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Neolithic Europeans Were Old School Thugs

Started by jimmy olsen, August 25, 2015, 10:10:31 PM

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grumbler

Quote from: Valmy on August 26, 2015, 08:39:21 AM
Only Rousseauan silly people think ancient people were peace loving hippies. Being a peace loving hippy requires modern technology...ironically I guess.

That does not mean the article is not full of crackpottery. It is all over the place. I kept having that 'WTF am I reading?' feeling.

Yeah, and he's got a lot of wrong ideas, like his contention that aristocratic women in Republican Rome had a lot of power.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

dps

I got to where discussing theories about ancient Europeans digressed into an irrelevant contrasting of Japanese and Chinese cultures,  At that point I figured that the article didn't have any real focus and gave up.

Valmy

Quote from: dps on August 26, 2015, 08:55:25 AM
I got to where discussing theories about ancient Europeans digressed into an irrelevant contrasting of Japanese and Chinese cultures,  At that point I figured that the article didn't have any real focus and gave up.

That was pretty much how it went. Just one random thought after the next.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Malthus

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on August 26, 2015, 08:37:48 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 26, 2015, 08:24:10 AM
That article reads like a smorgasboard of crackpottery. 

Examples?

I found the thesis (that Europeans were never peace-loving hippies until possibly today) rather self-evident and am surprised it's controversial.

It isn't. No-one in the archaeology field, as far as i know, believes that pre-historic Europeans were peace-loving hippies.

Rather, I'm referring to the article randomly jumping from one quite irrelevant topic to the next, as if they all related to some sort of significant point.

In four paragraphs he goes from Tolkien ("In J. R. R. Tolkien's work there are allusions to the coming Fourth Age of Middle Earth, an age of men"), to  some sort of pseudo-feminist, pseudo-"seduction community" analysis of biological determinism ("... village life became an inevitable target of extraction from collective groups of males, who translated their significant superior upper body strength into a reign of coercive terror. That coercion was translated into reproductive success"), to mutation theory, to Issac Newton's liking for magic, to comparing Judiasm to Christianity.

It's like watching that Time-Cube guy muse on anthropology. 



The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Legbiter

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Razgovory

Quote from: Malthus on August 26, 2015, 09:38:27 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on August 26, 2015, 08:37:48 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 26, 2015, 08:24:10 AM
That article reads like a smorgasboard of crackpottery. 

Examples?

I found the thesis (that Europeans were never peace-loving hippies until possibly today) rather self-evident and am surprised it's controversial.

It isn't. No-one in the archaeology field, as far as i know, believes that pre-historic Europeans were peace-loving hippies.

Rather, I'm referring to the article randomly jumping from one quite irrelevant topic to the next, as if they all related to some sort of significant point.

In four paragraphs he goes from Tolkien ("In J. R. R. Tolkien's work there are allusions to the coming Fourth Age of Middle Earth, an age of men"), to  some sort of pseudo-feminist, pseudo-"seduction community" analysis of biological determinism ("... village life became an inevitable target of extraction from collective groups of males, who translated their significant superior upper body strength into a reign of coercive terror. That coercion was translated into reproductive success"), to mutation theory, to Issac Newton's liking for magic, to comparing Judiasm to Christianity.

It's like watching that Time-Cube guy muse on anthropology.

Well I gave up after the first paragraph after there were some red flags, but maybe I'll read the whole thing.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Razgovory

Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 26, 2015, 01:07:32 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on August 26, 2015, 12:23:24 AM
What the hell is UNZ?
Don't know, don't care. The author is a well know genomics blogger who has worked for the New York Times and Discovery in the past.

You neglected to mention that he was fired from the New York Times for his affiliations with far right racists publications.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/03/new-york-times-drops-razib-khan-204287.html
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

MadImmortalMan

Quote from: Malthus on August 26, 2015, 09:38:27 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on August 26, 2015, 08:37:48 AM
Quote from: Malthus on August 26, 2015, 08:24:10 AM
That article reads like a smorgasboard of crackpottery. 

Examples?

I found the thesis (that Europeans were never peace-loving hippies until possibly today) rather self-evident and am surprised it's controversial.

It isn't. No-one in the archaeology field, as far as i know, believes that pre-historic Europeans were peace-loving hippies.

Rather, I'm referring to the article randomly jumping from one quite irrelevant topic to the next, as if they all related to some sort of significant point.

In four paragraphs he goes from Tolkien ("In J. R. R. Tolkien's work there are allusions to the coming Fourth Age of Middle Earth, an age of men"), to  some sort of pseudo-feminist, pseudo-"seduction community" analysis of biological determinism ("... village life became an inevitable target of extraction from collective groups of males, who translated their significant superior upper body strength into a reign of coercive terror. That coercion was translated into reproductive success"), to mutation theory, to Issac Newton's liking for magic, to comparing Judiasm to Christianity.

It's like watching that Time-Cube guy muse on anthropology.

They are attempts at injecting internet snark. He does it in a quasi-Family Guy literary format of constant cutaways. It's a bit hard to read as a result.
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers