Sunday, April 29th, 2007

Time	Event
11:30a	A prediction I don't generally make predictions, but I'm going to do so now. I think the next thirty years or so will see an amazing boom in paleoarcheology.  I think so for one particular reason: as I read about the discovery of fossils, it keeps hitting me that our methods for predicting where fosils will be and finding them are incredibly primitive.  Some of the best results have come with cross-discipline work (a single geologist making it a point to learn about fossils, a particular archeologist deciding to learn more geology than is generally required, &c). There is, or ought to be, a science to predicting or discovering where deposits might be.  Spectroscoptic analysis may play a part, population genetics will almost certainly play an increasingly important role, and so on.  The first advances are unlikely to come from the US, as the religious right will oppose such an effort with everything they have.  But I think we've just barely begun to learn about this.  If I'm right, the discovery of masses of new fossils will force a development in the methods of analyzing them too. I hope I'm around long enough to see some of this. (15 Comments | Comment on this)
3:32p	Fossil-maker's Blues Inspired by a comment by hatfield13 (who is, no doubt, even now writing the tune.  I'm sure of it). Demons and imps are all around Screaming and chipping are the only sounds I sweat so much it gives me fits Just to fool those stupid biologists         Chorus     It's calcium and marrow and mix 'em fine     I'm on the job from nine to nine     Oh lord won't someone set me free     From the Devil's Fossil Factory. Add a little carbon and start the decay Inject some mitochondrial DNA. Gotta carve them bones so they look right Then plant 'em in the strata in the dark of night.         Chorus Work all week for ninteen cents Building evolutionary evidence. You got no chance to organize When the Chairman of the Board is the Prince of Lies        Chorus (23 Comments | Comment on this)
10:22p	Another question I'm still working my way through Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade, and I've hit on something that strikes me as odd.  He seems to be saying in various places that before homo sapian could settle in communities, he had to develop the behaviors necessary for for community life.  Perhaps I am misinterpreting him, but, if not, then this doesn't make sense to me.  It does seem clear that different sorts of behavior is needed for herding and agriculture built around a community than for nomadic hunting and gathering.  It is less clear why this behavior must have occured before settlements could exist.  It  seems much more reasonable that these behaviors were learned as part of the process of going from nomadic to settled existence. Any comments? (45 Comments | Comment on this)

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