Thank Goodness for Experts [Sobek]

The discovery of what may be one or two ancient pyramids in Bosnia is a few months old, but today it was updated after Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Ali, a professor of Egyptology in Cairo, examined the excavations and stated it is worth digging there.

I bring this to your attention for two reasons. First, I love disciplines like archaeology, ancient history, and Egyptology (as should be evident from my name). Second, so I can quote this:

The theory has been disputed by a number of local and international experts, who claim that at no time in Bosnia's history did the region have a civilization able to build monumental structures.

Well that claim seems to be somewhat up the air, now, doesn't it? I love the circular logic here: someone finds a big pyramid-shaped thing in Bosnia, but "experts" know there's no such thing as a pyramid in Bosnia, and therefore whatever is under those mounds (which we shouldn't bother excavating, because the experts have already told us what cannot possibly be there) is most certainly not a pyramid. Because Europeans never built pyramids. QED.

That reminds me of a debate about the Dead Sea Scrolls. For two thousand years, it was received wisdom that Jews never practiced baptism. Then the scrolls were found, which described a group of Jews who practiced ritual submersion in water for religious, symbolic purposes. But whatever those rituals were, they certainly weren't baptism. How do we know? Because Jews never practiced baptism.

Thank goodness we have experts.

posted by Ace at 10:41 PM

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