Template talk:Continental Asia in 10000 BP

Original research

@पाटलिपुत्र: If this template is to be transcluded in articles, you need to cite sources. As it stands, if it's supposed to depict 10000 BP (as the title suggests), it's riddled with inaccuracies. If it's supposed to depict 20,000 to 10,000 BP (as the caption suggests), I can't see how you could possibly fit even the "main" cultures of such a long time period. – Joe (talk) 10:18, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The same goes for {{Continental Asia in 20000 BP}} and {{Continental Asia in 5000 BCE}}. – Joe (talk) 10:38, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Joe Roe: These maps are a simple (ongoing) attempt to put together known people/cultures in the places where they prospered, at the time when they are known to have prospered. Among sources:

Past Worlds: The Times Atlas of Archaeology (many maps, but especially maps of the hunter-gatherers and early civilizations)
O'Brien, Patrick Karl; O'Brien, Patrick (2002). Atlas of World History / Philip's Atlas of World History (PDF). Oxford University Press. pp. 16–27. ISBN 978-0-19-521921-0.

and for the locations based on recent populations genetics, maps such as in:

Narasimhan, Vagheesh M.; Patterson, Nick; Moorjani, Priya (6 September 2019). "The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia". Science. 365 (6457). doi:10.1126/science.aat7487. ISSN 0036-8075.
"Paleolithic to Bronze Age Siberians Reveal Connections with First Americans and across Eurasia" (PDF). CELL. 2020.
Hanel, Andrea; Carlberg, Carsten (September 2020). "Skin colour and vitamin D: An update". Experimental Dermatology. 29 (9): 864–875, Fig. 2. doi:10.1111/exd.14142. ISSN 0906-6705.
Yang, Melinda A. (6 January 2022). "A genetic history of migration, diversification, and admixture in Asia". Human Population Genetics and Genomics. 2 (1). doi:10.47248/hpgg2202010001. ISSN 2770-5005.
"Willerslev, E., Meltzer, D.J. Peopling of the Americas as inferred from ancient genomics. Nature 594, 356–364 (2021)". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Of course, any improvement is most welcome, especially from someone knowledgeable in this area. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 12:39, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the sources. I can't find any basis for these maps in Philip's Atlas—it only maps sites and patterns of diffusion, not cultures—and while I don't have ready access to the other atlas, if it says e.g. the Mal'ta–Buret' culture, dated c. 23,000 BP, is contemporaneous with the Natufian culture, 15,000–11,700 BP, and Göbekli Tepe, 11,000–10,000 BP, it's not a very good one.

I'm not going to dig into the other sources because the ancestry groups identified by geneticists are not the same or really in anyway comparable to archaeological cultures. Neither of them are "peoples". Mixing them all together on one map is misleading WP:SYNTH. It also doesn't really make much sense to talk about them being "contemporaneous", because by definition ancestry has no start or end date.

Unfortunately I simply don't think it's possible to compile maps like this, bearing in mind that we're not here to do original research. – Joe (talk) 13:07, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the feedback @Joe Roe:. I trust simply creating maps of known cultures/polities/genetic groups is not OR: per WP:OR "Original images created by a Wikipedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments". For ancient periods it is also common practice to put together cultures that fall in the same wide period bracket (like 20,000-10,000 BC), even though they might not be strictly contemporary within this period (all Atlases do that...). But I do get that it is probably better to put cultures and genetic groupings on a different plane: I will try to separate the two types of information, by having genetic maps on the one side (plenty of sources), and traditional archaeological cultures on the other (traditional atlases and publications are the place to go), with references. I do not claim to be exhaustive in the presentation of all main cultures, or to be devoid of mistakes, so I would appreciate feeback in case I miss important ones. Thank you for taking some time for this! पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 13:32, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Joe Roe:. Please find attached an example of a RS map [1] combining archaeological cultures (Afasievo, Botai etc...) with genetic grouping (WHG, EHG, CHG etc...) within a large time period (5000 BCE-1000 BCE) combining non-strictly contemporary cultures. This seems to be quite similar to my type of mapping... पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 06:41, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, people put bad maps in papers too. Doesn't mean we should start making our own. – Joe (talk) 06:52, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Joe Roe:. I don't know if these are "bad maps", but at least this is material from reliable sources, by experts in their domain. I will try to remain cautious, but at least we can say that this format is employed by academic sources, probably out of a need to provide a global perspective. I know you are an academic yourself, and I can understand some of your reluctance as an archaeologist towards this kind of synthetic approach. Following your querry, I will try to keep improving the quality, and bolster the referencing of these maps. Thank you! पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 07:19, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is, and however much I do think it is a bad map, I wouldn't object to you including it or something based on it in articles. However, the existence of one of these isn't a license to create your own for different periods, and I'm still opposed to including these series in articles, at least until the sourcing and accuracy is much improved. – Joe (talk) 07:22, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]