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Next month we'll have endless articles telling us all how Ida hunted for food, what tools she made, what she wore, how she communicated within the group and all sorts of other fanciful fairy tales based upon thin air. I can't wait for the laughs.

You forgot, "what she fed her children for breakfast before sending them off to lemur school..."

The following is long, but a classic "buried" example of "scientific charlatanism" which I actually lived through and finally saw rejected, proven wrong, ridiculed, but now forgotten:

Sir Eric Thompson, the leading Mayanist of the mid 20th Century---
He asserted, with no foundation whatsoever, that, ... the ancient Maya were thought of [by whom? no one knows] as a theocracy, time worshipers with an immensely sophisticated calendar and a deeply spiritual outlook. Their ideal was said to be [by whom? again, unknown] 'moderation in all things,' their motto 'live and let live', and their character to have an emphasis on discipline, cooperation, patience and consideration for others'. Theirs was a a civilization unlike any other, maintained Thompson, who looked to the Maya as a source of spiritual values in a modern world that placed far more importance on material prosperity..." *

Mind you, this fruitcake was exquisitely educated, erudite, knighted for his "work", and completely wrong. The net contribution of his life was zero. Sort of a parallel to other modern "scientific" contentious foodfights; but I digress...

Today, we know... that the Maya were obsessed with war, and that both the rulers and the gods liked to take hallucinogenic or inebriating enemas using special syringes. 'The highest goal of these lineage-proud dynasts was to capture the ruler of a rival city-state in battle, to torture and humiliate him (sometime for years), and then subject them to decapitation following a ball game which the prisoner was always destined to lose. *

There are two lessons here. Thompson, highly educated, actually believed the myth he created and spouted all his life, and about which he was passionate. He was honest about his "work", which was fundamentally flawed, and he never achieved what others, less obsessed, doggedly worked at --- the decipherment of the Maya language. His delusion contribute negatively to the problem. He delayed successful decipherment for decades

Secondly he illustrates perfectly the parallel to the "Global Warming" delusion of today.

I could quote Santayana again, but what's the use?

*The Story of Writing, Andrew Robinson, 1995