Thoughts on archaeology?
>>1215124
A respectable profession that has contributed immeasurably to our understanding of ourselves and world history.
However, there is currently a significant issue with snobby and territorial archaeologists having knee-jerk dismissals of anything even slightly far-out that challenges their views or questions certain aspects of it. Anything suggested that even remotely goes against the mainstream view is attacked and ridiculed which is ridiculous because tons of major and influential discoveries in archaeology were only made in the past 50 years and there are undoubtedly way more major ones to be made in the future.
I'm not saying that mainstream archaeology needs to prostrate themselves and proclaim Graham Hancock as their lord and savior and I understand that its important for experts to speak up when people assert blatant untruths as facts but people need to be more open to respectfully discussing hypotheticals.
This whole shindig with Göbekli Tepe is an example though. Before it was discovered anyone who suggested that there might possibly have been any cultures that significantly predated the Sumerians/Egyptians that built structures/buildings/complexes was ridiculed and made to look like an idiot. People acted like the fact that there were no pot-shards or other stuff found from the culture ruled out the possibility of it existing while remaining up until recently completely unaware of Göbekli Tepe which was built in the 9000-7000 BC range.
Then suddenly they find out about Göbekli Tepe and decide that it was built by primitive nomadic hunter-gatherers despite excavating less then 5% of the site. There have been anatomically modern humans for about 200,000 years and yet people act like the thought of a culture more advanced then hunter-gather sometime before 10,000 is ludicrous.
I'm not asserting there was some Atlantis-like advanced civilization in antiquity but people need to be more open-minded.
A job that gets good after you leave the trainee zone of digging dirt from 6am to 1pm and instead just watch everybody breaking their backs while you watch any interesting finding.
>>1215303
Oh right I forgot, THERE ARE NO JOB OPPORTUNITIES ON ARCHEOLOGY
Archaeology is the bane of religion.
>>1215314
>Archaeology is the bane of religion.
Why? Isn't that philosophy or common sense?
>>1215292
Not him, but also just adding to this, that a lot of the time, I wish archeologists were less obfuscatory about the basis for the claims. You often see these grand sweeping generalizations about ancient civilizations which are all ultimately traced back to an artistic style on pottery or something, only that part is buried in minutae and almost covered up.
Strongest guess based on available information becomes a certainty an awful lot in archeology, even when it perhaps shouldn't'.
>>1217257
Because the profession is entirely quantitative in nature.
It suffers from similar setbacks that other liberal arts professions do.
>>1217267
*qualitative
How do I get paid to dig around in the middle eastern dirt
All I want to do is explore and study the ruins of past empires
