Green Baron

Ha ! Thinks you ! But you have no idea. There are people who have studied it, dug it out, counted the bones and tools, reconstructed the sites and the environments, even where the stone-knappers sat and what they made and how they did it, what grew in the vicinity and abroad, how people moved, how old they were when they died and, if possible, what they died from. Climate, environmental composition (animals and plants) are pretty well reconstructed. Finds, sites and knowledge about it are constantly discussed, compared and compiled. Sure there is some speculation involved but far less than you might think. And if there was more speculation involved be assured i'd tell you. You cannot compare todays hunter gatherers in barren reserves and with ongoing contact to modern life. Very few are left and they are strongly influenced and not to the best. They are more a mirror for ourselves than a window to the past.

Apes are no prehistoric hunter gatherers. I should be more specific, and this applies to palaeolithic / mesolithic groups in europe / asia before the arrival of the neolithic package: There is no proof of intraspecies violence, in contrary, we have evidence of care for the old and harmed even in neandertals that were badly handicapped, even crippled and unable to chew a steak on their own, and that for many years (La Chapelle-aux-Saints for example). Violence between modern humans and neandertals is disputed, but archaelogy doesn't deliver any proof. There is one suggested case but we can more likely assume that it was a hunting accident; almost every neandertal had hunting-related injuries (See: Trinkaus). Of course violence always sells better and those stories are more likely to deliver a message than a banal hunting accident (one of many). Your examples are most likely late neolthic / bronce age or younger, to me they sound medieval. Violence seems to be connected to social stratification and property, which did most probably not exist in "old world" palaeolithic hunter / gatherers. One word to population pressure: Birth control happens quite automatic in mobile groups (and those were highly mobile) because a baby must grow up a few years to be self-reliant before a woman can have the next child. There never was a pressure of population in palaeolithic peoples, in contrary they went through several genetic bottle necks. Pressure comes with the neolithic. Ah, this takes too much time here ;-)

Thanks, @Thor Wotansen. Life expectancy in first agricultural societies was way lower than in contemporary mesolithic hunter gatherers. As how forgiving or harsh life really was we can only deduct from climatic evidence and density of find-sites. It varied, but at the end of the ice age, before reforestation startet, it probably really was a paradise. A conference transcript dealing about the socalled solutreen, the 10-8.000 years before the last glacial maximum, was titled a little heroic "Hunters of the golden age" :-) But during the glacial maximum the environment could probably not bear more than a few hundred individuals in middle europe, between the scandinavian and the alpine glacier. Though i last (2 years ago) heard that there was probably no gap, people could live there without a hiatus (unpublished, from a former collegue). I know little about north american indigenous tribes, but as far as i recall they lived semi-settled or even settled, grew crops (maize ?), and there were fights between tribes. One must tale into account that humans, as settled as they were or are, never totally gave up hunting.

A, now i see. My usual monologue when it comes to prehistory ... Well, after all, i fear there is no way back. Only for a few, but i don't think rest will let them ;-)

I don't see your point ... you are talking about settled or semi-settled societies. And as i understand you mix them up with hunter / gatherers and the first societies that "invented" agriculture.

Errr, that's a rude simplification of hunter/gatherer societies. Read about the circumpolar tribes aka eskimos or the last hunter/gatherers in mid 20th century in africa, a lot has been written about them. First: we do not know how societies in the ice age worked. Respect, reputation, property, that all is just our (your) fantasy and is naturally strongly biased. There are, in fact, a lot of hints that all of these did not exist until maybe the late ice-age, the last hunters of the open cold-steppe called magdalenien (roughly 15.000 before now). They lived in a paradise, built yurts and (a little jokey) just where waiting for food to come home. Storage of food did not exist until the epipalaelothic - hunter/gatherer mobility and storage is grossly contradictory. "Dependants" did not exist, that implies social stratification which is just your fantasy but is not reflected in reality, neither in finds nor in historic observations. Hunter/gatherers lived in groups, sizes varied, but not in the hundreds individuals. "Loved ones die" ??? You mean murder ? Your fantasy plays tricks on you. There is no proof of violence in prehistoric hunter/gatherers. There is, in fact, proof of life without property and social stratification in last centuries hunter / gatherers. A successful hunter performed a ritual of diminishing himself before the group in order not to get the "nose too high". That'll be bad for everyone. "Invent Agriculture ?". There is no need for a hunter gatherer to do so. It took several 1000 years of climatic stability from picking up crops via simple storage to half-mobile living spaces and caught animals that had to be separated from the wild ones for several generations in order to have "household" lifestock. "Murder": murder is an invention of the last 10.000 years, after hunter / gatherers began to adopt a new lifestyle. Not before.

Well, there is a huge stack of books on "practical astronomy", i don't think you'll make a big mistake with just buying one. A good book that gives an overview covers the topics: what things are there to observe (how is the galaxy/universe composed), how are things mapped, (coordinate systems, measurements), our neighborhood, how to observe and document, optical/physical basics, instruments (which ones exist, how do they work), mountings (they are in some cases the most pricey part), technical hints. An extensive part is usually the orientation in the night sky (constellations). Don't let other's indoctrinate you like "only newton !", "only refractor !" or "only alt/az mounts". Such "tips" are usually useless. I spent a lot of money on useless nonsense until i got what i wanted. Though that's expensive. If you're caught by the hobby you'll probably end up with more than one telescope for different uses. Astrophotography is the second step, when you've had your first experiences, curses and frustrations :-) Depending on your possibilities (money) and the conditions under which you will be watching plus your personal attitude like "do i want to adjust on my own or just plant it and watch" influence your decision. I'm sure many here will help you if you have specific questions :-) Edit: if you want to do it right and money is the limiting factor then i'd say first read a book to get a feeling, then decide on spending money for a specific equipment. Furthermore i find that you'll have far more fun when joining others or letting others join you. Carrying 30kg out in the field in -5 degrees C needs enthusiasm. And warm gloves.

What's wrong ?

Hehe. like it, though i only watched the first 3 minutes. Calling us as a subspecies of homo sapiens, namely homo sapiens sapiens is on my "wavelength". That leaves room for other subspecies, like homo sapiens neandertalensis. All our so-called cultural achievements including intraspecies violence are just a few thousand years old.

This is the relevant information: "Researchers from Oxford University, working in Brazil, found ancient "nut-cracking tools" - 700-year-old stone hammers that capuchin monkeys used to open cashew nuts." Edit: quotation marks Edit 2: no pictures of the tools, no find circumstances, ....

Tool use by capuchin-monkeys is nothing new. Otters open mussels with stones. Raven poke with a stick to chase worms out of the bark. Vultures fly high with a small animal to ... well, you get the point. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02380877 What's uncertain is whether they understand what they are doing or just do it as part of a "program", an automatism. Though in this case i ask myself: how did they identify a stone as having been used by monkeys to open nuts 700 years ago. Unfortunatly there is no link to the original paper ... As to humans: as soon as tools have clearly been worked to perform a job (oldest very crude technique: oldovan) palaeoanthropoligists speak of tool use by humans. They are tool-making, not just using. How often do i have to repeat this ? :-) Edit: @Scotius, yes, it can be assumed that pre-humans like the australopithecines used tools as well, the capability is there, but as far as i know they didn't make tools. Tool use (possibly without understanding) is well documented in quite e few species.

I had the same idea, the orbit shape reminds of those kbo's used for the planet nine prediction. Where's is the AP of 2015 RR245 in comparison to Sedna and the others ? If that's similar 2015 RR245 might be another hint to planet nine ... http://www.findplanetnine.com/p/blog-page.html

Thanks, Camacha. One of the blinks in the first video indeed looks like the blinks i watch from time to time. I assume this was shot through a telephoto lens or small telescope and with the bare eye the movement would probably not be noticeable. Also blinks always happen at the edge of the fow ;-)

Can't be aircrafts here, nightly overflights are forbidden (island of La Palma -> big telescopes on the caldera rim) and in 2 years i never saw an aircraft at night. I first saw flashes when sailing, 2-3 years back. What's wrong with satellites ?

An assembly is, in fact, a language with syntax and mnemonics. The Assembler translates the human readable text into object code. It's closer to the hardware then c but it keeps programmers from calculating addresses or jumps on their own. Assembler is fast enough for most time critical applications (microcontrollers in everything) and the programs are small without any overhead (not the biggest factor today). Some processor may have specific instruction sets. I can't assemble, though it could be fun to learn it. btw: the Microsoft assembler is still maintained i read, and of course linuxers could use the assembler of the gcc-family. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/X86_Assembly

Heh, typical beginners mistake. That's why you never work as root ... There are two sorts of people on the planet: those who have already done it and those who are yet looking forward to it :-)

On linux "objdump -D filename" disassembles, just in case you don't want to wait until that ide has startet ... :-)

I see these flashes too when the atmosphere is clear. Sky is very dark here. They last only maybe half a second, too short to detect movement. I can only assume that these come from high flying satellites, far enough away to be in the sun over the whole night, in polar, molniya or other highly inclined orbits.

There were a whole lot of civilizations before us. At least since the end of neolithic. Most of them have been investigated, are regionally and timely limited, they rose and fell. There are a few that still need some work but noone really has the time and money to do so.

I'm not sure whether this is just trolling ... the impactor is called Thea. That'll be bacteria, ediacaran-fauna, fish or insects then ...

I see. I lost you. So step by step. The crater didn't disappear. It was partly eroded, partly covered by sediments, that's why we found it (and many others, vredefort dating 2 billion years back). And that is the point: things that get under the surface last "a long time, brother". Structures i mentioned will be partly eroded and partly covered. They won't "survive" ready to use (i thought that was clear), but we'd see the traces, weathered, altered and distorted, compressed, but in all the sections we produce, borholes we bore and structures we build somewhere there would appear traces of what was comparable to what we do in the environment. I hope that makes it clearer, and pls, don't rely totally on wikipedia and the internet. That causes you to be badly partly informed and draw the wrong conclusions. brains: i didn't say birds have no brains, that's rather impudent, probably a result of "tl:dr", i said there are no big brains (implicitly like ours). Some saurians just have ganglion-nodes, enough for walking, eating and procreation. Hope you read this ...

Your take is mislead and doesn't reflect reality. A civilization 65my ago would have left many clear traces, structural, isotopic, climatic, in fauna and flora, almost everything. You would the traces of infrastructure, large and small buildings, change in plant- and animal-composition. It may be hard for you to realize what geology and palaeontology can do. The remnants of a civilization comparable to ours would be visible averywhere. And basic assumptions contradict the current state of research: 1.) Humans have spread across the planet since 2.6my, different species, always more than one at a time. Do not assume hunters and gatherers had no impact on the surrounding. This is the case since at least the OIS-3. For older things: i've found the smithsonian site for human evolution (i only know of good German or French publications), maybe that's a start for you guys that rely only on the internet for information gathering (http://humanorigins.si.edu/research/age-humans-evolutionary-perspectives-anthropocene). 2.) Continents are, concerning size and basic distribution, the same than 65my ago, the positions are different. Especially australia/antarctica. See scotese website. It's a false assumption that we don't know the arrangements. 3.) Sedimentary geology is able to deduct mass, energy and direction of deposits from 100s of millions of years ago, together with remnants of flora and fauna, if conditions permit. Areas like southern Germany are investigated thoroughly since 200 years, leaving little gaps (only cretaceous deposits are not there, but they exist elsewhere) from the late permian on. Climate and landscapes where reconstructed quite well. North Americas grand staircase has an even longer record but isn't researched that extensively (but there is nothing that supports your assumptions, not even in area 51 i dare say). 4.) There are no roads, railroads, harbour walls, power plants, dams, mines, bridges, fundaments/bases, groundworks like todays autobahns or fast ailroads, where whole landscapes are reconstructed or any other traces of infrastructure like mining, or deposits that have been artificially moved and don't fit. Do you really assume that wouldn't catch our eyes ? Then you are wrong, i am as sorry as possible. 5.) There are no big brains (in many cases not even brains as we understand them from todays mammals). A civilization, even if present only for a few thousand years, would have spread over the world, leaving traces everywhere and many under favorable conditions. It would be the dominating find in the fossil record. There'd probably be so many that we would exactly know how they looked, what they worked and what they ate. 6.) There are no isotopes from atomic things. Otherwise it would be impossible to date rocks today. There'd be huge spikes and jumps and we'd wonder how samples from the same layer, a few centimeters apart can yield totally different dates, or none at all. I stop now, that's the longest thing i've written here. If you just want to believe then i declare myself helpless. Edit: forum merged my posts: the above is an answer to @wumpus. Bloody mess, i don't. I just feel urged to spread some reason and lead people away from fruitless speculation ... But i did spend to much time in here, that's true. Other things need attention as well. Nothing i wrote is much of a secret or so, everything is published. Edit: i answered your questions.

Take a closer look at Orbiter if you haven't already ...

I've found toothpaste and wwII-style ammunition in neandertal-layers. That clearly shows that neandertal had a civilization capable of such production chains and all implications thereof *rolleyes*. (No offence dear neandertals, you did a great job in the ice age !!) What seems arrogant to you is a question of education and subsequently of time and effort one spends and dedicates to studying and learning.

Really, we need to get there. I wonder how old the surface is, how long it is exposed. What minerals are at the surface ? I read feldspar, olivin, pyroxenes. Some sort of basalt ? On earth that would weather away pretty fast. Elon, saddle the horses ! :-)