Credulity of Credulities! All is Credulity!

The Paleoanthropological Canon: King James Version.

Exasperastes
OR, THE SUBVERSIVE ARCHAEOLOGIST

Chapter 1

THE words of the Subversive Archaeologist, the son of Roy, king of the castle.
2 Credulity of credulities, saith the Subversive, credulity of credulities; all is credulity.
3 What profit hath John Hawks of all his labour which he taketh under the sun to laud the words of Blasco, Finlayson, Rosell, Marco, Finlayson, Finlayson, Negro, Pacheco, and Vidal's "The earliest pigeon fanciers," Scientific Reports 4:5971, 2014.
4 One unwarranted argument passeth away, and another cometh: but the overarching myth abideth for ever. So sayeth John of this work, "[this] work documents that hunting and eating these medium-sized birds was a recurrent part of Neandertal (and later modern human) diets. Once it was common to see "small mammal and bird hunting" in lists of behavioral traits limited to modern humans. Now we know that Neandertals regularly took large birds for feathers and medium to large birds for food. This isn't a single occurrence, it is a sampling of the behavior of people over tens of thousands of years. Plus, who knew? Rock doves are the wild progenitor species of common pigeons, and they are indistinguishable from fragmentary bone remains."
5 The media also ariseth, and the media taketh down the Kool-Aid of Finlayson's feathered Neanderthal clothing, and hasteth to the place that maketh the bile arise in the Subversive's throat.
6 The public opinion goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and returneth again according to its circuits, none the wiser. It knoweth not what to believe; believing only that to believe is to know. So said the empiricists of old, and the scientistic dinosaurs of these days.
7 All the untenable conclusions run into the Theoretical Sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again, and again, and again, multiplying and ramifying. Neandertals consumethed small birds, which they cuttethed apart with sharp rocks made with great thought afor, which shall be called Levallois. For, sooth, even unto domestication took the Neanderthals the pigeons, according to the final words of John; else why would he utter that pigeons of today and rock doves of the past are specifically indistinguishable from fragmentary remains? Innuendo passeth for inference. Inference for knowledge. Amen say the paleoanthropologists. Not so the Subversive Archaeologist.
8 All such claims as those of Blasco et alia are full of labour; some that may be so accurate, adding a line on the Holy vita, yet they be obvious, or goeth the conclusions without saying: the paleoanthropologist's eye is not satisfied with seeing what is not there, nor the ear filled with hearing that which makes no sound, it must make mountains out of rocks, even, and pebbles.
9 The thing that Blasco et alia inferred, it is that which shall now live evermore in science; and though that be done badly it is that which shall become the standard story: and there is no new thing under the sun—just the same inchoate prestations to the senior scholars whose sites and data are sacrosanct, and whose invocations of complex behaviour and mentation among Neanderthals and their ilk must be bowed to.
10 Is there any thing whereof John Hawks mayhaps can say, "Jeebuz, this is crap-o-la"? Middle Paleolithic pigeon fancying hath been already akin to other credulities of old time, which was before us, in such as purposeful burials, and blade industries, and birch tar, dental picks, care of the sick, and jawbones of red deer.
11 There is no remembrance of mitigated objectivity; neither shall there be any remembrance of any old thing they shall say but that those outrageous claims shall come after, always in the end, as it was in the beginning.

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