The trouble with scientists

As a scientist, I find that many of the world's so-called experts are nothing more than arrogant assholes, some of whom are down right phonies.  I was reminded of this when reading a quick archaeological update and I want to draw attention to the fact that even though many of us do research, so many are simply close-minded to the point that they don't want to hear anything whatsoever that goes against what they have researched.  I often feel that many of them would rather brush something under the carpet, or as one of those maverick archaeologists once said, he could imagine people from the Smithsonian Institute out in the middle of the ocean dumping artifacts that in fact went against modern belief at the time.  Hell we know they dumped the first coffin JFK was in at sea, but because it wasn't widely reported, it became part of the myth surrounding the conspiracy theory.

For a lot of my life, I have often read what can be called alternate history books, which of course falls into the realm of proof for Atlantis, alien visitation to Earth, hell even people living in middle Earth.  I can remember reading the Lost Cities series by David Hatcher CHildress (I recommend it as if anything they are good travel books) and being amazed by his travels around the world, and even more amazed by the observations that he noted at many archaeological sites.  One that still stands tall in my mind is are the ruins found both in Africa and South America that have the exact same writing on them, but just an ocean away.  Then there is the language issue where many words on both sides of the Atlantic have similar structures, like they came down from the same source (if you want to see this, look at the Romance Languages, all of which came down from Latin).

But what gets me overall is the arrogance of humans towards human archaeology and evolution.  Not all that long ago when I was going through school, the human tree was such that it went directly from one species of man to another, with a big question mark for Neanderthal, because God forbid that we didn't have a branched tree.  It was only during a class where one of my high school teachers, who had to skirt around the issue of evolution, brought up that we are unique in having a linear tree.  It was within ten years of class that it was revealed humans have a branched tree, like everything else in nature.  It was a big revelation let me tell you and somewhat shocked the world that man was just another animal and wasn't special (at one point in the tree there were at least 3 different species of man living on this planet at the same time).  Of course this did nothing to even get the Creationists to shut the hell up.

But even when you look at civilization, for a long time, it was 5000 BC was when civilization started.  It can't be earlier because man was too primitive.  More egg on their faces for sure as there has been a temple discovered that is at least 10 000 years old.  Let's not forget to mention that without the aid of modern technology and a crane, the Great Pyramids were built, Stonehenge assembled, and the ever famous walls of the Inca with the huge cut rocks that to this day you cannot even get a piece of paper between them.

But the article that got my attention and led to this blog was this:  Neanderthals had tools.  Yup, not sure why this is a surprise, for Neanderthals are perhaps the most misunderstood species of man that we've found to date.  When one is called on, it denotes a dumb person.  Well how many of you know that Neanderthals buried their dead, with flowers, and covered them in red ochre?  That doesn't sound like a dumb-ass to me.   Then there is the fact they did well with living in the cooler regions and most undoubtedly bred with modern man.  The fact that archaeologists are surprised that these brothers of man had stone tools and used them well, just shows the arrogance that smacks around in the science world.

What it all comes down to is this:  we need to keep an open mind and not be so quick to dismiss things that at first appear to be just bullshit. However on the other hand, just because some moron with a Ph.D. says something is so, it doesn't mean it is true.  There has been a lot of abuse of science over the last 20 years, and David Suzuki is one of them.  The moral of this story, don't always trust what you see, and don't assume that everything science has done, or historians have studied, is correct.   You weren't there, neither was I, so take it with a big grain of salt.