The origin of human language
2024-09-29 15:54 Some imagine “cavemen” with a very limited language.  If they talk at all people imagine pidgin.  The present-day human species have never talked like that when people spoke their mother tongue.
The origin of humanity
2024-09-27 14:40 I know people don’t like being grouped with monkeys.  However, purely biologically we are.  Our genus (Homo) have only had one species (Homo sapiens) since at least the end of the last ice age.
Famous prehistoric mammals
2024-09-09 13:04 After the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass-extinction it took 15 million years for the world to recover.  Mammals and birds then evolved to take over the role of the dinosaurs.  Towards the end whales arose too take over after the plesiosaurs.
The basics of geology
2024-06-23 17:03 Uniformitarianism is based on the idea of geology being explainable in terms of directly observable processes.  Certainly, processes can take place at different paces.  But this is still the same processes at different orders of magnitude.
Icehouse Earth and ice ages
2024-05-31 13:02 The climate during the last 550 million years is rather well-documented.  There have been several periods of tens of millions of years without any ice sheets.  The greenhouse effect was then considerably stronger than it is today.
Absolute dating
2024-04-05 16:16 Oftentimes we can know how old something is.  Not just though written history as some have gotten stuck into.  It is entirely possible to find out the age of things with natural scientific methods too.
Orders of magnitude matters
2024-03-21 12:39 It is important to keep track of which order of magnitude something has.  Otherwise one’s concepts of nature risk becoming far too erroneous.  Which in turn creates needless fear.
The limits of oral tradition
2024-03-13 13:18 Among pseudohistorians there is an overconfidence in oral traditions.  Detailed knowledge of the past is believed to be passed on for millennia.  To me this appears preposterous.
What I think about the Bible
2024-02-14 13:02 I don’t think the Bible was ever intended to be taken literally.  The idea was conceived after the breakthrough of the printing press in a doomed attempt to coordinate readings.
The mix-up between Muslims and Arabs
2024-02-07 14:03 Severe ignorance on geography leads to equally severe prejudice.  Someone can lump together groups which in real life are bitter enemies.  One example is North Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and western South Asia.