Discussion: Possibly of an advanced CULTURE or proto-Civilization at the end of the PREVIOUS ice age

I've toyed with the idea that one reason we have never found our famous lost civilization (LC) is that it wasn't a global wide organization, didn't have modern technology and arose around 130,000 years ago just at the end of the previous ice age, not the last one but the one before. Said culture would have been no larger than had been Sumer or say the Hittite's and they didn't develop writing or pottery. (thereby officially not being a civilization).

By being so far back its remains would have had longer to decay and one of the key indicators of cultures and the easiest to find; pottery would be missing.

So what I'd like the fine folks on ATS to do is look at the time frame from 130,000 to 80,000 years ago and ask - what was going on then. What could we have missed?

Thanks

a reply to: Hanslune

Interesting take - piques my interest.

I'll be interested to see what some of the historians/archaeologists have to say.

I have always said and thought that if there were advanced cultures during the last Ice age (or the one before) then whatever they would have built would have been ground to dust by glaciation or sunk due to rising sea levels.

Remember the South American Indians which communicated with string and knots.. It was more an accounting system but it worked.. We think of writing as ..."writing".... but that is not always the case as I am sure you are well aware of.. S^F for getting the thought process to working here at 4 am

originally posted by: 727Sky
I have always said and thought that if there were advanced cultures during the last Ice age (or the one before) then whatever they would have built would have been ground to dust by glaciation or sunk due to rising sea levels.

Remember the South American Indians which communicated with string and knots.. It was more an accounting system but it worked.. We thing of writing as ..."writing".... but that is not always the case as I am sure you are well aware of.. S^F for getting the thought process to working here at 4 am

Well that's the problem only a small percentage of the world's surface was covered by glaciers and even then stuff (stone tools) would have survived and ended up in the debris.

So where would those devil's be hiding. One aspect of this is try and figure out how the earth was different in that time frame - or was the earlier ice age repeated by the latter? (ie covering the same areas, etc.

I'm particularly interested in the rivers then - because for us we arose along and around them - could the same have occured back farther?

a reply to: Hanslune

You pretty much highlight the problem i have with this idea - that this "Civilisation" is likely not what we define as a civilisation, so it's a lost culture which is already not what folk want. Essentially we have nothing on "them" to work with except the suggestions of folk who don't believe in hammer-stones (claps hands, and says "i DO believe in hammerstones, i do!" - a hammerstone dies every time someone says "advanced ancient technology")

If their techniques somehow survived from 80kya to be used anywhere from the mesolithic to the bronze age, then they were passed down many, many generations with no practical application (ie architectural skills were unused, advanced tools were not used) until it supposedly resurfaced thousands of years later after the last ice age (when we were building huts from bones and hazel branches and making points from bone and microliths) to be used on the typically suggested sites of AE, The Americas etc.

a reply to: Hanslune

Yep, without water there is no life.. Those who like to refer to the earth as "Mother Earth" have a very limited understanding of just how violent a place this home world can be.. Not to mention bugs that seem to like to kill us or eat us..

A time machine even if it only allowed a virtual presence would be really something, would it not... Many questions could be answered... Or classified so only a few would know ? Typical government B.S. in that case..

I don't see any reason to push civilization back that far. They are having a hard enough time wrapping their heads around gobekli tepi. At the end of the day, without written records I lose interest quickly. What we do have around 130k years ago is a whole bunch of nothing. A few sparks of creativity around 50k years ago then a whole lot of nothing again until about 20k years ago?

I would like to learn more about "the deluge," and how people got to the Americas other than the conventional Clovis / Siberian land route theory. Oh and the harrapan civilization.

That being said people would be mistaken to think progress is linear. It's not. It could very well be that around 130k years ago a civilization flourished and expired but alas, without those written records it would mean so very little.

On a side note.... How long would a microchip preserve in say.... A permafrost situation?

originally posted by: nukedog


That being said people would be mistaken to think progress is linear. It's not. It could very well be that around 130k years ago a civilization flourished and expired but alas, without those written records it would mean so very little.

On a side note.... How long would a microchip preserve in say.... A permafrost situation?

One of my 'things' is palynology, and I've extracted a fair amount of pollen from swampy and lacustrine sediments.

Pollen preserves exceptionally well in a variety of environments and I would expect the pollen record to contain some sort of 'marker' of a previous civilisation/culture (which, for all the known civilisations, it does).

Certainly this is beyond my scope, however, due to the immensity of the collection/lab work/research/analysis required.

Fascinating idea, Hans.

For my money, palaeoshorelines would be a good place to start. However, based on the evidence we have so far, it seems we are the apex of Homo sapiens sapiens culture.

a reply to: nukedog

I agree with this completely. Haven't there been discussions on ATS regarding ancient written records, like the Crystal tablets of Thoth or I had also heard about golden tablets hidden somewhere in South America? They supposedly contain written accounts of this very topic.

I do believe that human civilization has risen and fallen during this time period, we know where the last ice ages occurred, where the most glaciation occurred, areas in the sub tropics would be ideal locations to habitat. These may be good places to look. And if we are talking 2 periods of glacial melt, erosion and Ocean sea-level rise and fall over that time span, we may be looking at VERY little of what remains.

a reply to: Hanslune

I would presume that the series of glacial dams that have burst over the ice ages would also do a bit of cleaning and burying.

a reply to: nukedog

If it resembled a microprocessor made today, it would last for a very long time as they're mostly silicon.

Stone tools can't be dated , and I'm sure all the advanced civilisations have been long drowned by the oceans.

Some of the gigantic monolithic stones at the lower levels at Baalbek and in Peru--those things would outlast steel and concrete. What would be left of NYC after 100,000 years of absent human civilization?

a reply to: Hanslune

Well then Hans,
What was going on 100-80k years ago?
In Europe HSN ruled the landscape, with their moustrian tool package they were developing in to two distinctive cultures. A western and eastern culture, apart from contemporary HSN cultures in north Africa, the Levant and the Caucuses, and very likely in east Asia as well.
In India an archaic group that was not HSN was making Olduwan and auchelean tools, they might have been denisovans(late heidlgergensis). In the highlands of the sub continent a culture was making olduwan tools the same way they had for several hundred thousand years, and continued to do so until about 5k years ago, these people also never developed a progectile technology.
In Ne Asia the first modern humans have shown up in China absorbed/replaced the indigenous archaics, whom had been there for almost a half million years.
The first modern humans were working their way down through se Asia on their way to Australia.
In island se Asia homo erectus was roaming around ,in a newly evolved gracile body, still making their auchelean tools.
Meanwhile in Arabia a colony of humans was "stuck" on the penninsula, strangely enough making moustrian tools, just as they were in the Levant and north Africa.
In se Africa, modern humans were learning to make beads and adorn themselves with other forms of personal art, such as body painting.
I some places trade networks were already established, as raw materials from far away sources can be found in the assemblages.

a reply to: punkinworks10

Nice. That seems to be a pretty spot on and remarkably concise summary based on current knowledge and estimates. I'm still holding out hope for a city/proto-city with nice mud brick or stone structures from some impressively ancient time, thousands of years older than Jericho or Çatalhöyük.

If you look at the numbers...

The first separation of man causing the first migration wave estimately 200.000 ago, creating the first isolated populations, which spawned at least 3 sub types of man. Homo Neanderthal, Homo Denisovan and Homo Sapiens.
The second migration wave estimately 140.000 years ago reuniting them and adding more isolated populations right up to the last wave migration estimately 65.000 years ago...

During this time all Homo populations could have formed more advanced cultures dozens of times before Homo sapiens even existed.
Homo sapiens had about 55.000 years to advance, and fall multiple times, only to be forgotten in time.
It seems some rather life changing events take place every 26.000 years or so that cause human populations to decline rapidly, and even go extinct in most places.
Volcanic catastrophic events, meteor impacts, climate change and disease...

Even the last 10.000 years gave us cultures that developed a very advanced way of life. Like the Indus valley people building apartment buildings, with multiple story buildings, natural air conditioned buildings, flowing water and plumbing system.
This was before Sumer... A total loss of most of the technilogical and scientific knowledge, several times after that. We only grow our accumulative knowledge back since the Renescance, that has lead to our current technological advanced civilization. It took us only a couple of centuries, which is a very short time, considdering man has been pretty much the same since 65.000 years ago.

Despite all that.

Evidence gets eroded away by sand, water and corrosion. Entire cultures vanish by ice, crushing everything, and flush away by melting water and flooding from sealevel rise.

Hardly anything but stone survives these things and only where conditions provided the right situations for it not getting wiped off the map, or getting buried underneath anything.

If you look at the products we use, only few will simply be around long enough, let alone be able to tell a story of ancient events that might have been taking place.

Modern day man is short sighted, selfish, arrogant and out of touch with nature. All the conditions are right for us to believe ware the absolute best of civilization since our first appearance.

So maybe we are the first to burn fossil fuel en masse. I don't think the ability to burn lots of stuff to gain energy is proof for our superiority. In fact, the separation with nature, and our destruction of it in any possible way, don't look like anything much to me. It shows how much we actually fail at maintaining a healthy world for generations to come. That is not proof of superiority whatsover, if you ask me.

I think it's more likely for an older global civilization to have existed beyond our knowing, then the notion, we are superior to other past man's accomplishments.

Purely conjecture, but I've often wondered if the answer is this: There are aliens here, and we are them. Imagine a group with the tech to make the trip here, but not to know the volatile nature of the planet...like a family who lives in Hawaii and is tired of the volcanoes, so they move to California; only to be pleasantly surprised by frequent earthquakes....would certainly explain some of the anatomically modern skeletons which were supposedly " dated incorrectly " at an age prior to the accepted rise of homo sapiens

a reply to: Hanslune

I still don't rule out a huge civilisation existing but also don't see why smaller sophisticated enclaves of humanity couldn't have existed at the same time as the world is a huge place but man's curiosity is huge also and he is daring and ingenious.

Three books have fascinated me with their author's theories, these are not recognised top notch scientists although Paul LaVoilette is a Ph.D. His book Earth Under fire about the Ice Age poses more questions alongside a number of answers put forward. Where he scores is that his knowledge of the cosmos and the ancient's view of living within it and reflecting what happened in the sky back onto earth and them, has been completely lost to today's scientists because of church influence and certain Emperors perception of the common man having the same advisors as him and thereby able to fortell his death etc etc.

Whether we like it today or not astrology and the study of the cosmos was their book of reference and they lived by it, today we have lost the dictionary for their understanding of it and how they applied much of it. I suspect many of those burnt at the stake were astrologers who did advice the papacy - which undoubtedly had its own astrologers and may still have.

Frank Joseph 'The Lost Civilisation of Lemuria' is a fascinating book and his research is particularly interesting with the examples he shows. His research covers the Southern Hemisphere and starts with a little story about the amazing similarity between the costume worn by two little girls doing an ancient dance from their separate cultures and literally wearing the same head dress and clothing with similar movements. When one realises that these cultures were from opposite sides of the earth and the distance between them, there is no explanation other than that of mutual trade and community from a very distant past tht both cutlures have maintained within their folk-law. A word we take for granted and belittle perhaps.

Finally a book from Christopher Knight and Alan Butler 'Civilization One' cover perhaps the most compelling argument for a pre civilisation we know precious little about or a group of separate sophisticated cultures that all communicated
This book deals with the Megalithic Yard and its use throughout the world. It deals with the weights and measures that ancient people used and are still in use today. Its the fact that they all used similar or identical weights and measures seems to indicate a unification we cannot explain. This was the means of measuring trade which we know flourised around the world between different cultures and has continued throughout the ages. Its something I haven't seen discussed but has a huge bearing on the way humanity functioned in unison.

I do believe that the current information we have from academia , is literally filtered through the universities and their funder providers alongside religious and governmental interests. However once one learns the 'language to be used in order to pass exams' one has cracked it and nevertheless does well. However, one can't then easily break out of this language and the information it allows. We all know of scientists who have tried to break the mould and suggest other theories. They are literally destroyed by those comfy within their university seats and outside positions and who are determined not to rock the boat. This is why we have needed and have acquired a wealth of good researchers not blighted by the law of academic language and thinking, who have brought other theories to our attention. These people get ridiculed and made to look idiotic by the media interviewers - if they get onto the 'front page' of the public's attention, so we have the current stalemate with the odd chippings at the corners of our current 'acceptable views' on our past. The media and jaded scientists also love to denigrate someone for posing a theory that gets disproved and someone falls from grace reputation wise. The ability to forgive mistakes and their admittance especially in published authors is a shame because it often means that their research, although it took a turn in the wrong direction is very hard to bring to the public's attention once they are back on track.

One last thing that is important at least to my thinking is that we have had relatively little upset over the last couple of thousand years. True we in the UK had the Thames freezing up and a mini ice age, but its only recently that the earth has started to 'play up' weatherise and cause destruction. We are also polluting it and are learning about our mistakes as our science advances. However a lot of things like the totem poles of ancient peoples and their histories speak of mayhem coming from the sky. We have the mereorite that hit Siberia nearly 100 years ago but very little of what is recorded in folk law about other happenings that would have affected our planet and caused the upheaval to destroy civilisations and much of the sremnants of them. We seem to be going through a time of near misses from meteors and I wonder how long our luck will last out as we know from scientific models that a thump into the earth destabizes our vulcanoes and sets off chains of matter that is capable of blocking our sun for considerable periods of time and certainly enough to destroy the food chain for a good few years and kill vast numbers of people.

a reply to: Hanslune

Interesting discussion, one of my favorites. I'll submit the following from one of my earlier threads. Coastlines during the height of the last ice age were much further out then they are now. That's where we should start looking, Those ice age coastlines. Not only there but in other locations as well....

Lost Civilization beneath the Persian Gulf Confirms Genesis History of Humanity

In almost every culture and religion of the world lies a story of a lost civilization. The Greeks told the tale of a sophisticated island nation suddenly submerged. However, the Greeks were not the only people group to embrace an Atlantis-type legend; many cultures recounted the lost-city-beneath-the-sea scenario. The ubiquitous nature of these stories, accounts, and legends lends credence to the possibility that in the early days of humanity’s history a relatively advanced civilization was indeed lost.

Now, a research paper published in Current Anthropology provides scientific evidence for such a lost ancient civilization, evidence that confirms much of Genesis 1–11’s historical account of humanity’s early days.1 University of Birmingham archeologist Jeffrey Rose reports on the discovery, conducted over the past six years, of over sixty new archeological sites along the shoreline of the Persian Gulf. All of these sites are dated as older than 7,500 years. Rose states that “these settlements boast well-built permanent stone houses, long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and even evidence for one of the oldest boats in the world.”2 In 2006, archeologist Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tubingen in Germany uncovered the remains of three different settlements that date between 25,000 and 125,000 years old at the base of Jebel Faya in the United Arab Emirates.

In his paper, Rose points out that during the late Pleistocene epoch (150,000 to 12,000 years ago) reduced sea levels periodically exposed the “Gulf Oasis.” The Persian Gulf receded to such a degree as to bring above the surface a landmass as large as, or larger than, Great Britain. Rose explains that this landmass was well watered by four large rivers flowing at the time: the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Batin. Additionally, the region was watered by fresh water springs supplied by subterranean aquifers flowing beneath the Arabian subcontinent. Such an abundant and well-distributed supply of fresh water combined with the region’s warm weather would have supported a lush agricultural enterprise.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: Hanslune

I would presume that the series of glacial dams that have burst over the ice ages would also do a bit of cleaning and burying.

I've toyed with the idea of South American Ice dams giving way and washing over the infamous site at Pumapunku, The site shows extreme devastation from massive flooding inmho, Outside of the Pacific and a massive tsunami the only other source would be the ice caps of the Andes, they too had massive ice build up during the last Ice Age and there too as here in North America may have had ice dams that gave way flooding out the terrain below.

But of course, that would mean the site is as old as Poznanski conjectured at or around 15,000 B.C.

a reply to: Hanslune

What about a plate shift so large it swallowed most of that known civilization?

Any other catastrophic events happen around that time that could lead to or cause a shift that could theoretically account for such large plate movement?