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Now that my allergy has subsided I can go back to being a grumpy old man. ;o)
I was very disappointed in a couple of science type shows which I saw Wednesday night. It's late in the season and I don't know how new either one of them was. It looked like both might be interesting and give some new insights. But one was dishonest and the other gloriously unscientific.
The first one purported to lead the viewer to the cause of the destruction of the Minoan civilization. It opened with the researcher we'd be following making a casual remark that the Minoan script Linear A had been decoded and that it was known that the language of the Minoans was related to the languages of Persia. My jaw dropped open. What? Persia? What language with a known phonology and written records from some 1600 years BC was there in Persia? How did it relate to Linear A? They didn't explain. Instead they moved on to evidence of a disaster. You can't blame the producers of the show for trying to make an exciting mystery out of it. Certainly might get some kids interested that way. But if you know any of the conditions there wasn't much mystery. There was a gigantic volcanic explosion which destroyed the island of Thyra about 1600 BC. They showed a map of how close Thyra was (and its modern remanent, Santorini is) to Crete. If you've been awake for the last decade, alarm bells immediately sound in your head "Tsunami!" You can't blame the filmers for taking their time explaining the destruction at Thyra and mentioning some people had thought the eruption had directly caused most of the damage to the Minoan civilization. Of course if you've seen the Nova show on Kratakoa you know that's not likely and you know most of the deaths in that well-documented explosion were caused by... tsunami. The researchers then head to Crete to look at the ruins and their surrounding areas. After showing the highlights of the ruins the researchers move uphill and discover a layer of building material, broken pottery and seas shell jumbled up in the soil. The film makers couldn't know some of us would be watching the show so soon after the Japanese tsunami of 2011 and would be rolling our eyes as the researchers pretended they have to ask around to figure out what might have caused this. It leaks out that they started their search after the Indonesian tsunami a few years ago. Not a surprising chain of events. But the presentation of the events in the film takes on a more dishonest air. They go down the coast to other sites and find evidence of a huge tsunami at many of them. So far so good. Then the researchers tell us this obviously destroyed the original non-Greek Minoan Civilization and allowed the Greeks to invade. More alarm bells go off, but only in the heads of those of us who happened to know something about the history of the study of the Minoan civilization. An archeologist by the name of Evans did most of the excavation of Knossos and other Minoan sites and felt he was entitled to make a name for himself for all time by interpreting all of the data by himself. His archeology was not much worse than anyone one else of his era, but his linguistic skills were sadly lacking. And in trying to interpret three mysterious writing systems which he discovered that was fatal. He made assumptions about who the Minoans were without evidence and assumed that he knew that all the scripts reflected a *pre-Greek* civilization. In due time Evans died and the thousands of items he was hoarding got into more capable hands. Considering World War II was already raging, the Linear B script was fairly quickly discovered to be, indeed, Greek.
I'm now skeptical about the claims of a decipherment of Linear A. A quick check of my resourses and the net the next day and surprise surprise, there is no agreed upon decipherment just a number of not terribly promising theories. So now we have some real evidence, not about the Minoans but about the researcher who is the center of this show. Kind of the last straw is his statement that the first great European civilization the Minoan was wiped out by the tsunami. Carbon dating places the catastrophic tsunami and eruption of Thyra at 1600 BC. Unfortunately for the researcher, Linear A is found in quantity down to around 1450 BC after which the Greek Linear B replaces it. There is no question that the tsunami was a catastrophe there is no question it must have weakened the Minoans, whoever they were. But the tsunami occurred right in the middle of the time of the civilization not at its end! The researcher appears to be a follower of Evans who isn't too worried about facts in trying to make Evans theories seem as factual as possible. I know of no evidence that Evans was wrong that the Minoans before the period of Linear B were not Greeks, but like Evans this guy doesn't seem to care whether there is evidence or not.
...
The other show was on Stone Henge. To be more brief the current archeologist is convinced that the famous book from the mid 1960s Stone Henge Decoded by Gerald Hawkins was all wrong. According to him the stone circle was a spiritual/religious center. Now first of all I have to say that when I first saw the TV show in the 1960s and read the book I was impressed. Whether or not Hawkins was correct in his big assumption that Stone Henge was used as an observatory to predict eclipses, he did prove that it could have been used for such. After 5000 years its a little tough to guess what actually happened and absurd to insist that what might have happened, absolutely did. Hawkins was an astronomer, so he looked for facts relevant to astronomy. The new guy is an archeologist so the facts he looks for are different. The new guy had an African colleague, a specialist in modern spiritualism in his homeland, come look at Stone Henge. He immediately said the stone represented the world of the dead and that if there were something similar in wood it would represent the world of the living. Having just watched a show with some scientific fibbing, I'm immediately suspicious both of these guys know damn well there is evidence of wooden versions around the area. I've seen them in North America so I wouldn't be shocked anyway. The show is honest enough to say that such circles in wood or stone with alignment to equinoxes, solstices or both appear in many stone ages cultures around the world, but the researcher automatically assumes that the grand significance of all of them is the same - the world of the dead vs world of the living spiritual thing. Now the archeologist isn't truly doing anything wrong or trying to mislead with his evidence. He's found a lot of interesting things, expanding what was already known about a much larger site than just the circle of stones. But his interpretation is so specific and so unfounded that by the end of the show I could hardly stand to listen to him.
I was very disappointed in a couple of science type shows which I saw Wednesday night. It's late in the season and I don't know how new either one of them was. It looked like both might be interesting and give some new insights. But one was dishonest and the other gloriously unscientific.
The first one purported to lead the viewer to the cause of the destruction of the Minoan civilization. It opened with the researcher we'd be following making a casual remark that the Minoan script Linear A had been decoded and that it was known that the language of the Minoans was related to the languages of Persia. My jaw dropped open. What? Persia? What language with a known phonology and written records from some 1600 years BC was there in Persia? How did it relate to Linear A? They didn't explain. Instead they moved on to evidence of a disaster. You can't blame the producers of the show for trying to make an exciting mystery out of it. Certainly might get some kids interested that way. But if you know any of the conditions there wasn't much mystery. There was a gigantic volcanic explosion which destroyed the island of Thyra about 1600 BC. They showed a map of how close Thyra was (and its modern remanent, Santorini is) to Crete. If you've been awake for the last decade, alarm bells immediately sound in your head "Tsunami!" You can't blame the filmers for taking their time explaining the destruction at Thyra and mentioning some people had thought the eruption had directly caused most of the damage to the Minoan civilization. Of course if you've seen the Nova show on Kratakoa you know that's not likely and you know most of the deaths in that well-documented explosion were caused by... tsunami. The researchers then head to Crete to look at the ruins and their surrounding areas. After showing the highlights of the ruins the researchers move uphill and discover a layer of building material, broken pottery and seas shell jumbled up in the soil. The film makers couldn't know some of us would be watching the show so soon after the Japanese tsunami of 2011 and would be rolling our eyes as the researchers pretended they have to ask around to figure out what might have caused this. It leaks out that they started their search after the Indonesian tsunami a few years ago. Not a surprising chain of events. But the presentation of the events in the film takes on a more dishonest air. They go down the coast to other sites and find evidence of a huge tsunami at many of them. So far so good. Then the researchers tell us this obviously destroyed the original non-Greek Minoan Civilization and allowed the Greeks to invade. More alarm bells go off, but only in the heads of those of us who happened to know something about the history of the study of the Minoan civilization. An archeologist by the name of Evans did most of the excavation of Knossos and other Minoan sites and felt he was entitled to make a name for himself for all time by interpreting all of the data by himself. His archeology was not much worse than anyone one else of his era, but his linguistic skills were sadly lacking. And in trying to interpret three mysterious writing systems which he discovered that was fatal. He made assumptions about who the Minoans were without evidence and assumed that he knew that all the scripts reflected a *pre-Greek* civilization. In due time Evans died and the thousands of items he was hoarding got into more capable hands. Considering World War II was already raging, the Linear B script was fairly quickly discovered to be, indeed, Greek.
I'm now skeptical about the claims of a decipherment of Linear A. A quick check of my resourses and the net the next day and surprise surprise, there is no agreed upon decipherment just a number of not terribly promising theories. So now we have some real evidence, not about the Minoans but about the researcher who is the center of this show. Kind of the last straw is his statement that the first great European civilization the Minoan was wiped out by the tsunami. Carbon dating places the catastrophic tsunami and eruption of Thyra at 1600 BC. Unfortunately for the researcher, Linear A is found in quantity down to around 1450 BC after which the Greek Linear B replaces it. There is no question that the tsunami was a catastrophe there is no question it must have weakened the Minoans, whoever they were. But the tsunami occurred right in the middle of the time of the civilization not at its end! The researcher appears to be a follower of Evans who isn't too worried about facts in trying to make Evans theories seem as factual as possible. I know of no evidence that Evans was wrong that the Minoans before the period of Linear B were not Greeks, but like Evans this guy doesn't seem to care whether there is evidence or not.
...
The other show was on Stone Henge. To be more brief the current archeologist is convinced that the famous book from the mid 1960s Stone Henge Decoded by Gerald Hawkins was all wrong. According to him the stone circle was a spiritual/religious center. Now first of all I have to say that when I first saw the TV show in the 1960s and read the book I was impressed. Whether or not Hawkins was correct in his big assumption that Stone Henge was used as an observatory to predict eclipses, he did prove that it could have been used for such. After 5000 years its a little tough to guess what actually happened and absurd to insist that what might have happened, absolutely did. Hawkins was an astronomer, so he looked for facts relevant to astronomy. The new guy is an archeologist so the facts he looks for are different. The new guy had an African colleague, a specialist in modern spiritualism in his homeland, come look at Stone Henge. He immediately said the stone represented the world of the dead and that if there were something similar in wood it would represent the world of the living. Having just watched a show with some scientific fibbing, I'm immediately suspicious both of these guys know damn well there is evidence of wooden versions around the area. I've seen them in North America so I wouldn't be shocked anyway. The show is honest enough to say that such circles in wood or stone with alignment to equinoxes, solstices or both appear in many stone ages cultures around the world, but the researcher automatically assumes that the grand significance of all of them is the same - the world of the dead vs world of the living spiritual thing. Now the archeologist isn't truly doing anything wrong or trying to mislead with his evidence. He's found a lot of interesting things, expanding what was already known about a much larger site than just the circle of stones. But his interpretation is so specific and so unfounded that by the end of the show I could hardly stand to listen to him.