Jeffrey H. Schwartz - What the bones tell us (1993)

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From a succession of historians we learn of a particularly gruesome component of Carthaginian daily life: the routine and ritualized sacrificing of not just animals—animal sacrifice was a common religious activity of all Mediterranean cultures—but of infants and children.... Greek and Roman historians were unanimous in their abhorrence of the Carthaginian practice...

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
There are always alternative interpretations of the same data. It is often the case, however, that the alternatives that are rejected are treated as if they don't exist. But they do. And we should be aware not only of their existence and potential viability, but of the possibility that the hypotheses that we might embrace so strongly today may very well be the rejects of tomorrow.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
Becoming a rock does not ensure safety.... The blasting of windblown sands, the pummeling of waves, the corrosive secretions of mosses and lichens, and even the steady rhythm of a stream can, in time, reduce a seemingly indestructible boulder to a grain of sand.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
The Bodo skull and the Kaprina and Shanidar Neandertal skeletons raise the possibility that two distinct, non-spaiens species of Homo had had rituals and cultural practices that we have assumed are only within the capacity of members of our own species.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
Petrie found that certain types of pottery were characteristic of a particular phase of the Bronze Age, whereas other styles were found only a phase of the Iron Age, or only during the Hellenistic or Greek periods.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
The Phoenicians were the Canaanites. Thus Phoenicia... was invaded by the Israelites, who eventually pushed the Phoenicians to the coastal fringe. Subsequently, the Israelites borrowed various cultural elements from the Phoenicians, including the first alphabet. Some groups of Israelites even adopted the god Ba'al and, presumably, the practice of child sacrifice.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
I hope to... provide insights into the interpretation of "evidence" and the application of the "scientific method" so that you... will be more attuned to what scientists are saying, and why they may be saying it, and realize that the problems and issues that they are addressing are matters we can all think about critically.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
The upper and lower ends of a humerus are like the brim and base of an urn. The shaft of the bone is like the belly of the urn. Fragments, even minute ones, of the detailed parts of a bone are like the indicator sherds of a broken urn. Fragments, even large ones, of the shaft of a bone are like the body sherds of a broken urn. Analyzing bones, after all, is very much like analyzing pottery.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
The smaller the mammal, the more it is confined to smaller geographic areas. A small mammal is also more susceptible to subtle changes in climate and environment.... On average, the absence or presence of smaller species provides more precise clues to past conditions in an area than does the information gained from study of the bone assemblages of the larger animals.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
The processes of bone preservation are such that the farther back in time we go, the less there is.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
The corpses of water-dwelling animals often sink to the bottom and become covered with sediment. The sediment tends to protect the dead body and even at times retain an impression of its shape and external anatomical details. This environment then provides the means by which the bones of the skeleton are mineralized.... most land animals die and fall to the ground, without any chance of a freak flood casting them into an environment more favorable to fossilization.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
Science, especially evolutionary sciences, can only proceed from learning about theories of hypotheses that do not stand the test of time.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
Greeks and Romans alike engaged openly in a variety of sanctioned atrocities, including adult human sacrifice.... according to... Cicero, human sacrifice was not restricted to the western Phoenicians but was widely accepted among Mediterranean societies as a pious act that would please the gods.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz
It is frustrating to know, on the one hand, that every living thing on earth will have had a single, unique history—whether it be the life of an individual, of a civilization, of a species, of a diverse evolutionary group—and, on the other, to be constantly in the position of trying to discover it.

Jeffrey H. Schwartz