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Mon 19 Jul, 2004 11:22 pm
The early days of known history... Egypt... Babylonia... Sumeria... Each of these cultures has a few in common. Fully developed linguistic and writing systems, judicial systems, social hierchary, etc. How is it there is no record of intermiteriary steps toward these developments, but rather they seem to appear over night?
Batteries have been found dating back over 2000 years ago. The first was in 1936, by Khuyut Rabbou in Bagdad. Since then, others have been found in Seleucia and Ctesiphon.
An ancient map dating 300 AD has been found detailing accurate coast lines of Antartica, but we have only recently discovered these through the use of sonar. The author indicates it was made from earlier versions.
The Library of Alexandria was burned to the ground, destroying texts on all the known history at that time. How far did it go back?
Monuments in South America and Egypt all sync up to the belt of Orion 10,500 BC. Why does the same date keep popping up?
Once lush, fertile lands, are now desert. Yet, this is before any modern causes of global warming.
Putting this all together, it does appear that sometime happened in the past, we have devolved as a society, and are now working our way back up.
Hypothisis:
There has already been a nuclear war sometime in the distant past. Society was at it's peak, and the early societies of Egypt, etc. were founded by the survivors of the pre-history society.
Sound crazy? Well, take into account the following:
1) Ancient writings show ships, flying machines, etc. when no such things should have existed.
2) Any steel remenants not affected by direct nuclear blasts would long gone just through natural erosion.
3) Would explain the sudden shift in global climate. Creation of deserts due to nuclear blasts, and formation of ice due to nuclear winter.
Well, for my first new topic post... Let's discuss!
This is something I've always been interested in.
Current scientific thinking is that humans have been relatively unchanged for the past 100,000 years or so. Then why is it that civilization as we know it didn't get rolling until about 5,000 years ago? What's so special about then? Why not 25,000 years ago? Or 75,000 years ago?
I would dearly love to see some real evidence about this.
Re: Pre-History Civilizations
TLomon wrote:The early days of known history... Egypt... Babylonia... Sumeria... Each of these cultures has a few in common. Fully developed linguistic and writing systems, judicial systems, social hierchary, etc. How is it there is no record of intermiteriary steps toward these developments, but rather they seem to appear over night? Over night? One can hardly call a proces spanning centuries overnight. Our main problem lies in the fact that there are few sources of information available when compared with thelength of the excistence of said civilizations... And why should anybody take up a stylus or a similar tool and start explaining how the concept of say a judicial system was born? Or how the hieroglyphs had evolved? Mind you, there were comparatively few literate people in those times.
Batteries have been found dating back over 2000 years ago. The first was in 1936, by Khuyut Rabbou in Bagdad. Since then, others have been found in Seleucia and Ctesiphon. Really? I'll have to check up on this, first time I ever heard of it.
An ancient map dating 300 AD has been found detailing accurate coast lines of Antartica, but we have only recently discovered these through the use of sonar. The author indicates it was made from earlier versions.
The Library of Alexandria was burned to the ground, destroying texts on all the known history at that time. How far did it go back? This I believe is one of the most cataclysmyc events in the whole of human civilization. I guess we'll never know how far back it went, or how much knowledge was stored in there...
Monuments in South America and Egypt all sync up to the belt of Orion 10,500 BC. Why does the same date keep popping up?
Once lush, fertile lands, are now desert. Yet, this is before any modern causes of global warming.
Putting this all together, it does appear that sometime happened in the past, we have devolved as a society, and are now working our way back up. Really? I'd say we need a deal more evidence of advanced civilizations before we can say so.
Hypothisis:
There has already been a nuclear war sometime in the distant past. Society was at it's peak, and the early societies of Egypt, etc. were founded by the survivors of the pre-history society.
Well, if we look at the scientific process we had to go thorugh until we as civilizations could build nuclear missiles... I'd say there should be SOME evidence of these civilizations. And besides... How many nuclear missiles would it take anyways before such a massive climate shift takes place?
Sound crazy? Well, take into account the following:
1) Ancient writings show ships, flying machines, etc. when no such things should have existed. [/color=blue] Less ancient writings show medusas, unicorns and dragons were no such things could have existed. Human imagination is a fine thing. Where are these writings located? And besides, shouldn;t there be blueprints and all for these ships? Where are those?[/color]
2) Any steel remenants not affected by direct nuclear blasts would long gone just through natural erosion.
3) Would explain the sudden shift in global climate. Creation of deserts due to nuclear blasts, and formation of ice due to nuclear winter.
Well, for my first new topic post... Let's discuss!
The problem stems from under-population. Civilization didn't start to fully prosper until medical and healthcare advances started lengthening the lifespan of people and creating a more stable infant mortality rate. Once the population started expanding, civilization did as well.
The subject post of the thread is the thesis for Erich von Däniken's 1970 book, Chariots of the Gods. The book enjoyed wide popularity for a little while, but has been thoroughly discredited for decades. Some ideas, like a hollow-earth, never seem to go away. The idea of lost civilizations always seems to find believers, though the evidence for them is neglegible. Atlantis and the Lost Continent of Mu are often believed to have been capable of wonders far beyond belief. Teleportation of massive stones to construct pyramids, and other structures is actually believed by some.
The oldest civilizations we know of centered in the Nile Valley, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, along the upper Ganges, and in Northern China. Each of these four developed their own version writing and literacy. Later, it is believed, that writing was also independently developed in Meso-America. The oldest civilizations seem to be those in rather close proximity in the Middle East. They did not "just appear" one day from nothing, but evolved over long periods of time.
Hunter-gatherers lived a nomadic existence, and left little evidence of their passing from one territory to the next. That doesn't mean that they didn't develop sophisticated social and cultural patterns. The idea of working together as a team to herd and kill is one requisite of social cooperation. The ideas of leadership, distribution of labor and gender roles, and what the group's place is in the universe all probably predate what we call "civilization". Those ancestors knew how to use fire, and to shape tools from their natural environment, they had language and an oral tradition. They domesticated the dog, and perhaps a few other animals. They recognized edible plants, and harvested them in season.
Somewhere along the line, after thousands of years, it occurred to a tribe, or perhaps a number of tribes, to try planting several varieties of edible plants close together. To tend the plants, they needed to reduce the area of their migration and shift from hunting to agriculture as the primary source of food. That in turn necessitated a change in social structure. Barter already existed during the long centuries of hunting/gathering, but with settled communities became the beginnings of a market economy. "We have corn, and you have grapes, lets trade for our mutual benefit." Property, beyond small personal items, became a more important concept. A means of keeping track of what was owned and owed had to follow. That in its turn accelerated the move toward wealth, and laws to protect it. Still nomadic tribes wandered around looking for the main chance, and they took to raiding the new agricultural settlements. To protect themselves the farmers needed military force as much as they needed a shaman to control the weather.
Step by step civilization grew up. Settlement made more leisure available, and so arts and crafts, and invention became more common. The number of artifacts increased and their density around settlements makes them easier to locate. The process that led from wandering to settled agriculture, and then to literacy took a long time, but the rate of change increased at a geometric rate, and that rate of change has with a few blips continued to the present. There has been more change in human affairs in the last fifty years, than from the time our ancestors left Africa until the renaissance.
Sorry Charley, lost civilizations are a non-starter, though the civilizations from which we have developed may have been much more sophisticated that generally believed. Trade, in particular, may have been more extensive and sophisticated and at an earlier period that we might think. The speed with which innovative ideas spread may be astonishing, considering the lack of fast transportation and communications systems.
15,000 years ago someone apparently built a pyramid on what is now Japan. We only found it recently (last year I think) because 13,000 years ago something happened that did more damage than a nuke or 50 could do.
Those damnable ice caps started melting.
Human civilization typically sticks close to the water. Of course, when the water moves uphill all those buildings tend to get permanently wet. And so we find what looks like a 15k year old pyramid underwater off the coast of Japan.
7500 years ago people lived around a large freshwater lake fed by rivers from Europe. But again that damnable rising water eventually found its way through a narrow strip of land (what we'd now call Istambul). A trickle turned to a river. A river to a flood. A flood to a torrent to make gods tremble as an ocean forces its way through a narrow space like the Clumps through a buffet line. The large freshwater lake was instantly turned salty. The fish died. The air was supersaturated with water and it rained for quite a long time as the lake's water levels rose 6" a night.
Someone probably had the bright idea of grabbing two breeding stock of every farm animal he owned and packing his family with 'em on a boat in hopes of riding it out. Maybe several people thought of it. And some succeeded, but they still had to start over. Whatever they had was lost.
And then of course you can go back to 1370 BCE where the Atlanteans had hot and cold running water in every home on one of their islands and were the one race the Egyptians to the south of them did not consider barbaric. Problem being that the hot running water was heated by the island itself. A rather large volcano which decided to blow itself off the face of the planet in the spanse of a couple seconds. Fortunately it gave some warning by bloating up first for a while. But nobody at the time had any clue how destructive it would be. It made Mount Saint Helens look like a pimple. Caused a bunch of horrific side effects. And some fellow named Moses took the opportunity to get out of dodge.
All that's left of that island is a crescent shaped hole in the ocean named Santorini (though also called "Thera" meaning "fear")
It is impossible to know how much technology we have lost in the past, but there's little to indicate we've ever come as far as we have now. Evidence (like the fact that we didn't suck up all the fossil fuels 20,000 years ago) says otherwise.
Fantastic reading, Asherman and limbodog. Shucks, you mean Robert Silverberg was wrong, too?
name doesn't ring a bell. Sorry.
Vanished Cities and Lost Civilizations, limbodog. Fascinating reading
I enjoyed the stories by Robert E. Howard. But then, I'm a barbarian at heart, maybe that's it.
I'd like to add to Asherman that there may have been centuries of overlapping lifestyle on particularly bounteous areas, tribes could settle down for a while and gather their fill before they moved on. Perhaps someone somehwere indeed figured that it could be possible to grow the food for themselves...
limbodog wrote:Human civilization typically sticks close to the water. Of course, when the water moves uphill all those buildings tend to get permanently wet.
When the water moves uphill I figure we all better start re-evaluating our commonly held notions regarding physics.
joefromchicago wrote:limbodog wrote:Human civilization typically sticks close to the water. Of course, when the water moves uphill all those buildings tend to get permanently wet.
When the water moves uphill I figure we all better start re-evaluating our commonly held notions regarding physics.
It does it every 12 hours.
Naj,
I'm sure there was plenty of overlap, because civilization didn't just happen, it evolved. Each generation builds upon the last. Actually, I don't believe there was much technological or cultural loss from the earliest human settlements. catastrophes come along every so often, but they don't totally erase what stood before. Santorini might well have been the model for Plato's Atlantis. Plato used Atlantis as a skeleton on which to hang his ideas and ideals, and shouldn't be too much relied upon. The "sunken monumental structures" off the coast of Japan may be a curious, but natural formation ... the jury is still out. Often things appear wondrous until they are looked at closely. There appears to be some persuasive evidence that the Black Sea was once higher, and that in pre-historic times the land blocking it from the Med broke, causing a flood of immense proportions. That flood may have been the prototype for a number of Flood stories common in the region. However, no world covering waters and no Noah's ark, even if a famous astronaut isn't convinced.
I really doubt the psychic prediction that a library containing all the lost wonders of mighty and long forgotten civilizations will be found buried in the sands beneath the Sphinx's paws.
Asherman wrote:I really doubt the psychic prediction that a library containing all the lost wonders of mighty and long forgotten civilizations will be found buried in the sands beneath the Sphinx's paws.
Thinking of what I sometimes find in my rooms ... ...
No, seriously, I only can agree with Asherman.
But writing such stories as Däniken did, had always filled those authors account ... through that part of history, with is generally thought to have existed.
(Writing that Charlemagne or the complete middle ages didn't exist, isn't very lucrative, but still a niche :wink: )
Actually, the idea for the post came from Discovery shows that I watched on cable. The nuclear war comment is what really amused me.
Besides, if there were many civilizations before, and they got wiped out by a nuclear explosion... I take it there would be many more survivors!
I read somewhere that all the genetical patterns excisting in mankind seem to have evolved from 26 or so people in africa.
Guess that nuclear war REALLY managed to wipe out everybody, huh?
I still feel that the contents of the library of Alexandria are probably some of the most valubale documents ever to be destroyed. A massive collection containing nearly all the known work of the great thinkers from before?
Imagine getting the entire texts of Parmenides, or thorough accounts of the Persian empire... Priceless stuff.
the observation that many dispersal route followed the then coastal environs and that all civilizations exist on an erosion surface means that archeologists have many years of work ahead of them to even find older settlements. Not everyone lived in caves, many proto civilizations built structures near the peri glacial lakes.
Limbo has the mechanisms down pat. Weve been in a series of glacial periods that wipe out traces of interglacial encampments.
Theres a lot of evidence in point typology. For hundreds of millenia, points ('arrowheads") remained pretty much the same, then , long aBOUT 30k AGO points began to evolve into better worked, resulting in different hafting and better tech, like breakaway points that exert greater finaL force onto game animals.
Also, Didnt the little horse and mammoth swculptures of the Gravettian predate 20000Yr BP?
If there were a nuclear blast , wed be able to detect the daughter products as remnant materials in kames or eskers (unless all the Nukes were made in the S hemisphere0 in that case, we dont see any long lived artificial daughter products . If we did, nobody'd keep this secret and even Deniken wouldnt have to stretch his theses of his "chariots..." series. He was just trying to make money and cash in on our need for tabloid literature.
There is a place in the submarine Gulf of Mexico off St Kitts I believe where theyve seen a roadlike plane called the "highway" Its similar to those in the med and off Japan. They are natural structures full of cracks that are propogated in the same directions as nearby cracks and joints in native rock. in other words no ATlantis is needed to explain.
Same thing with the Nazca lines. These can only be seen from a wspace ship (as Von D sez) Actually, they can be seen quite well from the hills across the valley where von Deniken took his pictures. They were probably a means of road conveyance or, in some cases, they were possibly irrigation troughs from a wetter time.
Give the old-timers credit for what they accomplished; after all they also have enough to live down...as we have. As for Däniken and others like him, they only prove that distortion can be a gold mine; it still amazes that so many people believe this kind of crap as though requiring a comfort zone away from actual history. I would consider it an injustice.
For moderns, time is speed but for the ancients time is torque, the slow-moving physicality and labor of men and animals; also, at it's best, the incredible organization, brain-power and skill that made the most of itself in the slowness of time meaning, I suppose, if there was any competition it was mostly in merit and that, to me, is the real wonder which created the ones we know of not to mention the far greater portion which is gone forever.
Asherman wrote:Naj,
I'm sure there was plenty of overlap, because civilization didn't just happen, it evolved. Each generation builds upon the last. Actually, I don't believe there was much technological or cultural loss from the earliest human settlements. catastrophes come along every so often, but they don't totally erase what stood before. Santorini might well have been the model for Plato's Atlantis. Plato used Atlantis as a skeleton on which to hang his ideas and ideals, and shouldn't be too much relied upon. The "sunken monumental structures" off the coast of Japan may be a curious, but natural formation ... the jury is still out.
There have been more then just the ruins in Japan that have been found, they have also found ruins off the coast of the Bahamas known as the Bimini Road. Where most of these types of ruins have been found are under water suggesting that these ruins were made during the last Ice Age when the levels were at a much lower point due to most of the Earths water being frozen. Could it be that there were civilizations before modern man? It seems that it is possible and only time will tell. The only issue I see with this is modern day scholars not being able to step away from their train of thought that what they know is the only proof. There needs to be a more open minded about said issues.
I almost forget to mention the fact about the sphinx. There is some proof being denied about the creation of the Sphinx. It is believed that the Sphinx was made about 5,000 years ago, but erosion around the Sphinx indicates that there is a large amount of water erosion in the area where the statue sits. The difference between water and wind erosion is large. Where wind erosion is horizontal, water erosion is vertical. While there is evidence of both there hasn't been the type of rain fall necessary to create water erosion of this type in over 10,000 years. Could it be true that the Sphinx is older then the rest of the buildings on the Giza Plateau?
I heard this theory and its very interesting. Human civilization is a big cycle. The human race propels forward in thinking and such until it eventually destroys itself (wars). Then, planet earth starts all over again and a world exactly the same is recreated later. This cycle goes on forever. This may be linked to the theory of "past lives" and maybe that strange feeling of deja vu we all encounter.
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