For more information on the Endeavor, this article sums up its history pretty well, although there are definitely more sources out there with more information: newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/captain-cooks-end…
anyone background in this field able to chime in on how accurate this is? I read it briefly and looked up alpha/omega and the “chi-rho” but not sure how they got that out of some random blotches that are barely visible. Seems like generous interpretation may have been used. I can see how they may be able to verify its a tattoo by looking at the materials the blotch is made of, but superimposing an image of what it “is” seems like a stretch to me without knowing more about this.
In the first stage, archaeologists opened eight trenches and found a necropolis with nearly 150 urn graves, rock tombs and earthen graves, which were determined to belong to the Iron Age Assyrian civilization dating back to the first millennium B.C., in an area of approximately 100 square meters.
Spears, arrowheads, daggers, knives, swords and a wide variety of war materials, thought to belong to the dead, were unearthed in the urn graves, where the remaining bones of the dead were buried after being cremated.
Imagine living in a pod in a city crammed togther with a bunch of annoying stinky mfs and you are constantly bloated because you are eating a shitty diet that is mostly grain with no space to escape. I would also bonk some noggins.
Collard and colleagues first published their finger amputation thesis a few years ago but were criticised by other scientists, who argued that the amputation of fingers would have been catastrophic for the people involved. Men and women without fully functioning hands would be unable to cope with the harsh conditions that prevailed millennia ago.
Sounds pretty fair.
Since then, Collard, working with PhD student Brea McCauley, has gathered more data to back the amputation thesis. In a paper presented at the European Society conference, they said their latest research provided even more convincing evidence that the removal of digits to appease deities explains the hand images in the caves in France and Spain.
Oh really? Sorta interesting, okay, what’s the evidence?
The team looked elsewhere for evidence of finger amputation in other societies and found more than 100 instances where it had been practised. “This practice was clearly invented independently multiple times,” they state. “And it was engaged in by some recent hunter-gatherer societies, so it is entirely possible that the groups at Gargas and the other caves engaged in the practice.”
…
That is not convincing evidence.
Sure, it’s possible. If someone assembled some data that showed that in the modern day, ritual amputation is way more common quantitatively than accidental loss of digits, and showed that they were able to reject some other plausible explanations (e.g. showing that there wasn’t a particularly cold climate in that area that would cause frostbite to be more common than normal), then sure. But that’s not this paper, it sounds like.
Then we must help the poor thing recover. I suggest we start by giving them world leaders chosen by random dice rolls. Because I don't want to give them babies, but since the world leaders already feed on baby blood, they'll still get that rejuvenation.
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