<HTML>
> I think that there are ways in which science fails to respond
> to new evidence quickly - mostly through the human element :-)
Absolutely. Science is a human process, and so it is necessarily messy and uneven. I never said otherwise. In fact, I stake no value on the image of the "dispassionate" scientist of popular imagination -- and of Schoch's self-image as revealed in his <i>Voices of the Rocks</i>. I think the dispassionate scientist is a myth. In fact, I prefer my scientists passionate about their work! But where you have passion and emotion, you will also have clouded judgments and mistakes. My point would be that (a) most scientists will follow the evidence when the issue is clear, even if diehards do not and (b) eventually the truth will out. But, true, the latter can take some time. Then again, think how quickly something truly radical like evolution was accepted ... Patterns of acceptance are uneven, because scientists are humans.
But note that every accepted hypothesis has been able to present <i>some</i> cogent evidence. Not so with our alternative friends. Nor with creationists. Or UFOlogists. Or psychics. And so on. You get my point, I'm sure
.
> I don't know much about Tiwanaku in all honesty. I have been
> reading about the Age of the Sphinx where there is a lively
> debate around the evidence. But I don't find any evidence
> that supports an eleventh millenium build by a LC, nor much
> discussion about it.
To my mind the real "pay-off" of the earlier Sphinx claims lies in the possibility of monument-building cultures far earlier then we currently think. But there is simply no evidence at all for that. That's why Colin Reader's moderate redating concerns me less than the fanciful imaginings of West or Hancock or Schoch. Same with the Orion-Correlation thing. If you take out the LC stuff, you're left with some interesting discussions among experts about AE religion. The real meat is in the sensational claims, not the mundane observations.
Fact is, not a scrap of evidence has ever been produced for the LC, despite so vast a volume of inkshed spilt on the matter. That pretty much settles it for me, at any rate.
Best,
Garrett</HTML>