Think and Hammer
Your introduction to a geologist’s irreverent view on the woo-woo
I recently joined a Megalithomania tour of eastern Turkey with a group of participants from all walks of life: architects, real estate agents, ordinary people on an extraordinary tour. The main thing uniting us was a) our keen interest in Turkey’s archeological sites, notably the Neolithic Taş Tepeler sites of Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe, and b) our ability and willingness to fork over large sums of cash. The main thing distinguishing us was the extent of our beliefs in the occult, the mystical, the supernatural and the pseudoscientific. So before forking over said cash I decided to read one of the tour organizer’s books - Andrew Collins: “Gobekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods” - as I really didn’t want to join discussions on the pros and cons of alien abductions, angels or the Lake Van monster. Despite its flamboyant title the book contains a good scientific overview of the Neolithic sites, and only a spicy dash of what Andrew himself calls the “woo-woo”, i.e. the unscientific. So I joined.
During the tour my experience as a scientist/geologist (Ph.D. & 40+ years) helped me nuance a few discussions, and before long many of the group were seeking my opinion on the topic-du-jour. I was however momentarily stumped when someone asked me: “When did humans go extinct?”. After a moment of panic (We didn’t cover this at university!) I stoically replied: “Uh, I don’t think we did”. Whereupon my interrogator developed a crafty look, as if I was some science-for-hire hack enabling a Deep State cover-up of what really happened.
The question made no sense until I learned that the inquirer believed that extraterrestrials brought humans to Earth, and was therefore interested in learning if our Earth-landing happened before or after the Neolithic (still doesn’t make sense, does it?). I’m unaware of any evidence that humans ever went extinct, or that extraterrestrials brought us to Earth, but I admit that I haven’t read the whole internet. However I am trained in the Scientific Method, which allows me to weigh the presented evidence (none), estimate the probability that humans did not go extinct (a conservative 99.99%), in order to reply with Scientific Authority “Uh, I don’t think we did”, and pronounce the “Human Extinction” theory DOA. A shortcut to this conclusion could have been reached via Hitchens’ razor - what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence – but I prefer the longer, more engaging, scientific route. It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end (U. Le Guin). Woo-woo opinions are reached when a series of low-probability woo-woo premises are slapped together into an even lower probability woo-woo conclusion. A woo-fighter’s duty consists of visiting and evaluating the probability of each such premise in a journey towards a more scientific truth, whereby woo-woo needs to fact up or get fact over.
Which brings me to: is this sub-stack for you? In the classic (possibly documentary) film The Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo, the main protagonist, a choice between two pills. “You take the blue pill... the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill […] and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I'm offering is the truth - nothing more." Modesty prevents me from comparing myself to Morpheus (or did it?) but if you’re a red-pill type of person then I’ll offer you a scientific - and hopefully engaging - view on a wide range of topics such as the Younger Dryas Impact theory / the cause of the end of the ice age, panspermia, geomagnetic reversals, etc. via short posts that separate the science from the fiction. If you’re a blue-pill type of person who believes the Earth is flat (“I can see it with my own two eyes!”) and hangs garlic over their bed to ward off vampires (“Can’t hurt!”) then this sub-stack may harsh your mellow. Perhaps I should have everyone check a box acknowledging that this sub-stack exposes viewers to reality, bad punditry and tasteless humor (in fairly random order). If you think that data analysed via the scientific method can alter your reality then give Think and Hammer a try. You can always check out and devolve back to the joys of tin foil hats and illuminati moon bases.
My goals are to educate and entertain you (in that order) by trying to separate the story from the storytelling. I don’t receive any remuneration from the Deep State, but there’s always hope. My first journey will visit many of the events and catastrophes that happened during the melting of the ice caps after the last glacial maximum: we start at Göbekli Tepe, a Neolithic temple complex built between 11500-10000 years ago, and wind up at the glacial puddles at the end.
The geologists’ creed is “Mente et Malleo”, Mind and Hammer. My logo is fairly typical: the crossed hammers over something else. In this case the something else:
is an allegory to a thinking geologist. Hammer aficionados will have recognised the left hammer as a Rock Pick hammer, useful for the finer work of picking things apart,
while the right hammer is of course a Schlosserhammer,
useful for giving things a really good whack, as I do in the next post.