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

a reply to: nukedog

Sorry Nukedog I seemed to have missed your earlier post.

Even if the civ did have a written language we wouldn't be able to read. You cannot read a script if you don't know the language on which it is based.

originally posted by: 6Taco6Smell6

originally posted by: nukedog

without those written records it would mean so very little.

The Inca didn't have written anything yet they were amazing architects and seemed really advanced. That's like saying an animal has no purpose because it doesn't have a social security number.

Right and neither did the builders of Stonehenge, or the harrapan civilization (we think), or the chavin. All great civilizations that we know very little about. A written language, that is decipherable, gives us something though.

I agree that if we found something that far back that was written it still wouldn't help much. That's why I said that stainless steel plaque would need to be in English.

originally posted by: 6Taco6Smell6

The Inca didn't have written anything yet they were amazing architects and seemed really advanced. That's like saying an animal has no purpose because it doesn't have a social security number.

Pumapunku screams higher knowledge of building techniques, stone work/masonry, engineering and astronomical alignment, yet, the builders [Which are still argued over as to who exactly they were and when they existed] don't get the booby prize of being defined as a civilization.

I know this will sound WAY out there but for all anybody knows....

Maybe, just maybe, those cone headed weirdoes used mental telepathy and simply didn't need an archaic written language to convey their thoughts.

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 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

Don't forget other non-written forms of communication.

They may have commemorated events and happenings, plans for the future, worship of idols or deities, using acoustics.

Sounds made using instruments, or structures engineered to produce various harmonics (like some of the archaeological sites have been found to do in Ireland and Malta)...this may have been the main form of storytelling, or passing on of historical information, not using language or the written or drawn word, but using unique sounds and frequencies.

Maybe.

a reply to: SLAYER69

Slow down there. I never said they don't qualify as a civilization.

My point is, if we found any civilization prior to the ice age we wouldn't be able to take away much from it.

I have about 48 hours of ancient history on my podcast. The chavin, the harrapan and the builders of Stonehenge combined make up about an hour of that.

I'm not knocking any civilization. However fascinating they are, without written records we are stuck looking at a pile of rocks and trying to figure out which stars they aligned it to while somebody runs around and screams aliens at the top of their lungs.

originally posted by: Hanslune
a reply to: SLAYER69

Good post but what information do we have on coastlines as of 130-80k?

That just it. The location in the article link I posted spoke of how the Gulf has been flooded several times during the Pleistocene epoch 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago. The other location and has been peaking my curiosity lately is this now submerged location.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3a77b78bf36c.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3cc6c6ffe5e8.png[/atsimg]


We both know there were Homos during those periods and they, like us, migrated, so why wouldn't they have simply walked to certain locations that are [on our present day Earth] are either isolated locations by ocean rises or [the path they took and possibly settled in] are simply now submerged due to again, ocean levels rising since the ice age melt off.

Like the Gulf region in the article, these areas, and others, could have been exposed and flooded several times due to oceans falling and rising depending on Glaciation.

a reply to: SLAYER69

Yes perhaps a version of telepathy, or maybe they were even more advanced than we give them credit for...perhaps they invented paper and inks thousands of years before we imagine they were invented..perhaps they were just rediscovered by the Chinese in the year 105...

IF these ancient cultures had in fact developed complex writings skills and methods, similar to our own today, it's not surprising we don't find any traces today. Not every culture carves writing and glyphs into long lasting stone and rock, we ourselves tend to have our important writings on paper and textiles, and since the digital age, stored electronically in the majority of cases.

When we do carve into rock and stone, it is normally for things like memorials, grave stones and war monuments etc...even graves and memorials just a couple of 100 years old are so weathered and worn, it is difficult to read the text on them, or even to recognise the lettering after only a relatively short period of time.

If we're talking about many tens of thousands of years...even carved lettering would probably have vanished unless specially preserved.

Paper and paper-like materials would not survive the passage of time unless carefully and deliberately stored in a way that would preserve them, maybe there is a cave or underground structure acting as a kind of time capsule that might one day reveal a cache of preserved documents...maybe their encyclopedias or libraries.

a reply to: Hanslune

I like the hover full of eels - Civilisation One is well worth a read and I recommend it to you.

Whenever I see the weather forecast and the lay of the land today I seem drawn the the huge 'gap' between the UK and Europe and find it hard to imagine Doggerland and its once occupied lush areas of people and settlements.

Something that has always intrigued me is that I can't help that inner feeling that people always kept some form of animal long before farming to give milk to youngsters for their growth etc. I don't think that animal husbandry was in any way haphazard and groups of people kept animals for food, clothing even needle making from their bones. Man is so versatile and clever that only a catastrophe of some kind would have meant he would not have had a few animals kept within his groups for their necessity, especially when one could not guarantee the hunt or capture of milk provision for his youngsters, he knew exactly what plants he needed and animals to keep his group healthy.

a reply to: MysterX

The Assyrians knew the importance of maintaining records on baked clay. After all, they had thousands of years worth of records to read anytime they wanted.

Even as Akkadian, written on lamb skin replaced it they kept double records in Sumerian on baked clay.

Just throwing it out there

a reply to: nukedog

If a civilization is as old as is being speculated on here and they did in fact live along those now submerged coastlines their clay tablets would have been submerged as well.

Finding ancient dry clay tablets on land is hard enough already, just imagine trying to find even older ones underwater and a few miles from our present coastlines.

a reply to: SLAYER69

Gold?

originally posted by: nukedog
a reply to: SLAYER69

Gold?

Heh, Heh

There was a thread a few months back discussing such a scenario and how possibly the Spanish during the conquest of the New world and their Gold fever may have inadvertently melted down possible ancient relics [Which were made of Gold] not knowing what they were destroying were valuable ancient artifacts. Since Gold stands the test of time etc etc etc. An advanced Ancient race would know this too...


We will never know

a reply to: SLAYER69

Actually, during the Eemian interglacial, sea levels were 20-40 ft higher than they currently are with temperatures about 4-8 degrees warmer than the average temps for the last 1000 years based on ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica so any civilization or cultures thriving at that point would be on dry land with coast lines rather different than they are currently.

originally posted by: SLAYER69
Spanish during the conquest of the New world and their Gold fever may have inadvertently melted down possible ancient relics [Which were made of Gold] not knowing what they were destroying were valuable ancient artifacts.

They did destroy nearly all records of the history of the people they conquered. Probably the most valuable items of all.

a reply to: peter vlar

Eemian interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago) would still leave plenty of time within Human history for migration and coastal developments *now submerged, If we base that on our own present understanding of the timeline of our modern 'civilization' developing within the last 10 to 15 thousand years.

All presently known cradle Civs, Indus Valley, China, Egypt, Sumer and now Caral-Supe in Peru supposedly only go back to their earlier Culture stages no earlier than a few thousand years before being recognized as civilizations.

Then, of course, we have Göbekli Tepe

a reply to: peter vlar

Actually, during the Eemian interglacial, sea levels were 20-40 ft higher than they currently are with temperatures about 4-8 degrees warmer than the average temps for the last 1000 years based on ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica so any civilization or cultures thriving at that point would be on dry land with coast lines rather different than they are currently.

Just how technologically advance are we imagining our hypothetical civilisation to be?

If were speculating about a possible civilisation thriving at or around 130,000 ya, it's also possible (following a non-linear developmental scenario) that this civilisation were not only highly technical like we think of the Aztec or Incas, Sumerians or Assyrian, Indus valley and so on, but say they were different to, but more similar to our own current levels of technology than the other ancient cultures we consider to be high tech.

If they were similar in tech to ourselves, there's absolutely every possibility that our 130,000 yo civilisation lived on the water and the dry land....floating cities and such would be a sensible option for a high tech culture where sea levels are significantly higher than they are today.

We are already designing and building sea based habitats ourselves..who's to say it hasn't been done LONG before? It would be hard to find evidence of these sea based cities i expect, but it's not impossible for a suitably technological culture to have devised and engineered such things.

I agree that the most likely place for a lost civilization would be at the bottom of the ocean. Runners up for me would be obliterated by volcanic explosion/buried under lava flow, wiped out to sea by river/valley flooding (ice dams to simple high rain/hurricane/low pressure system flooding comes to mind)
Aside from those, it's quite possible we just haven't uncovered them on land yet. We still have a lot of unexcavated areas of deserts, rainforests, boreal forests, steppes left to examine. The Russian taiga could be hiding anything, and so could Canada's vast forests. The Sahara could still be hiding an entire culture we never knew about somewhere under the sands. The Amazon hasn't given up all her secrets yet. We still have a lot of places left to search through yet

a reply to: SLAYER69

You're absolutely correct in that. I was just about to edit my post to add that just because were discussing this particular time period, that doesn't rule out later sites that are now underwater. I've always thought that we were missing out on a lot of important sites from the last 40-50 KY as a result of current sea levels. It's unfortunate that underwater archaeology is so expensive, difficult and time consuming as well as taking a back seat to the few resources available to working sites on dry land. I was just trying to stick with the period Hans was speculating about.

a reply to: SLAYER69

Must be why we were so busy mining gold 200k years ago lol.

Much shocking! 200k year old civ discovered!

As for the spaniards melting down precious gold calendars, I would hope at least a few of the locals would have been smart enough to stash the gold somewhere. Like in a cave maybe....
UFOS and underground tunnels

Seems like we need to ask the Mormons if we can look at any though
Sneaky Mormons!

Ice Core records:

There was a WWII bomber that crashed in Antartica. When they found it - 50 years later the ice build up using their dating methodology suggested it had been there for at least 10,000 years!