Posted on 04/21/2006 11:14:50 AM PDT by blam
This is the problem. You think that there actually are 'dozens of ways to accurately date things'. There are not.
Those 'dozens of ways to accurately date things' are interpretations built on assumptions that are extrapolated back into an unobserved past. Until you recognize this fundamental point, you will continue to blindly accept whatever you are told.
Written records are recorded observations and are a different class of evidence than interpretations built on assumptions that have been extrapolated.
The 'abilities' of Homo Erectus are not of the same type of evidence as written observations. They are interpretations built on assumptions and are based more on imagination than anything else.
That is the fundamental difference between them and written records and why it should be clear that you should be very skeptical of what anyone tells you happened 'millions of years ago'.
Tree rings are assumptions? I really don't get the sense that you know what you're talking about.
The 'abilities' of Homo Erectus are not of the same type of evidence as written observations.
I don't know what that sentence is supposed to mean. Abilities?
You think tree rings go back millions of years? They don't go back more than a few thousand and that is assuming that they are matched correctly. Assumptions, assumptions.
'Abilities' = the purported tools that supposedly indicate tool-making supposedly indicating intelligence supposedly indicating the 'abilities' of this creature.
Assumption built upon interpretation built upon extrapolation.
I've played this exercise in my mind by pretending that I had gone back in time 500 years or so and tried to tell someone how to make something we have today. You'd have to invent everything. Everything moves forward together and most cannot come before their time.
The tree-ring 'gauge' is now over 10,000 years long.
I'm not sure what your point is here, but 10 certainly falls within the parameters of few.
No argument...just exactness. I'm a big fan of Professor Mike Baillie
Research Interests
Archaeologist and palaeoecologist with research interests in dendrochronological and chronological issues. Teaches chronological and environmental issues in palaeoecology plus human evolution. Research record in tree-ring chronology construction for radiocarbon calibration and reconstruction of past environmental change."
Like I said, "...that is if they are matched correctly."
Big IF, imo since no tree is 10,000 years old.
Other assumptions (besides the ability to 'match' different trees correctly) underlying this 'gauge' are the ability of the researcher to count correctly, the assumption that the weather was always the same such that each ring represents an annual cycle rather than a wet/dry cycle.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp
Well, we went from 'dozens of ways to accurately date things' to one (tree rings) that has been shown to be inaccurate pretty quickly.
Like I said, be very skeptical when someone claims to be able to tell you that 'millions of years' even existed, much less what supposedly happened.
It's all in the storyteller's imagination at that point.
Ain't no real Java Man....
Been held back by superstition
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has done that ;)
I came to the conclusion that I would be absolutely worthless if I was transported to the middle ages, unless I could convince people of germ theory (that would be a biggie) :)
I had a similar conversation, sometime back, concerning a fossil that proclaimed three dating methods. Upon close inspection it broke down to just one.
I don't believe the evidence. Common sense tells me humans haven't been around for a million or more years.
So the whole human race has been "superstitious" for over a million years?
Care to elaborate?
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