Right, and I'm arguing that none of these cited articles are valid evidence for that claim. Leaving aside the fact that his vague wording gives him enormous wiggle room, i.e. "others" could refer to anything from professional archaeologists to the Ancient Aliens guy and "old things" could mean almost anything.

This is why a I think it is a bad article. He first proposes some far-outlier theories, which need extraordinary proof as he acknowledges himself. He does not give it in the article which propels his theory in the realm of fantasy. His article would be way more honest if he would describe it as pure speculation, instead of shoehorning all kinds of finds or theories into his flight of fancy.

I mean it is a fantastical idea, and if we ever find a laptop from 10000bc I would be stunned, or if we find marsian burial chambers, but the probability just isn’t very high on what we observed sofar.

That isn’t to say a lot is lost to history, which skews our interpretation, especially prehistorical, but that would warrant a different kind of article.

You mean like https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-e... which links to https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748 ?

A megalithic site, especially of that size, is the evidence of an advanced stone age civilization.

Surprisingly, one existed thousands of years before what was long considered the oldest, the Egyptian pyramid builders.

Uruk also predated the pyramids by a couple millennia and has been known for a pretty good while. Archaeologists also don't use the three-age typology (or the word "advanced" if possible) anymore.

The surprise of gobekli-tepe is mostly in demonstrating once and for all that monumental construction isn't limited to fully sedentary peoples and doing so in a way the diffusionists can't argue with.

Sure, but Hanson seems to be taking a stronger position here than "well maybe". He's proposing that we should set up prizes so people are incentivized to always be on the lookout for older civilizations.

Indirectly, that's the funniest part of his whole schtick. He seems to segment the world in two: things addressable by pure reasoning, and things that require doing something.

He treats the former as his domain and clearly sees himself as a master thereof. And the latter you solve with bounties.

The Critique of Pure Prediction Markets by Immanuel Köd (1781):

> "That all our knowledge begins with bounties there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of payouts which validate our judgements, and partly of themselves produce rationales, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience?"

Edit: wow, what is SFW Rule 34 called? this is a thing. http://kenfeinstein.blogspot.com/2011/01/kant-on-betting-and...

Isn't he always on the lookout for older civilizations?