Hawass right – everyone else wrong.

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Hafiz
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Hawass right – everyone else wrong.

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Hawass takes on the Max Planck Institute. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... frica.aspx

Well its what you would expect. The world’s greatest scientific institution produces evidence which disagrees with a Hawass speculative theory about the genes of ancient and pre-history Egypt, and he says they are wrong and says so in screaming hyperbole.

Not only that, but he seems to misunderstand what they are saying. Well he is getting a bit old and DNA and human evolution are areas he knows little of.

Nevertheless he now claims to be a world expert on genetics and human evolution with better evidence (none of it published) than the Planck. Maybe the hatted one will submit his evidence to Nature, the refereed journal which published the Planck findings, although he might be unfamiliar with the strict standards normally applied to submissions to a academic journal and the requirement in such cases that his work be reviewed by peers before acceptance and publication. His article would also be subject to letters of criticism and attacks from subsequent articles. I await the publication of his counter ‘evidence’.

It also raises the question about whether he follows the universally accepted rules of intellectual debate. If you object to a professional journal article you write a letter and, if this is not nonsense, it is published in the next edition. I await his letter but note that the Planck will be given a right of reply and qualified others will be invited to write letters responding to his attack on the Planck.

I think I’m on firm ground in saying that there is not the remotest possibility of Hawass wanting to get involved in an international public debate with his ‘peers’ – with all the risks to him that would involve. I’ll accept all bets at 10:1 on this – payable in bitcoin.

A few pieces of red meat thrown to the masses via al Ahram not followed up in the normal way with debate with his ‘equals’ is exactly what you would expect.

The whole DNA issue raises an interesting point about how Egyptian archaeology is behind the ball on bio-genetics/DNA.

Most other fields of historical inquiry have been using it for decades but not ‘Egyptology’. Meanwhile there has been a major shift in the tools used in the study of pre-history. All other fields of archaeology use it, why not Egypt? Wonder who would be holding that back?

There have been follow up reports on the Planck study focusing on their remarkable findings on early hominids in Morocco. These throw doubt on traditional sole East and South African origins for the first humans and even lead to speculation that Israel may emerge as the new hot area for research on human evolution. Imagine the effects on some if we are all descended from ‘Jews”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40194150 and Israel is putting big money into working with the Planck on this in Israel: https://www.weizmann.ac.il/pages/center ... thropology

On this point I suspect the Egyptian sand gropers have little useful or new to contribute.

Hawass should stick to his new announced multivolume encyclopedia on Egyptology to be published by his new, and very generous, Russian friends who are no more savory than you would expect. I look forward to its review by a leader in the field in an international journal of note (preferably not Russian) as such a review would be the first time a peer has closely examined any of ‘his’ many publications. I will also take bets at the same odds, and payable in bitcoin, that it will not be submitted for review to anything other than a cheer-squad ‘journal’ – maybe the journal of the University of Santo Domingo.

I think the truth is that there will be no letter, because that would expose him to professional public attack, he will not submit his counter evidence for separate publication, because this will be subject to public peer scrutiny on his scholarship and attack and he will not submit his new encyclopedia for proper review for fear of what would be published by a fellow professional. It continues a lifetime of avoiding public scrutiny from his profession.


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