Quote Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr View Post
If it was just a case of two independent developments in Asia-Africa-Europe and the Americas, I agree it could be a coincidence. But there were nine of these independent developments across the world. According to this article (which admits this presents something of a conundrum) these are the "Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, Andes/Amazonia, eastern United States, Sahel, tropical West Africa, Ethiopia and New Guinea".

My view of what happened is that a people with extensive knowledge of agriculture, seafaring, urban development etc first settled in the Middle East and then settled the world over a period of about 1,000 years. Regarding the dates I gave earlier - I wouldn't read too much into a variation of 1,000 years - the figures are extremely speculative since radiocarbon dating is not far short of useless for absolute dating - its use lies in relative dating which is used alongside much less precise theories to come up with dates. Their significance IMO is in showing a very sudden appearance of civilization across the whole world - something that doesn't fit with evolutionary models for human development.

Have you ever come across any of David Rohl's books or documentaries? He is a secular archaeologist and is (was?) Britain's top expert on the ancient Middle East - he does an excellent job at pointing out how flimsy current scientific interpretations of these ancient times are, as well as highlighting systematic problems in the scientific community, and in particular its failure to harmonize findings from different disciplines as well as its refusal to appreciate the value of literary sources for cultural reasons (eg, the perceived faith v science conflict which means even attempting to reconcile archaeological findings with literary accounts is a career-wrecker).

If you want a secular and serious critique of much of modern science and history, then he's your man.
A. You can't claim that radiocarbon dating is both useless and then claim that the dates of agriculture derived from radiocarbon dating is definitive.

B. 1,000 years is a long time, again stop saying that all these areas are somehow connected because they all saw agriculture develop along a very long time. Assume that most regions had established agriculture by 6500BC, with agriculture starting in 8000BC. If we take agriculture to be the birth of "modern human history" then this major development takes up ~1,500 years/(8,000 BC to 2,000 AD) = ~15% of all of "modern human history".

C. I am worried that you have a theory in your head and you are just looking for any sort of justification to shed doubt on what is otherwise established science.