It's incredibly difficult to rigorously assess technology levels in antiquity once the pottery is ground to dust, erosion removes an writing, and the cites are overtaken by changing climates.

What we have of the neolithic period is mysterious granite objects and other hard stones. These granite pieces are hard to build, but we have no basis to assess whether they were carved with primitive tools over generations or quickly using greater application of labor and better tools. Due to the difficulty in dating granite, it's also unclear "who" made the object - this gets exceptionally pronounced when looking at artifacts in the Andes or northern europe.

IMHO the only way this changes is if we get better at marine archeology, detecting signs of civilization via environmental changes (e.g. terra preta in the Amazon) or improve climate modeling to look for places where civilization was but is no longer.

This camel rock carving dates back 6000 years or more.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-58570259

Which makes the argument of the Sphinx less compelling.

We can directly date the burial of granite objects with OSL. We can detect human populations with charcoal, pollen analysis, modern genetic studies, or directly with eDNA (among others).

But still that only tells us when those granite artifacts were last used. In some cases they might have been constructed much earlier, and then reused or modified by later civilizations.

Yes, which is why there's a whole network of independent lines of evidence that inform modern consensus. Our picture of the neolithic, while still incomplete, is complete enough that most of the speculation in this thread is pretty unlikely.

I think the pace of new discoveries in that time period over the last 10 years brings into question how accurate our consensus is. The consensus view is the best informed by current evidence, however we lack sufficient evidence to really pin down what humans were doing in most of the world. Given this lack of evidence, our default assumption is that they were doing what they had done before... which was probably living in nomadic tribes ... until suddenly Mesopotamia/Egypt.

So for context, I used to work on this professionally. I still keep up with the literature to a reasonable degree.

The major new tool we have is ancient DNA and the results we've gotten from it broadly rule out most of the 'expected' ways we'd see an advanced, ancient society.

As for that default, most archaeologists would not agree with what you've described. Everyone can point to cultures like the natufians as pre-YD societies that weren't fully nomadic and you can trace that stuff to through the Holocene and later 'civilizations' like Egypt and mesopotamia. Most archaeologists are also open to the idea that there was a tremendous amount of social and political diversity in the late pleistocene that isn't fully apparent in the material record, but this is more of a widespread hunch that doesn't yet have enough evidence to be called consensus.

These days when academics (regardless whether it's public health or archeology) talk about evidence, I tend to read "evidence" as "what we already know", and the whole narrative ends up being "we know what we already know, and we reject what we don't already know".

I mean, there's no way to un-see this way of reading "evidence" after realizing how much humanity has yet to learn, yet there's a class of people who's confident that they're really knowledgable about stuff.

Like the cyclopean ruins throughout Europe that no cultures can lay claim to.

I'd never heard of this; thank you for the interesting topic!

OSL establishes a lower bound on age. Numerous events can lead it to read younger than the reality.

Yet, the Valley Temple and Menkaure pyramid come out 500 years older than the official numbers. (With wide error bars, it must be said.)

OSL can read both younger and older than the true age, depending on the error sources. Modern labs will usually apply a correction to deal with underestimation as well.

Maybe explain how OSL can establish an upper bound on age? It looks impossible to me, except where you can prove the sample was undisturbed.

The water erosion hypothesis is not supported by enough evidence.

A strong piece of counter evidence is that they have dated the temple near the Sphinx (built at the same time according to both pseudo- and real archeologists) and it corresponded perfectly to other estimates.

The technique they used is called thermoluminescence dating and is incredibly interesting in itself.

What is the counter evidence for the erosion?

There are numerous arguments, but basically other forms of erosion might do it, there’s some evidence of heavy rainfall later than previously thought, and even rainfall consistent with recent history might well be enough anyway given the poor quality of the limestone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_water_erosion_hypothesi...

A few other considerations:

>The dream stele in front of the sphinx directly states that it was restored by egypt (specifically dug out)

>We don't know who built the Giza complex, but we do know who built ON TO the Giza complex. The pop-science clickbait titles that discuss "THE DAILY LIVES OF PHAROAH'S PYRAMID BUILDERS" are bullshit, to be blunt. This is right up there with the old "the giza pyramids were tombs FOR DA KING AND DA QUEEN!" line, which can be easily disproven by examining the sterile empty interior of the Giza complex and comparing it to ANY OF THE OTHER PYRAMIDS THAT HAD FUNERARY ARTIFACTS PRESENT. Anyone who supports these narratives while slandering the measured scientific work of Robert Shoch and Randall Carlson is misinformed.

>The nature of the Sphinx itself has been knowingly lied about. The presence of entrances into the sphinx, however small, was denied and slandered by Hawass and crew until multiple forms of visual evidence in modern day (1980-2015) show people ENTERING the sphinx, one of which shows Hawass himself performing the feat, others (in the form of videos) usually contain comments that the video is being recorded under threat of security apprehension and criminal charges. This fits with the pattern of research permits on controversial topics being denied almost instantaneously.

>The mainstream narrative peddled by Zahi Hawass is riddled with blatant fabrications and controversy. Hawass appears to be nearing discrediting himself with his childish refusal to advance his own field. Whether or not this comes down to religious fundamentalism (ie not letting information out that contradicts Hawass' beliefs) or sheer pride, there are more than enough videos of Hawass reacting with door slamming and screaming rage when questioned about inconsistencies in his narrative. Is this appropriate behavior for a world class academic, a leading figure of his field, and someone who is supposed to be the foremost authority on one of the most mysterious civilizations of antiquity? Regardless, it is apparent that the narrative pushed by Hawass that reduces Egypt to a 4000 year old civilization with no deeper connections to any other ancient lineages or sciences is closer to being as unscientific as theories that claim the giza pyramids were time machines!

It's worth noting that the Hiwara labyrinth has been discovered in a recoverable, but endangered state, and Hawass has done everything he can to silence any investigation and suppress the results of the recent ground scan. If you are unfamiliar with the labyrinth, please take the time to look up this incredible piece of legendary megalithic architecture, specifically how it was considered THE wonder of Egypt in extremely greater prominence than the Giza complex to the old dynasty Egyptian people. From what I've seen from the ground scan, this thing is another structure akin to Gobekli Tepe: sprawling stone walls, coalescing with themselves in irregular patterns, with a nearly impossible to discern purpose or use. Given that the ancient Egyptians had a mindnumbing reverence for theological history (consider that the same deities in Egypt were worshiped for nearly 4000 years straight with only one break in the Amarna era), could it be that the labyrinth was exalted by the ancient egyptians for being a structure as ancient to themselves as they are to ourselves (ie 12,800bc or so), a structure that survived the most recent changing of ages/cataclysm? The accepted narrative was that the labyrinth was quarried by the Romans, and any digging would only reveal a smooth stone slab where it once stood. We now know that this slab is, in fact, THE ROOF of the structure. The condition of the soil/sand that encloses the labyrinth is extemely acidic, and we are at risk of losing this structure from stubborn pride. For the most part, the only restoration effort needed to preserve this structure would be to dig it out, but alas...