At this point, the evidence overwhelmingly points to the idea that we don't have any idea about our actual history. I'm not a fan of Graham Hancock, but his and a few others' work really did get some things right.
No, there is a (more or less) steady increase of urban/social complexity from Gobekli Tepe to Vinca, Maykop and Eridu. Shimao fits quite well into the picture if one accepts a concentric multiwave expansion of 'civilization' with metallurgy as one of its hallmarks. The ever growing center region of course being between Mesopotamia and the Black Sea. It will be most interesting if indeed a sign system similar to the Anau seal will show up.
Even before Shimao there was strong evidence that metallurgy was introduced into China from the steppe via Erlitou. Shimao just sits in the right place.
To suggest anything "steady" between the end of GT c. 9000 BP and Vinca c. 7700 bp requires willful ignorance of the magnitude of 1300 years.
And to suggest Shimao is somehow unsurprising flies in the face of a century of sinology, which offers no hint of any large-scale organization anywhere in China, never mind there. Erlitou postdates Shimao by four centuries.
Personally, I wish more mainstream archaeologists would be brave enough to say "we don't really know", instead of fitting everything into the Ancient Near East Civilizations theory.
Bracelets and more generally art are part of the (Epi)Paleolithic package since at least 70000BC South Africa.
Claiming that these were truly made by Denisovians or similarly Neanderthals requires much more evidence in my opinion, especially since those finds coincide with the arrival of modern humans
I see that you missed the point about the bracelet. The point was about its method of manufacture, which does not show up anywhere else for tens of millennia.
Are you claiming it was planted?
Denial is good for turf defense, but not so good for truth.
It's not about denial, it's about integrating it into the existing framework of knowledge instead of creating a complete new theory.
Very interesting discovery in any case, at the very least shifting the dates a bit (as always). Maybe you are right and homo sapiens did learn these arts from Denisovan people. Do Denisovans have a history which leads to this developmental stage?
Because 'we' do and delicate stone workings are part of our skillset earlier than this find:
He is journalist who gets around. He has wacky ideas but keeps his eyes open, so sees things, and isn't afraid to say what he sees. "Pseudo" is just namecalling. There is only correct and wrong. "Real" archaeologists are, also, often wrong, often because they are afraid to say what is right in front of them.
Thank you for articulating this comment. As I said before, I am really not a fan of some of Graham's out-there ideas, but actual archaeologists have been wrong time after time, and most people don't realize that it is not a hard science. This crowd of scientists (and their supporters) like to hand wave people like Graham away by labeling them with the "pseudo" moniker, as if nothing he says has any value. Throwing the baby with the bath water.
Any honest historian will admit Göbekli Tepe is the most astonishing find in a century. Hancock has been talking for decades about an expectation to find constructions exactly that old, i.e. coincident with major sea level rise. Similarly, major early civilization in the Americas. Similarly, a continental-scale catastrophe in the Americas in near pre-history. Similarly, miles of construction under 60+ ft of water off India.
His methods are not respected and the ideas are often not, initially, his own ("journalist", remember), but he does get around, and his "pseudo-science" has an uncanny way of becoming ordinary science.
His ideas (sudden pole shifts, comets synchronized to earth's rotational precession) are often very, very wrong, but science is equipped to handle wrong.
He predicted megalithic construction dating to the Holocene boundary. He didn't say where.
Revisionism insisting that GT was not absolutely astonishing to historians and archaeoligists is properly met with derision.
Of course, we don't know where else it will turn up, although India or Pakistan would be a good bet, and northwestern South America, by his expectations.
Anywhere it would start a turf war, where the other side is well dug in.
An example is Egyptian early history, where disagreeing with the head of antiquities in Egypt could interfere with your access to sites. Thus, although the evidence for who did what and when, in the case of the oldest constructions, is very, very thin, it is risky to suggest alternative scenarios. Notably, surface luminance testing has been done to a very limited degree, suggesting the big pyramids might be 500 years older than is assumed, but tests have not since been followed up.
Similarly, early Chinese history, where there is an official government timeline that differs from evidence, and being seen to disagree could even interfere with crossing the border, which would make it hard to remain a sinologist.
Probably any young archaeologist could identify a dozen other examples. People like to pat themselves on the back when somebody is finally vindicated decades after their career has been blighted, but for each such case there have to be several that die with their evidence just forgotten.
