crathes_Castle#Mesolithic_calendar

What about animal migrations? Obviously it's not Africa with million beast herds and such but wouldn't there be migrations on a smaller scale back then?

Also, it could be they actually had farming but we just haven't found the evidence yet.

Originally posted by sonhouse
What about animal migrations? Obviously it's not Africa with million beast herds and such but wouldn't there be migrations on a smaller scale back then?

Also, it could be they actually had farming but we just haven't found the evidence yet.

The example they gave on the News was for fish. I think that in the Paleolithic/Mesolithic, they were fairly nomadic anyway, so keeping track of land based animals wasn't a problem. What interests the historians is that it is a marker of more sophistication in how they view time, as well as telling us that they had three 10 day weeks to each month. The calendar sorted out the drift in their system (we have leap years to deal with the deficiencies of our calendar) - so, prior to that they had a system for seeing where one is in the annual cycle, they were able to recognize there was an error in their system, and produced a clever piece of error correction code.

I think farming leaves really strong tell-tales, but we'd need an archeologist to say how likely it is that such ancient farming happened but is no longer detectable due to subsequent farming. They might have had the equivalent of no-till vegetable patches or some form of small scale forest agriculture, but their economy wasn't dependent on it in the way that all economies have been since the neolithic. Why farm when you can hunt and gather?

Originally posted by DeepThought
The example they gave on the News was for fish. I think that in the Paleolithic/Mesolithic, they were fairly nomadic anyway, so keeping track of land based animals wasn't a problem. What interests the historians is that it is a marker of more sophistication in how they view time, as well as telling us that they had three 10 day weeks to each month. Th ...[text shortened]... way that all economies have been since the neolithic. Why farm when you can hunt and gather?

Well, it was within a couple thousand years of agriculture, there may have been a mix of hunting and small scale farming. It would seem though, they wouldn't have needed something so sophisticated for small scale farming, but you never know, some genius of the era figured it all out. I bet it happened from the work of one dude, some ancient Aristotle.

How do they know that it's from 10K years ago ?


Manny

Originally posted by menace71
How do they know that it's from 10K years ago ?


Manny

DUH ... IT'S A CALENDAR.

There's a calendar discovered in southern Africa which is c.100,000 years old and is aptly named Adam's Calendar. The stone calendar is the central focal point for a medium sized community complete with mines and gold mines, basic farming, accommodation and possibly a primitive religious building. Naturally this discovery pushes back the previous earliest estimates of the dawn of civilization.

Originally posted by UniReCyclops
There's a calendar discovered in southern Africa which is c.100,000 years old and is aptly named Adam's Calendar. The stone calendar is the central focal point for a medium sized community complete with mines and gold mines, basic farming, accommodation and possibly a primitive religious building. Naturally this discovery pushes back the previous earliest estimates of the dawn of civilization.

References please.

Originally posted by twhitehead
References please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH1wgwe6udo

This really puts to the question the reason for these, fish migrations? Agriculture?

Is there independent dating of these structures? Is the stone now lying flat which supposedly pointed to Orion's belt 75,000 years ago, could it have been pointing at another prominent feature in the sky but say 8000 years ago? Has anyone done any refutation work on these structures?

Humans with modern brains showed up about 100,000 years ago so these structures are theoretically possible from that era but that is an extraordinary claim so needs extraordinary evidence.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Is there independent dating of these structures?

My impression is that their reasons for dating it so old are very shaky. Basically they tried to find a match between the stones and some stars and by looking hard enough, they found one by coincidence.
The only real way to date such a site is if the builders used wood, then carbon dating can be used, or if they left tools lying around that would be a good indication of the period.

Here is someone who went into it in more detail:
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/txsa_4_adams.htm

He says that archeologists believe the stone structures in the region were made by the Bantu who got there about 1800 years ago, so any time after that.
He also reckons the claimed alignments are just made up.

Originally posted by sonhouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH1wgwe6udo

This really puts to the question the reason for these, fish migrations? Agriculture?

Is there independent dating of these structures? Is the stone now lying flat which supposedly pointed to Orion's belt 75,000 years ago, could it have been pointing at another prominent feature in the sky but say 8000 years ag ...[text shortened]... ally possible from that era but that is an extraordinary claim so needs extraordinary evidence.

I had an attack of severe skepticism when he started going on about pyramids at the end. He didn't state how he came out with the date of 75,000 years. There is a human population bottle-neck around then, so they've got a manpower problem. The younger date of 25,000 years is more plausible.

I checked who Michael Tellinger is, according to the wikipedia page he wrote the book: "Slave Species of God" which has an ancient astronaut theory of human origins. The stuff about it pointing to Orion's belt is intended to bolster this. Incidentally you can always find a day of the year when any monument "points" to a given constellation. He doesn't have any formal training in archeology and spent most of his career writing music. If some university based archaeologists get interested it's different, but I'd take this with large pinches of salt.

Originally posted by DeepThought
The younger date of 25,000 years is more plausible.

I don't find even that particularly plausible. I see no reason whatsoever to think it is anything older than a thousand years or so. It could easily be 100 years old. There is no easy way to date it, but it seems reasonable to think it was created by the Bantu, who are relatively recent in the area ( < 2000 years)

Originally posted by DeepThought
I had an attack of severe skepticism when he started going on about pyramids at the end. He didn't state how he came out with the date of 75,000 years. There is a human population bottle-neck around then, so they've got a manpower problem. The younger date of 25,000 years is more plausible.

I checked who Michael Tellinger is, according to the wikip ...[text shortened]... eologists get interested it's different, but I'd take this with large pinches of salt.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I do have a question related to your post. Is there no room for amateurs in science anymore? I don't necessarily mean this guy, but honest amateurs who are interested in things like this to investigate and pose theories.

Originally posted by dryhump
I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I do have a question related to your post. Is there no room for amateurs in science anymore? I don't necessarily mean this guy, but honest amateurs who are interested in things like this to investigate and pose theories.

There is certainly room for amateur scientists... But being an amateur (not professionally
paid to do science) doesn't mean you don't have to use proper scientific methodologies,
and it depends on the area of investigation.

It's very hard to be an amateur particle physicist.

There are however many valuable contributions made by amateur astronomers.