"Why should the bar come falling 
down here?"

   The easy answer to that question might be: Because they're archeologists.
But a lot of people might not understand what I mean by that.  Archeology 
is much more about speculation than other scientific fields.  There is so 
much that can never be known for certain and yet, at the end of the day, 
you want to be able to say something about what you've discovered.  What 
could it mean?  Archeologists bat these theories around in order to see if 
they can make any sense of what they've discovered, and yes, sometimes it 
gets pretty far out there.  
   Speculation does get out of hand from time to time and runs afoul of 
science when what is speculated gets taken for what is known.  Although the 
author in this case may be a little too proud of his theory maybe even 
wanting us to be convinced that it is a better fit than his evidence can 
support, I was not led to believe he was expressing it as fact.
   Another pitfall of this kind of scientific endeavor is when the pursuit 
of data becomes too heavily directed toward support of a pet theory which 
can lead to ignoring evidence in support of other valid possibilities.

Steve Noble    
 

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************