It gets increasingly easy to believe in other undiscovered civilizations.
Insisting there aren't any is now the extraordinary claim that needs extraordinary evidence.
It is one thing to create a pyramid as a solid, and something completely different as a "skin" to a mountain.
If fact there are pyramids in Egypt that were created as a skin over mountains too. They did not last though as people stole the stones for their houses(leaving just the mountain), like they did with the Great Pyramid too, which had a very beautiful white limestone and granite skin.
The publications may be in error, but it would take evidence to say.
Even before Shimao there was strong evidence that metallurgy was introduced into China from the steppe via Erlitou. Shimao just sits in the right place.
And to suggest Shimao is somehow unsurprising flies in the face of a century of sinology, which offers no hint of any large-scale organization anywhere in China, never mind there. Erlitou postdates Shimao by four centuries.
Personally, I wish more mainstream archaeologists would be brave enough to say "we don't really know", instead of fitting everything into the Ancient Near East Civilizations theory.
Claiming that these were truly made by Denisovians or similarly Neanderthals requires much more evidence in my opinion, especially since those finds coincide with the arrival of modern humans
Are you claiming it was planted?
Denial is good for turf defense, but not so good for truth.
Very interesting discovery in any case, at the very least shifting the dates a bit (as always). Maybe you are right and homo sapiens did learn these arts from Denisovan people. Do Denisovans have a history which leads to this developmental stage?
Because 'we' do and delicate stone workings are part of our skillset earlier than this find:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_invention...
Wikipedia may need an update though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill#History
Summary: Not planted, but maybe traded (for women?)
Tens of millennia is not "a bit". Tens of millennia is "Holy Shit", or you are just not paying attention.
Of course, that is the nature of science and research. My question is, what is it Graham has been right about where archeologist have been wrong?
His methods are not respected and the ideas are often not, initially, his own ("journalist", remember), but he does get around, and his "pseudo-science" has an uncanny way of becoming ordinary science.
His ideas (sudden pole shifts, comets synchronized to earth's rotational precession) are often very, very wrong, but science is equipped to handle wrong.
Revisionism insisting that GT was not absolutely astonishing to historians and archaeoligists is properly met with derision.
Of course, we don't know where else it will turn up, although India or Pakistan would be a good bet, and northwestern South America, by his expectations.
So what is it the archeologist see which they don't dare say?
An example is Egyptian early history, where disagreeing with the head of antiquities in Egypt could interfere with your access to sites. Thus, although the evidence for who did what and when, in the case of the oldest constructions, is very, very thin, it is risky to suggest alternative scenarios. Notably, surface luminance testing has been done to a very limited degree, suggesting the big pyramids might be 500 years older than is assumed, but tests have not since been followed up.
Similarly, early Chinese history, where there is an official government timeline that differs from evidence, and being seen to disagree could even interfere with crossing the border, which would make it hard to remain a sinologist.
Probably any young archaeologist could identify a dozen other examples. People like to pat themselves on the back when somebody is finally vindicated decades after their career has been blighted, but for each such case there have to be several that die with their evidence just forgotten.
But common sense tell us we only have remains of a microscopic fraction of human activity through history. There is so much we will never know about the past.