Four more student blog posts from our discussion of giants are now live:
- Large Adena Skeletons as a "Unique Physical Type" (by Juan Perez)
- Building with Big Stones: Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence (by GratefulGirl22)
- The Schloss Ambras Castle Giant (by Drayson Labrom)
- Neanderthals as Nephilim? (by Shaggy)
Please have a look, see what you think, and comment on the posts if you have something to say. I've instructed the students to check on their posts periodically (i.e., at least once a day) and respond to comments if appropriate. All the completed posts related to giants are listed here. The homepage of the course website is here. A synopsis of what we've been doing every day is here.
My online friend and fellow #Swordgate warrior Pablo Benavente suggested that posting some of the blogs in the Ancient Origins Group on Facebook would be a good way to get people engaged in reading and discussing the posts. In terms of pure numbers, all indications are that he's write: the two student blog posts that have been shared there so far ("Building with Big Stones: Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence" and "Neanderthals as Nephilim?") have garnered far more "likes" (200 and 191, respectively, as of this writing) than the other posts that I've shared in my skeptically-oriented groups and on Twitter. There are long discussions going on both of those posts, but they're happening on Facebook (in a closed group) rather than on the blog post itself. Based on skimming the comments, it looks to me like many people engaged in the discussion may not have even bothered to read the original post: they're just reacting to the headline and to the other comments.
That's an interesting pattern that I've noticed before. I'm not sure exactly what it's telling us about how/why people communicate about these ideas online, but I'm sure it's telling us something. The "Neanderthals as Nephilim?" post has been shared 16 times from the Ancient Origins Group alone, and the discussion on the post there is currently up to 93 comments. And yet there is not a single comment on the original blog post. Interesting.
That's an interesting pattern that I've noticed before. I'm not sure exactly what it's telling us about how/why people communicate about these ideas online, but I'm sure it's telling us something. The "Neanderthals as Nephilim?" post has been shared 16 times from the Ancient Origins Group alone, and the discussion on the post there is currently up to 93 comments. And yet there is not a single comment on the original blog post. Interesting.
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