I've been compiling threads, articles, and interviews from skeptics of #AncientApocalypse in the description of my YouTube video on the subject. I'll link them below in a 🧵
Please feel free to share others and I'll add them.
1/many
Hey everyone! So @FlintDibble shared a bunch of great resources including YouTube channels for archaeology. This part I helped with a little, so I thought I'd go one further and put together a list of them all in this 🧵!
And there's mine of course, which I was thrilled to be on the list here alongside all these other amazing channels. Flint and mine are a LOT smaller than most of these others: youtube.com/@archaeologytu…
🧵 1/ Come along on a journey of how archaeology REALLY works..
So, recall this quite strange artifact I showed off a few days ago? It was found near the bottom of a historic fill layer at the Henry Whitfield House in Guilford, Connecticut.
2/ Here it is moments after recovery last July. This was one of the most interesting artifacts I had ever seen. Also, I had No Idea what this thing was, but I found it so evocative. Look at that weird little face on there! Look at that delicate handle!
3/ So, the guessing games began. Here's a video of it in motion - that's right, it moves! That little iron bit near the "arm" is a tiny delicate hinge. And I mean delicate, we don't move it anymore bc it's very corroded.
Remember when you wrote that great paper, took you untold hours of work - cited dozens or even hundreds of thoughtful sources - and it was rejected? Well, prepare to despair over this paper citing only a bad textbook and a self-published preprint touting warmed over race science
This is basically just the premise of The Bell Curve - you find some data, any data really, from Africa, completely ignore all the myriad reasons why it’s statistical insanity to compare that data with non-Africans, do it anyway, and pretend like it proves racism is biological
1/ Here's where I'm going to end off on this, hopefully back where I started: Repatriation is a morally-right action. I'm speaking now to folks who are not already in this debate.
2/ Repatriation, if you don't know (and in the simplest terms I can manage) is taking the remains of Indigenous ancestors currently housed in museums, universities, and elsewhere, and giving them back to descendant communities (usually) for reburial.
3/ The moral justice of this action was controversial in archaeology for a long time. It has not been controversial for decades. That doesn't mean no one disagrees, but it has become an ethical consensus.
1/ On the ethics of talking about bad actors. This is a followup post/couple of posts on a discussion still ongoing (you can check my profile if you'd like to see it firsthand) with @ArchyFantasies@FlintDibble@JenniferRaff and others
2/ @ArchyFantasies brought up this person's twitter profile last night on a discord which we both frequent. She pointed out that as of now, this person was not getting any serious, sustained criticism from the archaeological community and that they should - I agreed
3/ We both decided to QRT this person with a criticism and a call to action. That action led to some larger accounts taking notice and raising a much broader awareness (this was a good thing, IMO)