It is worth noting that even mainstream archaeologists who aren’t on board with the idea of mysterious ancient civilizations and impact extinctions think Gobekli Tepe is weird and not easily explicable. They assert that it would build by hunter-gatherers despite the fact that this contradicts their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish.
Yeah, but the thing is, I don’t see anything terribly important about facts which “contradict their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish” since I think their usual model should come with a large warning label “EPISTEMIC STATUS: UNCERTAIN”. If you have a collection of guesses based on sparse data, you should be prepared to revise these guesses when new data comes in.
It’s a big deal if you staked your academic career on one of those guesses; otherwise, not so much.
It is worth noting that even mainstream archaeologists who aren’t on board with the idea of mysterious ancient civilizations and impact extinctions think Gobekli Tepe is weird and not easily explicable. They assert that it would build by hunter-gatherers despite the fact that this contradicts their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish.
Yeah, but the thing is, I don’t see anything terribly important about facts which “contradict their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish” since I think their usual model should come with a large warning label “EPISTEMIC STATUS: UNCERTAIN”. If you have a collection of guesses based on sparse data, you should be prepared to revise these guesses when new data comes in.
It’s a big deal if you staked your academic career on one of those guesses; otherwise, not so much.