Show the work.
We build a source-linked evidence atlas before advancing a large explanation. New evidence can change any claim.
Start with the smallest defensible claim.
Each record identifies a find or documented account, its context, what material was dated, and the distance between that date and the human event we want to understand. A mineral covering a painting gives a minimum age; a date on sediment depends on its relationship to an artifact. A geological event does not directly date an oral account.
Six useful statuses
Observed · documented material or account.
Dated · chronology and its method.
Inferred · reasoned interpretation.
Contested · substantial live disagreement.
Hypothesis · a testable proposal.
Open · insufficient evidence.
Status belongs to a particular claim, not every statement about a site. Confidence is explained in words, not a false numerical score.
Compare carefully
We test transmission, independent development, and shared practical or environmental causes. Similarity alone does not demonstrate contact or inherited meaning. We look for specific matches, chronology, possible routes, differences, and counterexamples.
Respect the people behind the record
Indigenous knowledge is presented in its cultural context and according to the terms of its source communities. Sensitive coordinates and restricted material are not placed on a public map. Image use requires permission or an appropriate license.
Research boundaries
The core time span is approximately 300,000 years ago to the earliest surviving writing around 3400–3300 BCE. Later traditions enter as a separate comparison layer. The fraction of human time before writing does not equal the fraction about which we know nothing.