It's about putting up some resistance to the overwhelming trend for forum sites to devolve to Slashdot. If you wan't Slashdot, go there. Most of the same subjects are covered.
It's more about discussion quality. Does humor add to a discussion? Sure. It's good to laugh. but, what happens when the majority (and this will happen) of your replies are just simple grabs at humor? the quality discussion gets lost in the noise. So it comes down to principle, members here have agreed to stay on topic, expand on it, dive deeper, annotate. if you want to throw some humor in the midst of doing that, I imagine that would be fine.
> what happens when the majority (and this will happen) of your replies are just simple grabs at humor? the quality discussion gets lost in the noise.
I think this is only a problem if the humor isn't funny enough. I don't know if I hit the mark here, but if I make unfunny jokes I hope I get called out on it (or at least see it reflected in the vote totals), and that'll definitely regulate my posting. If we somehow manage to make enough good jokes to drown out on-topic discussion, I'm going to be very impressed more than concerned I think.
"Oh look, a comment that slightly deviates from THE RULES of the site? Better jump into the guidelines and copy-paste the relevant passage to prove how vile the poster is. When he reads my comment, he will certainly drown in guilt and despair and refrain from posting something like that again. That will show him!"
I appreciate both the original joke, the reprimanding comment explaining the rules, and your comment. All are needed, in the right amounts, for this site to not decay into one extreme or another.
Seems like it's not that major of a blow, just that human creation of such tools requires a higher standard of evidence now, such as "concrete traces of dietary remains or hearths—charcoal at the site could have originated from naturally occurring fires," as the article says. Ultimately, though, the farther we go back, the harder it will be to tell human-made from other primate-made tools, as the other pieces of evidence more readily decompose.
I think that might be a matter of divergence from source, though. Most people can't afford the time to debate every idea that they accept over their lifetimes.
So, if you get someone who heard something from someone they trust that heard it from someone THEY trust who is doing actual work on the subject... that's not too far removed from a primary source, so the twice-removed observer is likely to accept that fact as Good Information and move on.
To add context, I don't believe this comment was intended as a joke and others shouldn't down-vote it as such due to the sibling comment made in poor taste.
One of my moms favorite anecdotes from when I was growing up:
Mom: Just gets don't reading me a National Geographic where they cover evolution. She thinks to herself about how proud she is of explaining it to 5 year old me, thinks I really got it.
Me: Mom, how old were you when you and Dad turned from monkeys?
I'm sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree with the thesis of this article. Clovis first has more than a few holes in it at this point. This is generally accepted. It's not hinging on a few singular 22k BCE finds, or even South American finds. Nenana, Bluefish, Triquet, Meadowcroft, Saltville, Cactus Hill, Topper, Page Ladson, Buttermilk Creek, Paisley and that's just North America pre-Clovis sites. Monte Verde in Chile is well established, and it's very evocative that the very oldest finds are down the coast from the first megalithic American sites in Caral ~4000BCE. Almost certainly not related - not with 10k y separation - but, as I said, evocative.
Lord knows I have my problems[1] with today's reactionaries, but at the same time, I also have a gut revulsion at any knee-jerk rejection of early Homo distribution. I'm not saying this piece is guilty of that specifically, but it's a stated bias at conferences: we'd rather find recent Homo spreading recently. My counterargument: Nazis aren't going to give a strained s#!t when America or Asia was peopled, they're going to latch on to whatever they want to. More crucially, they'll use your bad judgement to undermine all of science and the fucking Enlightenment while they're at it. Don't let their nonsense taint your judgement, as noble as you might think it is.
[1] Which I am in no way drawing false equivalence with. One of these parties is guilty of bad judgement applying aesthetics to archaeology, and the other . . well, we come from all sides here, so enough said.
