Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Around 13,000 years ago, Earth was emerging from its last great ice age. The vast frozen sheets that had covered much of North America, Europe and Asia for thousands of years were retreating. Giant mammals — steppe bison, woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats — grazed or hunted across tundra and grasslands. A Paleo-Indian group of hunter-gatherers who eventually gave rise to the Clovis people had crossed a land bridge from Asia hundreds of years earlier and were now spread across North America, hunting mammoth with distinctive spears.
Then, at about 12,800 years ago, something strange happened. Earth was abruptly plunged back into a deep chill. Temperatures in parts of the Northern Hemisphere plunged to as much as 8 degrees Celsius colder than today. The cold snap lasted only about 1,200 years — a mere blip, in geologic time. Then, just as abruptly, Earth began to warm again. But many of the giant mammals were dying out. And the Clovis people had apparently vanished.
Geologists call this blip of frigid conditions the Younger Dryas, and its cause is a mystery. Most researchers suspect that a large pulse of freshwater from a melting ice sheet and glacial lakes flooded into the ocean, briefly interfering with Earth's heat-transporting ocean currents. However, geologists have not yet found firm evidence of how and where this happened, such as traces of the path that this ancient flood traveled to reach the sea
Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/younger-dryas-comet-impact-cold-snap
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 30 2018, @12:36PM (13 children)
Isn't this idea losing favor lately? Boat technology isn't really that hard, the Australian aboriginal people managed it around a similar time.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:48PM (10 children)
Its not really boat tech, its being able to accurately and precisely estimate longitude so you know where you are relative to homebase.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @02:39PM (5 children)
Polynesians used astronomy for the purpose since literally the times immemorial. Navigational retardedness is/was an Europe-specific affliction.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday June 30 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)
Getting fixes on stars will get you some pretty good idea of your latitude... that is how far north/south of the Equator you are, but being the Earth is just a spinning sphere orbiting the Sun, knowing just how far East or West you went requires you have an accurate clock that maintains a reference time. Seeing the position of the stars gives you a good idea of latitude... but *when* you saw them gives you longitude, as the earth rotates under you and the parade of stars march by over you. If you are careful, you can sync to "high noon" during the day from the sun, watching for the peak angle of the sun from the horizon during the day, then see where the constellations are at night. Kinda obvious this is tricky to nail it on the nose. You could easily be several hundred miles off. I would imagine being a ship's navigator would be a full time job, especially if you had to do the calculations by pen and paper, by hand, relying only on a compass, theodolite, books of star charts and sine tables.
An overcast day would leave you doing dead reckoning by your compass and estimates of how fast you think you are going.
It was a really long time before we had any decent accurate timepieces for ships.
Its all moot today, though. GPS. Still works on time shifts. And accurate to within about an inch if you use dual frequency receivers so you can calculate and null out variances in atmospheric delays caused by weather conditions between you and the satellite.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday July 01 2018, @06:00AM
Northern Pacific means mostly overcast and rain, making celestial observations hard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @03:40PM (2 children)
Try "shooting" the position of a heavenly body while on the deck of a pitching oceangoing vessel and you'll realize how limited the usefulness of this is.
If you look at the maps made by early explorers, you will recognize how difficult establishing longitude was.
It requires knowing what local time is and what time it is at another fixed point on the globe ("home").
This requires an extremely accurate timepiece--and it has to be able to, again, work on a pitching vessel.
Those weren't demonstrated until 1741.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer#First_marine_chronometers [wikipedia.org]
(Years ago, PBS had a nice presentation on clockmaker John Harrison.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday June 30 2018, @05:09PM
One gets pretty good at it with a bit of practice. :-)
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @06:42PM
Cant you just use the relative position of a few stars to the moon at your location vs those predicted at the "home" location?
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Saturday June 30 2018, @05:05PM (3 children)
The Polynesians used several techniques. Mainly they followed paths in the stars and used knowledge of currents and wind and wave patterns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation [wikipedia.org]
http://blog.sailtrilogy.com/blog/maps-stars-polynesians-used-celestial-navigation-become-worlds-best-explorers [sailtrilogy.com]
http://www.hokulea.com/education-at-sea/polynesian-navigation/polynesian-non-instrument-wayfinding/ [hokulea.com]
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/physical/navigation-and-transportation/wayfinding-and-navigation [hawaii.edu]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday June 30 2018, @06:11PM (2 children)
It's worth knowing, though, that they often found new islands. One my suspect that the followed the paths of birds, but that's just a guess. Probably they also often died. Both of those methods would have worked for other early humans, though one might suspect that in the far North they followed seals rather than birds. Eventually the sea levels rose hiding much of the evidence that might be there.
Remember that people often took chances. We may hear of the survivors. Consider the case of a small island with two tribes and an overpopulation problem. One solution, that may have happened often, is a decisive war in which the losing side fled out to sea in boats. They are in a position where they must take chances to even possibly survive long term, but they are set well enough for the moment, so they try to find somewhere to live. The successful ones may leave a record. You don't hear from the others again.
Now where shall they head? Well, earlier fishers and hunters know where they've seen land in the distance, or where the seals or birds have been heading, and there aren't any better options. I really doubt that they found Hawaii that way, that's more like driven by a storm, but where there's an island chain it's a quit plausible approach. And the Aleutians approach the Kurils.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Saturday June 30 2018, @11:20PM (1 child)
Actually it's very easy to spot islands in the distance, at least in the tropics. I've traveled on boats a couple of times and during the day there's always a cloud hanging over every island. I guess you easily could spot islands up to a distance of 100 miles this way.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Sunday July 01 2018, @05:58AM
Northern Pacific, not so much. A good part of the year means overcast and rain, so no, you don't see islands until you're on top of them and navigating by the stars is usually more miss then hit. Helps if like the Vikings, you have some calcium carbonate which shows polarized light allowing you to see the Sun through the clouds.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:58PM
Abbos are still masters of boat motor technology, except nowadays they huff petrol to fuel their paddling.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday June 30 2018, @03:20PM
Sarah Palin not withstanding, I was watching a sailing video a couple weeks ago and at the closest point, you can easily see from Alaska to Russia.It's about 20km.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir//Alaska/@65.8339984,-169.8364228,9z/data=!4m8!4m7!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x5400df9cc0aec01b:0xbcdb5e27a98adb35!2m2!1d-149.4936733!2d64.2008413 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday June 30 2018, @12:57PM (9 children)
Seems like scientists are coming up with theories and testing them to the best of their ability for an event that we have no neat solution for. Lots of theories are unpopular for quite some time before becoming accepted such as the earth being round, or (at least some) dinosaurs having feathers.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:57PM (8 children)
Oh, jeez...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 30 2018, @02:10PM (7 children)
Before him, actually.
Earth being round was known and accepted from antiquity [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday June 30 2018, @02:19PM (3 children)
I never said it was a recent revelation. Maybe I should have said the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around? The church wasn't a big fan of that one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @02:42PM (1 child)
Look up Eratosthenes [wikipedia.org] some time.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @04:01PM
...who not only knew the Earth is spherical, he had a very good estimate for its size.
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=circumference+Alexandria [google.com]
Anyone with a proper education has known this stuff since around 230 BCE.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday June 30 2018, @03:18PM
I believe it was in the Book of Job where the earth was referred to as a circle, and it is hung on nothing.
But I think it was known during the times of the Anunnaki and Sumerians, which far pre-dates Genesis by the Church dating.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
I explained this in an earlier thread. The earth is round but the oceans are flat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:08AM (1 child)
The oceans are round as well. Look at a fucking horizon dipshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:44AM
Imagine sitting (or standing) on a grape floating in a body of water. Would it look flat or round to you?
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:01PM
Perhaps if TFS had included the next paragraph of TFA:
Or perhaps even this one:
There would have been be some sort of indication as to what this "debate" was all about.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:02PM (2 children)
There are people who stand to gain money and/or prestige based on the answer. Also, because it's a thing that happened that is climate-related, there are probably a fair number of people who (probably erroneously) think it has some bearing on the question of whether anthropogenic global climate change is happening, which not only affects money but deeply held beliefs about capitalism and environmentalism.
Next question?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:52PM
Not based on the answer. Based on the continuation of the debate. Debate = papers = tenure. So, you just end up making shit up to fill up the quota.
Well, to be honest there's two semi-justifiable circumstances for this:
1. An engineering field that still demands academic publications. Take geology for instance, the field essentially stagnated into an oil drilling engineering field that can't really produce enough new original papers to justify all the lecturers. But that doesn't mean you don't need those guys to do the teaching. So, to keep those essays going, you had academics arguing against plate tectonics until fairly recently. Their ideas were pure nonsense and nothing they claimed held up to evidence. But neither their detractors nor themselves ever came clean about the whole show because they all had jobs to keep and a paper quota to fill.
2. The traditional essay system doesn't work for that field. This is a huge issue in climatology where most research only yields raw data that needs to be digested with dozens if not hundreds of other findings to create a single worthwhile paper. But, the academic system still demands papers while punishing the people who release raw data by not asking people who use that data to credit the original researchers. So, the whole climatology publication papers is a teaser for data you need to make a call for to the actual researchers to get combined with useless essay statements and conclusions that are only there as filler.
Worth noting genetics is in the same place as climatology. They're a basic research field that will take decades to reach something "hard science"-worthy and will have to do so pulling the work of thousands of man years. But they're under constant pressure to release drugs now and to publish in that very rigid format. So, a few take existing research and cook up high risk gambles against terminal illnesses. The idea is that if they got it wrong no one will die anyhow. And if they got it right, everyone has something to gain. Of course, it's shit science to just toss the dice like that not even known the odds. But that's how most of medicine got to where it did so no one will stop them.
(Score: 1, Troll) by frojack on Saturday June 30 2018, @05:31PM
All of that has come and gone. No money was gained. A lot of hide bound geologists lost a lot of prestige.
You didn't notice, because you weren't even born yet. http://hugefloods.com/Mystery.html [hugefloods.com]
The theory won't die because it has already been proven. That TFA didn't bother to do their research is no excuse for you making the same mistake.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @01:57PM (1 child)
Maybe that's why.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @02:59PM
i am not even sure if this article merits inclusion here.
what next? asking why cosmo still has headlines about 5 things for mindblowing sex? You'd think by now people would have read what those were, but no, they keep repeating it every year--I guess for the new readership that just got old enough to want to blow minds or get blown.
the article summary lacks any editorial insight as to why the question about the debate is being asked. is there a good reason? i wouldn't know from what was here. for all I know its just egg heads bopping their foreheads together and trying to stymie the progress of someone else because sudden drops in temperature mean we can keep burning fossil fuels since the recent geographic record shows we can refreeze at any random moment, and since its a mere 'blip in the geographic record", all that hogwash about global warming and permanent damage can be swept aside like how if it snows out your window, there is no global warming because duh snow out my window.
but theres no stated reason as to why they are even 'debating' it. or why anyone would even care--there's nothing to draw the interest other than a description of something that appears to be unquestionable facts about warm, cold, warm, and the negative impacts that had. so whats the debate, never matter why they are having it. i shouldnt have to click the link to find out. maybe i have to click on it to learn why, but not what the debate actually is about.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday June 30 2018, @05:08PM (5 children)
That's utter nonsense.
This is a long solved problem. Right down to the actual time frame, means, and methods.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/channeled-scablands/ [nationalgeographic.com]
http://www.historylink.org/File/8382 [historylink.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods [wikipedia.org]
There were a number of similar lake draining of MUCH smaller sizes that happened in this same period in other locations, some in Canada, several more smaller incidents in the same Glacial Lake Missoula area.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday June 30 2018, @06:21PM (3 children)
I've got to suspect you misunderstand the current debates. Yes, the evidence you point to exists, but that doesn't mean that there aren't details in the reasoning that aren't being debated. Probably having to do with causation or details of execution, but that's a guess.
OTOH, not having read the article, possibly it's the article that got the current debate wrong. (But an earlier post suggested that they were, indeed, more specific.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @07:12PM (2 children)
This is totally incorrect. The scablands flooded as part of one catastrophic event, its the flood remembered in the Noahs ark, etc stories found all around the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:22AM (1 child)
lol you mean the same Noah who lived to 963 years old? yeah thats the source i want to rely on for my argument
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @12:53PM
Noah was an albino:
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-ouch-26870465 [bbc.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:24AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @05:19PM
It's Trumps fault.