It's what a lot of engineers have been saying for decades: Looking at the surfaces of the artefacts, it's obvious more advanced tooling, than what was claimed by archaeologists, must have been used. Oh irony, the bits were already lying about in the museum's archive for a century.
Quite frustrating how archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". While some of the excesses of the past were clearly excessive, drilled holes should have been sufficient evidence of drills, people living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats, rope-worn bones should be considered evidence of rope and so forth.
Balance would be nice, yes, but I think the conservative approach is closer to correct, especially given the natural human bias toward believing sensational theories.
That's an interesting thought. I wonder if you can quantify this belief? That Weibull (presumably) distribution would be an interesting and useful thing to know.
Maybe not closer to correct, but definitely less likely to admit errors. But sometimes the negative space around a particular thing becomes overwhelming. To me this is like circumstantial evidence—in general it’s weaker than physical evidence, but in high enough numbers it can serve.
Given need, access to anything that might serve as string, pieces of wood, and too much time to think about the problem, most singular humans will come up with that within the year, if not within days.
That thing has probably been independently invented a hundred thousand times over. Trying to figure out who did it first is silly.
Also that is not a "sophisticated" tool at all. It's literally one step above hitting rocks together. Sharp rocks happens to be the only tool you need to make a basic bow drill.
Because electricity was unreliable and machinery was expensive.
That thing has probably been independently invented a hundred thousand times over. Trying to figure out who did it first is silly.
Also that is not a "sophisticated" tool at all. It's literally one step above hitting rocks together. Sharp rocks happens to be the only tool you need to make a basic bow drill.
True. Good thing no one is trying to do that.