And while we are doing the ‘odds’ bit - what are the chances that all the finds of so-called hunter gatherers where the hunters who kept the city dwellers in meat - those same city dwellers whose abodes are several hundred feet below sea level now and buried in thousands of years of mud, muck, and debris?
And the odds that our whole picture of what life was like 10s of thousands of years ago is totally wrong?
My thoughts, pretty much, too.
I also believe that it wont be until archaeology really focuses on those areas that have gone the longest without glaciation that we’ll really get to understand early humanity.
There’s a lot of stuff in Central America that just doesn’t fit the civilization timeline, which unfortunately leaves it open to exploit by the Ancient Alien types. Eventually, archaeology is going to have to come to terms with modern humans being older than their current model assumes as well as reassessing the age of artifacts and ruins in un-glaciated areas.
City dwellers would have been in the business of manufacture and trade, and manufacture generally requires trade for the raw materials. Thus, they would tend to be near water, because boats are the easiest way to transport heavy things for long distances, and boats have been around since prehistoric times