bellinghman: (Default)
bellinghman ([personal profile] bellinghman) wrote2007-01-31 09:41 am

You gotta love archaeologists.

"It is the richest - by that I mean the filthiest - site of this period known in Britain,"

Now why don't parents see it this way? Not cleanliness is next to godliness, but messiness is next to wealth.

[identity profile] caerleon.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 09:45 am (UTC)(link)
Aye lad.. where there's muck there's brass tha knows..

[identity profile] bellinghman.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 09:55 am (UTC)(link)
So very true, and I'd forgotten it.

(Too long I've been a southern wuss. Well, since I was born, but Mother, she was Yorkshire.)
ext_52412: (Default)

[identity profile] feorag.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 09:55 am (UTC)(link)
I have often asserted that if the mythical period in which humanity lived in perfect harmony with the environment ever existed then, by definition, we wouldn't know about it because there'd be no archæological evidence.

[identity profile] bellinghman.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 10:01 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, but the lack of evidence would be evidence, surely?

(I note that the latest evidence from the Nullarbor plain in .au rather tends to indicate that the aboriginal inhabitants of the area were responsible for the mass extinction of everything slower than the ground kangaroos. Well, that's another enviromental woo candidate gone.)

(Anonymous) 2007-01-31 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! A well known archaeological tenet.

[livejournal.com profile] uitlander - from work.

[identity profile] bellinghman.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 01:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, indeed.

On the other hand, I can prove there is no elephant in my garden by dint of an exhaustive search of every cubic foot of it, and determining that the properties of that cubic foot are incompatible with it being part of an elephant, and that it is impossible for an elephant to occupy less than a cubic foot.

Similarly, if for the entirety of human history/prehistory, for the entirety of human range, there is evidence of humans not being environmental angels, I thing we can justifiably assume that such angels never existed, at least not to any appreciable extent.

(Managing that exhaustive search is an exercise for the archaeologist. I shall just stand back here out of throwing range, shall I? Oh, so you're using a woomera, huh? Well, one moment, I shall move even further back!)

[identity profile] megabitch.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Today, in the car, the subject of Boscastle and the Witch Museum arose. My darling son, for some reason, started on about witches flying around Cornwall/Devon on broomsticks. I asked when he'd ever known me to fly via broomstick. His response was "Well, you've got a broom. Just because I've never seen you flying on it, doesn't mean you don't. After all, you're always up late at night. How would I know what you get up to."

I think he's training to be a scientist. Certainly getting there on the solipsism front :)

[identity profile] bellinghman.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)
*laugh*

Ah, he's getting all growed up!

Broomsticks..

[identity profile] caerleon.livejournal.com 2007-02-01 02:00 am (UTC)(link)
Whereas we know what you *really* get up to with the broomstick..

Mwahahahahaha..

:-)

[identity profile] k425.livejournal.com 2007-01-31 10:27 am (UTC)(link)
Perhaps not financial wealth, but I view it as next to experiential wealth. Sometimes at nursery they'll apologise because Jack's got paint on his clothes or jam in his hair. Good grief, if a toddler isn't grimy by the end of the day, someone's not doing their job right! Provided a child starts the day clean and goes to bed clean, the time in between should be allowed for getting mucky!