ANTH 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Pseudoarchaeology, Pseudoscience, Root Race
3 May 2018
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Thursday, March 29, 2018
Lecture 19 - Pseudoarchaeology
WHAT IS PSEUDOARCHAEOLOGY?
๏Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996) !
•Erroneous Science:!
•Science thrives on errors (mistakes aren’t in and of themselves a bad thing)!
•Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved (falsifiability
needs to possible). Errors are necessary for science to advance; they allow
theories to be revised.!
•Experiment and observation produce alternative hypotheses!
•Slow, gradual shifts occur to improve understanding!
•Pseudoscience:!
•Opposite of erroneous science.!
•It cannot be invalidated: pseudo-hypotheses are framed so they are
invulnerable to disproof (not falsifiable)!
•Skeptical scrutiny is opposed. Extremely defensive towards any challenging
of their ideas.!
•Standards for argument - what passes for evidence - is often relaxed. Not
much value given to what the facts are actually telling you.!
•E.g. dragon in the garage?!
•We can’t see a dragon. It’s invisible.!
•We can throw flour on the ground to see its footprints. No, it floats.!
•We can use IR lasers to see its heat signature. No, it’s cold blooded
and breathes cold fire.!
•So, what’s the difference between this dragon and no dragon at all?!
๏Characteristics of Pseudoarchaeology!
•Unconstrained by evidence!
•Flawed set of attitudes towards evidence and personal reasoning about the
past.!
•More subject to social, political, or personal biases than mainstream
archaeology because it doesn’t rely on evidence (of course even science
also cannot be completely objective).!
•It is not just non-academic archaeology!
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Thursday, March 29, 2018
•Pseudoarchaeological ideas can emerge anywhere. It’s defined by its
practices, not by its practitioners. !
•Attractive because it is pseudoscientific !
•Uses rhetorical techniques and relies on the social assumptions of readers,
in order to persuade, manipulate, and even deceive.!
•Patternicity = tendency to find meaningful patterns from meaningless noise (Michael
Shermer, Skeptic).!
•E.g. seeing a face in the clouds.!
•The brain is always subject to this. In the past, this was necessary for survival. It
is better to see patterns when they aren’t there, than to miss subtle ones when
they are there. !
๏Motivations for Pseudoarchaeological Claims?!
•Money = public interest translates into $$$!
•Fame = recognition and notoriety often accompanies money!
•Nationalism = attempts to prove or support nationalist agendas!
•Ideology = attempts to prove or support religious ideological claims!
•Romanticizing the past = creating a false narrative because we wish the past to
be so. We may believe the past was a certain way, or we wish it to have been a
certain way, so we start finding ways for evidence to support what we believe
even when it doesn’t.!
SOME CLASSIC CLAIMS
๏ Piltdown Man
•1908 reported “discovery” by Charles Dawson in Sussex, England!
•Jawbone, skull fragments & teeth were found.!
•They were given to Arthur Smith Woodward (a geologist from the Natural History
Museum) to study. He proposed that a new species had been found, which
gained a lot of attention.!
•At the Geological Society meeting in 1912 they announced the discovery as
Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson’s dawn-man)!
•This elevated the discussion of human evolution in the scientific community.!
•Apparently it had a modern-shaped cranium, with an ape-like mandible/
prognathism.!
•This proved that one of the first hominids had developed advanced
cognition.!
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Document Summary
Carl sagan (1934 - 1996: erroneous science, science thrives on errors (mistakes aren"t in and of themselves a bad thing, hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved (falsi ability needs to possible). Extremely defensive towards any challenging of their ideas: standards for argument - what passes for evidence - is often relaxed. Not much value given to what the facts are actually telling you: e. g. dragon in the garage, we can"t see a dragon. It"s invisible: we can throw our on the ground to see its footprints. No, it oats: we can use ir lasers to see its heat signature. Shermer, skeptic): e. g. seeing a face in the clouds, the brain is always subject to this. In the past, this was necessary for survival. It is better to see patterns when they aren"t there, than to miss subtle ones when they are there.
