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Re: Ad Yurii Gloriam (Was Re: maize in ancient india: strong




burglin@ubaclu.unibas.ch wrote:
: > Peter van Rossum (pmv100@psu.edu) wrote:
: > 
: > : Well, Yuri you are actually changing your line a bit here.  Before
you
: > : seemed to be claiming that no one has specifically gone out looking
: > : for corn cobs in India so none were found (at least that's how I and
: > : many others interpreted your comments). 

[Yuri:]
: > Correct. I'm not changing my line. I'm saying that _if someone wanted
to
: > disprove Johannessen_, this is what they should do, i.e. look for
corncobs
: > in the settlements around Somnathpur temples. 

: Yuri, here you demonstrate that you don't understand anything at all. 

...Really, Thomas? How nice of you to say so...

: It has been pointed out numerous times to you that you
: cannot look for negative evidence.

...Well, it looks like I have to explain some simple things to Thomas once 
...again. Elementary logic is not a strong suit of his...

...You see, Thomas, if maize was a staple for those communities, as I
...claimed, and if archaeological research identified the staples consumed
by
...these peoples, and failed to identify maize among them, this will
disprove
...my thesis. Yes? 

...Which part of the above you find difficult to understand, Thomas?

:  How are you going to find
: a non-existant corn-cob?  Tell me that?

...So you already determined that corn-cobs are non-existent there? Did you
...do this through some voodoo rituals of divination, or something? Let me 
...in on the secret, please.

: So, let us assume the excavations there did not show any corn-cobs?
: What would your answer be? 

...I will admit that I was wrong.

I seriously doubt this.  On an earlier thread, when you were arguing for
preColumbian chickens, it was pointed out to you that thousands of sites
have been excavated in South America (including the Incan area where some
of these chickens were supposed to have been) and no clearly preColumbian
chicken bones were found.  You countered by saying 1. They weren't looking
for chicken bones 2. Maybe the archaeologists, for whatever reasons,
didn't report or misplaced the chicken bones 3. At ONE site (of thousands)
there MAY have been preColumbian chicken bones but nobody "bothered" to
date them.

On the maize thread you posted and reposted the "Argumentum ad Silencium"
fallacy numerous times.  This follows an even earlier postion of yours
(correct, insofar as it goes) that simply because no in-context asian
artifacts have been found in the Americas does not prove that Asians
weren't here.

My guess is that you sense that no one on this thread is conversant enough
with East Indian archaeology to show you a site report from a relevant
area and era, and so you hold this out as a false criteria for
"disproving" you.  Were someone to present one, you would fall back to the
earlier arguments.

Lack of corncobs would suggest that no maize was present, but would
certainly not prove it, as you well know.  Lack of chicken bones never
proved a thing to you about precolumbian chickens -- the difference in the
two cases being that in the latter you had people throwing up examples of
sites that had been excavated with 0 chicken bones in the faunal remains. 





: You simply would say they didn't look in the right places.

...How come you're so great at predicting the future, Thomas? It must be 
...those voodoo divinations of yours...

Simple extrapolation from the past, and the very recent past at that.

--Greg Keyes



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