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5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools

For the curious, Clickspring has recreated something a lot like this and uses it on his Antikythera Mechanism videos on YT.

2 hours agoOarch

It's what a lot of engineers have been saying for decades: Looking at the surfaces of the artefacts, it's obvious more advanced tooling, than what was claimed by archaeologists, must have been used. Oh irony, the bits were already lying about in the museum's archive for a century.

4 hours agotoolslive

Quite frustrating how archeology swings over the years from "we'll believe anything" to "we won't accept any claim without a preserved example". While some of the excesses of the past were clearly excessive, drilled holes should have been sufficient evidence of drills, people living on islands should be sufficient evidence of boats, rope-worn bones should be considered evidence of rope and so forth.

an hour agoMarkusQ

Balance would be nice, yes, but I think the conservative approach is closer to correct, especially given the natural human bias toward believing sensational theories.

an hour agoandrewflnr

Maybe not closer to correct, but definitely less likely to admit errors. But sometimes the negative space around a particular thing becomes overwhelming. To me this is like circumstantial evidence—in general it’s weaker than physical evidence, but in high enough numbers it can serve.

40 minutes agotwodave
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2 hours ago
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