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Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:11 pm
by Charlie Hatchett
hardaker wrote:Hi Folks,
The artifacts of Valsequillo, the photos, the notes, the sketches. all of Armenta's artifacts -- all missing. I heard a hopeful word a week ago that the INAH folks might have found a few of Armenta's pieces, but it was not clear if they were the engraved pieces. They are keeping everything very close to the vest down there. Like up here in the US, the word Valsequillo is a bigtime embarrassment in Mexico. My attitude: tough titties. Ego versus priceless treasures is not a contest.
Wormington did indeed think Sandia was below Clovis on the continuum, but you must realize this was back in the 60s and 70s. But try to get ahold of the NEW YORKER article in the mid-1990s about Frank Hibben; it will be worth the search. Virginia Steen-McIntyre turned me onto it years ago. Hibben may have been doing some hanky panky. Makes me sad, but it also makes me leary about what this guy was all about.
Chris
LOL @ "My attitude: tough titties."
I'll definitely track down the New Yorker article. Thanks for the heads up!!
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:01 pm
by Minimalist
Ego versus priceless treasures is not a contest.
Unfotunately the dominant part of that equation seems to be the "ego" no matter how priceless the treasure.
Questions
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:59 pm
by Cognito
QUESTIONS
"Did pre-Mods migrate to the New World several hundred thousand years ago and evolve into Mods a couple of hundred thousand years earlier than the Eurasian Mods?
Were Upper Paleolithic techs independently invented in the New World 200,000 years earlier than the Old World?
Did some of these New World Mods perhaps then migrate across the Atlantic around 50,000y and inspire the UP Revolution, only to return again to become the Clovis hunters?
Can you pass me that worm in the bottle?"
These were questions based more on irony than any attempt to reform the timelines and origins of modern human artifacts. Just some crazy ideas, that, alas, should be asked but maybe not too seriously, except for that delicious worm that helps to process all this new stuff. I don't believe for a moment that stuff about them being here and then going across the pond to inspire the UP, and then coming back to inspire the Clovis. But it was fun to put in writing, but I will probably be flogged unmercifully. Oh well, like Red Skelton said, If I do it, I will get a licking; I do'd it.
Chris
I don't believe any of it either, even though the questions cannot be answered with 100% certainty due to limited data. All we know is that searching for the answers will yield results that are even more weird than we could ever imagine. And more importantly ... it's fun to screw with people's paradigms.
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:28 am
by Bruce
QUESTIONS
"Did pre-Mods migrate to the New World several hundred thousand years ago and evolve into Mods a couple of hundred thousand years earlier than the Eurasian Mods?
Just can't get away from the notion that it all started somewhere else. If that's not a club inspired statement... and why a couple thousand years? We been strach'en at this earth a hell of a lot longer than thousands of years.
Were Upper Paleolithic techs independently invented in the New World 200,000 years earlier than the Old World?
The club will like this statement since hominids in their opinion had a great disgust for this continent and would not set foot on this land until about 12000 yrs ago. Sure we'll give mexico and SA a little credit, but anything north belongs to manifest destiny and its better if nobody was here at all.
Did some of these New World Mods perhaps then migrate across the Atlantic around 50,000y and inspire the UP Revolution, only to return again to become the Clovis hunters?
Here we go a migrating again. I'm pretty sure the technology way outdistanced the migrations. We make it out like a conspricy when it's just people being people for the last 2 million years surviving the best way they know how. It;s just easier to pretend that we are the first ones here and we can destroy whatever we damn well please.
Look at every mountian, every river like it's the valley of the kings. Eygpt has nothing in comparison if you'll just see it!
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 4:28 am
by Digit
As you say Bruce, we've been around for a long time, most of it doing nothing according to the pundits, till suddenly our brains kicked into over drive and we became 'intelligent'.
There was a TV show over here entitled 'the day we learned to think',
the evidence? Painting!
I pointed out some time back that the Egyptians, the Japanese and the Chinese, established a level of 'civilisation' then froze it. The Club seems to work on the basis that if contant change is not ongoing then there is no intelligence.
One of the driving forces in HSS is idleness, if you have all that you want, why put in more effort, hunter gatherers have resisted change in modern times purely on that basis.
If you have a perfectly good flint tool, why the Hell go to all the extra trouble to produce a copper one.
The fact that society apparently didn't change for thousands of years does not prove lack of intelligence, that may be the case, but equally it may be satisfaction with your life style.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 5:32 pm
by Charlie Hatchett
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Yup.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:59 am
by Minimalist
Seems as if Cynthia Irwin-Williams is emerging as the real villain of this piece.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:06 pm
by Charlie Hatchett
Minimalist wrote:Seems as if Cynthia Irwin-Williams is emerging as the real villain of this piece.
No doubt.
Talk about dereliction of duty!! She never published the final report on the site.
She just sort of washed her hands of the matter. Doesn't sound a bit like science to me.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:45 pm
by Digit
It isn't science Charley. It's at least cencorship and bloody criminal!
Hiding evidence that you don't like isn't going to make it vanish and there's a good chance that it will come back to haunt you.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:50 pm
by Minimalist
What's worse is the apparent reason for her actions, Digit. It was her site and she was only willing to follow the evidence part of the way and no further.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:08 pm
by Digit
ie, if it doesn't fit your preconceived ideas, bury it!
I don't understand these people Min, I really don't.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:30 pm
by Minimalist
She was more worried about her career than about the find. We've joked about "The Club" mentality but this guy Hardaker is pretty clear on what it means, career-wise, to challenge the Clovis-Firsters.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:50 pm
by Digit
The politics was the worst of part of senior management I found, but as Shakespear said 'he that has no stomach for the fight,' etc, but win or lose Min, I retained that old fashioned idea of personal honour.
These people have a duty, another old fashioned concept, to future generations and need some backbone!
Logic seems to suggest that Clovis was a late comer, and I can't help but wonder how these people will feel when they finally have to bow to the inevitable and concede that point.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:08 pm
by Minimalist
Charlie? I'm going to let you handle Digit's last question.
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 6:19 pm
by Forum Monk
Folks, maybe its the company I keep (I hang out here I get the chance) but is Clovis First still the overarching paradigm?? I mean really. Isn't that idea all but dead, even in the universities?