For this in particular, it’s a fascinating piece of history. Whether for approximately 80,000 years or 500 years comparative to whatever timeline you agree with, it’s a huge chunk of human history that people littered this spot with all kinds of hunting gear and a few teeth, and gathered around a campfire. Maybe it was well known enough that people traveled to go hunting there. Maybe they fought over this spot… Who knows… But it was an important part of very ancient European history. That’s why I find it “interesting.”
You keep trying to equate the view supported by data with the view supported by nothing. It’s not a good look. Isn’t 80,000 years more interesting than 500 years?
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If the same things happened in 500 years versus 80,000, yeah I’d say the 500 years was more interesting. 
If you did 5 things in one day versus only doing those same 5 things and nothing else at all over the span of 2 years, I would say your one day with lots of activity was more interesting.
I am astounded and saddened at your lack of interest in or wonder at deep time. There’s nothing more to say.
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I felt like a heretic from a religious community as I read through the comments and replies directed at me on this thread, so that you are disappointed I do not feel awe is not surprising to me, as it falls along the same theme. Do I have wonder at deep time? No. It means nothing to me.
Valerie, unlike many YECs, you actually expose yourself to scientific literature other than creationist sources, and that is great. But here is where I think you part with reality. Science papers, in keeping with good practice, generally present results with some stipulated uncertainty. That can be fairly substantial, but rarely order of magnitude.
If I tell you I drove a 200 mile trip in an hour, you know I broke some laws. You might also think that I’m full of it, but it’s not completely impossible. But if I tell you I drove that in 10 minutes, that cannot be true. Just because there is some uncertainty doesn’t mean that any rate is plausible.
YEC is full of bizarre rates with more hyper than sci fi. Hyper fast magnetic reversals, hyper speciation, hyper radioactive decay, hyper tectonic movement, instantaneous light, impossibly fast chalk and limestone formation, which brings us to your post…
From Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France
we report hominin fossils from Grotte Mandrin in France that reveal the earliest known presence of modern humans in Europe between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago.
So to be consistent AiG’s date of 2248 BC for the dispersal from Babel, that would mean that, say by 2200 BC humans might have sang kumbaya around a campfire at Grotte Mandrin, and soot from that fire become entrained in cave concretions. Right there, you know that is wrong. There is no way the uncertainty in the analysis that dates back to 51,700 years can be reduced to 2,000 years.
But that is not even the main of the problem.
Where did the speleothems come from to begin with? Speleothems can be quite variable in their rate of growth, but they generally grow over centuries or millennia. So if humans arrived 51,700 years ago, the speleothems could be expected to be thousands of years older. But that is not yet the main problem either.
Speleothems do not grow in thin air. The cave has to be there first. Now we are talking millions of years. So you are looking at 51,700 + thousands + millions to equal sooty caves. But we are not done.
You can guess where this is going.
Caves form in rock; calcium rich sedimentary rock like limestone, chalk, and dolomite, which is formed by dead sea life. Now there are actually two problems. You need to generate formations which are kilometers thick, and then you need to uplift that to dry ground where caves can form. Here we are talking serious time. Tens of millions of trips around the sun to soak up its energy to make rock, and then heave that out of the sea.
And it all has to be sequential. Sea life before limestone. Limestone complete before uplift. Patience now. Then caves. Speleothems form. Then at last we are ready for some troupe to warm themselves to a crackling fire.
You will notice that in YEC articles concerning algae blooms, caves, and speleothems, they are never talked about together. Separately, the timelines they suggest are laughably or painfully fantastical, but together and in sequence they are an acid trip. Starting from plankton fall, limestone formations thicker than the seas are deep are uplifted with thrusts hundreds of times further than any earthquake on record, caverns are carved out and speleothems form, all within a few human lifetimes? It is simply self-deluding to believe that - you are orders and orders of magnitude from any reasonable age. The whole incredibility is much greater than the sum of the incredibilities.
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Again, that’s very sad. What about deep space, the billions of light years and the billions of galaxies around you?
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Which is pointless if she doesn’t let it modify her current beliefs. When I read the primary scientific literature I usually have a mental checklist of things I want to upend. When I find some evidence that strongly contradicts a strongly held belief of mine, I remain skeptical of that evidence and dig in further to see if the data in other studies have led the authors to similar conclusions that contradict my stance. When I see that the bulk of data opposes my belief, I slowly drop that belief and gradually accept what the data supports.
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As far as I could tell from the paper, these grew with the soot layers in them. And they have annual layers. I tried reading that section in the paper several times, but it just had too many terms I didn’t understand. I was trying to make sure I wasn’t just dismissing something that would disprove my position (other than their dating of rock layers of the cave floor) by asking questions earlier, but no one so far seemed interested in engaging what I wrote.
Here is what I wrote, although it was written poorly, and without actual direct questions.
The formation process of these sooted carbonated crusts is simple and follows a repeating cycle (Fig. 5) whereby calcium carbonates, mainly calcite, precipitate on the walls and vault in the form of flat or budding laminae, humans occupy the cave and make
fire that deposits soot on the walls and vault, and the soot layer is then trapped by further deposition of carbonate. In other words, the smoke is deposited on the vault and walls of caves and rock shelters as soot films, which are preserved in the carbonated crusts under favorable circumstances. This means that each soot deposit has to be covered by a carbonate veil quickly enough to be preserved. The result is the formation, on the walls and vault of the cavity, of a crust in the form of a “layer cake” with soot films within the calcite laminae. The next stage is the flaking of the encrusted walls and vault of the rock shelter, producing encrusted limestone chips that are later recovered in the various sedimentary units during the excavation. Because peeling does not occur everywhere at the same pace, each clast would bear a specific sooted coat recording a specific sequence of soot films. The length of these individual sequences varies. The parietal carbonated crusts of Mandrin cave are laminated. The kind of lamination depends on seasonal hydrological variations, which lead to the formation of growth laminae, with alternating micritic (WPL ¼ white porous laminae) and micro-sparitic (DCL ¼ dark compact laminae) laminae. These are generally annual for speleothems (Genty et al., 1995, 1997a; Baker et al., 2008) and can be easily observed on thin sections with transmitted light. In concretions with annual lamination, the positions of soot films within DCL/WPL doublets can also give information about season of occupation of the site, and thus about the dynamics of occupation of the cavity by past societies. It is important to note that the annual nature of DCL/WPL doublets identified in the parietal carbonated crust of the Grotte Mandrin, though consistent with the common annual formation of such doublets in speleothems, is not proven yet. However, it is clear that the chronological resolution is not secular, and in the worst case is decennial. Therefore, our analysis is based on the assumption that Grotte Mandrin’s parietal stromatolites have a cyclic lamination with an annual to decennial resolution.
I do this sometimes when multitasking, and I’ve been focused on a frustrating task at work. Rejiggering someone else’s code is hard enough, but then SAS refused to do what it is supposed to do, turning a moderate task into hours of WTF (I’m submitting a bug report on this one).
As to the missing words, perhaps “… going to find …?”
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WE may not see the point, that doesn’t mean Valerie thinks it pointless. You describe the scientific thought process very well, but faith isn’t a scientific question.
I wonder how many words I left out this time? 
But Valerie repeatedly claims to be interested in science. However, she routinely rejects the scientific method, or" worldview," and grossly misrepresents it as being limited to interpretation of existing data, instead of admitting the scientific reality of generating new data by testing hypotheses.
Clearly, at some level Valerie knows that going there entails too much risk. I just think that she could be a lot more forthcoming about her now explicit rejection of the scientific method.
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From the photo, the soot concretions were on the outer layers. The bulk was there before any evidence of human occupation.
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That’s absolutely mindboggling to me. You find nothing awe-inspiring or wonderful in the concept that entire continents, forests, and new ecosystems populated by different species and their distant descendants could have come and gone through the eons?
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Missing words are “but” and “what”.
Sure, her faith as a Christian is not subject to scientific scrutiny, but her YEC faith certainly is as it makes claims that can be checked with a scientific approach. If she was really interested in looking at ideas or claims through the lens of rigorous science, she would have abandoned YECism a long time ago or at least adopted Todd Woods honest position at the moment.
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I know nothing of geology, but are you certain? I can see nothing in the text or the other pictures that indicate anything other than they formed on the limestone bedrock. I don’t know one rock from another, but there’s that yellow layer(which is what if not limestone?), and then alternating black and white. Unless you’re not talking about speleothems, or I’m just confused per usual.
Death, death and more death? No. One time was enough. But thank you for at least focusing on the events of time. Time itself is only as meaningful as the events in it, imo.
Reminds me of the clerics who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.
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