Originally posted by savagecupid
Is that not the best way to deny ignorance?
Thing is, you haven't demonstrated that trans-atlantic contact has occured, nor that its a theory that deserves to be in the 'mainstream'. You are
'backing it' without sufficient evidence. "denying ignorance' is not merely accepting unpopular, but quasi-supported, theories. And, as the old
saying goes, "an open mind is good, but not so open that your brains fall out'.
Scientist are notorious at not changing there minds even when presented with contrary evidence, sometimes it takes generations for a new theory
to be accepted.
This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the process.
Firstly, scientists do not as a whole reject good evidence merely because they disagree with it. Thats simply not true.
The second point, that it can take a long time for a scientific theory to become 'mainstream',
is often true. However, this is a good
thing.
There is a vetting process in science, and that process requires that these new ideas be demonstrated and supported, and studied and attempted to be
refuted by other scientists. No one man is going to know everything about anything, so it can't be decided quickly. It takes lots of people putting
a lot of thought into something to finally be able to say 'yes, this is in fact correct'. The trans-atlantic idea simply has not met and passed
those tests. The evidence that supports it is flimsy, and, in the case of the olmec heads,
extremely subjective.
Do I have to list each and every similarity here for discussion?
Well, yeah. You have to examine the data. Listing it isn't doing any good. Noting general similarities is not good enough, you have to consider
how else these similarities could've come about and what ideas are more reasonable. Most nations in the world have a flood myth. Does this mean
that every nation is directly descended from an original one, and that that nation suffered a destructive flood, and that all the nations since then
have preserved, thru the millenia the story of surviing it? or does it mean that there was once a global flood, and everyone is descended from noah?
Or does the simple fact that floods occur everywhere account for flood stories everywhere??
Do many nations connect the fertility of the crop fields with a fertile female divinity becuase of the dispersal of an uber-primitive Ceres cult? Or
because the connection between the fertility of a field and the fertility of a woman is obvious?? Similarities on their own are not sufficient.
“They look like the actual natives of the region that they are found in, not africans.” Do they? What region would that be?
The very region that they occur in. There are tribes of people that look like the statues. Many natives in the region also don't look like the
statues, and many natives in the region are the result of intermixing of native populations with the spanish invaders. Indeed, still others are the
result of other central american tribes that invaded.
So Nygdan would you say that there was contact between India and Mesoamerica?
No. Certainly nothing like direct contact.
Contact over the pacific is possible but not the atlantic?
Its definitly possible over the atlantic, but then again, why is it that we can build a case for cultural contact and expansion in the pacific, but
not the atlantic? I don't think that india sent canoes across the pacific, but I do think that very prmitive indian culture certainly had cultural
contact with peoples on the andaman islands, and that they contacted with people in indonesia and the like, and so on to polynesia, and possibly
ultimately to central america. Hence we can see a case for pacific contact, and the mainstream, at least at one point, considered it and discussed
it.
And make no mistake, atlantic contacts have been considered and discussed, but ultimately they've been rejected, in general.
