Mankind’s advances and setbacks

It seems to me that all through history mankind has built great civilizations and has achieved great technological feats. The Sumerian civilization, the Hindu culture, ruins at Baalbeck, Machu-Pichu and Yonaguni Japan just to name a few. Are things that mankind has achieved, but there is still is no satisfactory explanation as to how, who, when and most importantly, what happened. Now I know that there are a lot of high brow explanations as to this cause and that effect, and I must say they do not work for me. Because I figure if these people where smart enough to build these wondrous things in the first place then they where smart enough to overcome any thing as simple as food or water supply shortages. As I have been looking at mankind’s history the one thing that truly jumps out at you is the fact that every time we get to a point where we are getting to an advanced state (a society must first advance before technology can advance) we get knocked down, whether it is caused by war, or famine, or natural (?) disaster. The effect is always the same. We start over at a point that is below what we had achieved. We now know that the sea level is 395 ft (120 meters) higher than it was 20,000 years ago. Well a 395 ft (120 meter) raise in the sea level could easily hide countless cities, harbors, farms, factories, and temples that may have once existed in coastal areas as they do today.

welcome to ATS, interesting post

Civilization, mankind and the world in general is cyclical. Civilization will flow and ebb just as the tides do, both go hand in hand.

i agree. the question then is how far along the cycle did we get and what may we have forgotten?

well since history seems to repeat itself, I think we've forgotten quite a bit or in some situations, it more like selective memory, we remember only what we want. It's like how many more wars do we have to fight before we realize war isn't a good thing. This is strictly opinion so don't hold me to it, but I think morals in civilization is usually the major factor when it comes to society failing. When mankind ignores the basic fundamental spiritual morals of life, is when the cycle rushes to refresh itself.

do you mean to imply that morals must be spiritually based? if a person has a good sence of right and wrong must it be a religious realization?

Originally posted by jurasicdog
do you mean to imply that morals must be spiritually based? if a person has a good sence of right and wrong must it be a religious realization?

The Mayans wrote that we are about to enter the fifth sun, and have had four rises, peaks, descents, and this will be the fourth bottoming out. In a completely unrelated and anecdotal vein, the Vedas quote the same number, but they record numbers in the billions of years. Still, the fourth age, the Kali Yuga, the most depraved of the four ages, is supposed to now be upon us. In fact, the end of this Yuga is said to be near, which is the worst time of the worst age......... when I look around me, it would not at all shock me. It is pretty depraved out there right now.
In response to j-dogs query, yes and no. Imho, it is based in our spirits, but it does not require religiosity.....had to put that word in there. Isaac Asimov, the Sci-Fi author was a devout atheist, and his morals sounded solid to me when I watched an interview with him about this very subject.

He said he strives to be good cuz he wants the society he lives in to be enjoyable. That is perfectly logical, ethical, moral and simple. To me, atheists are just as righteous, spiritual, moral, and ethical as any follower of any faith or belief. I know it is still a subject of much debate which raises its head every day. My God's bigger than your God. Atheists don't believe in anything....etc. All that dissing. Being a Christian is no guarantee you'll pass the finals when you meet Pete. You might just get bumped by an atheist.

i was refreshed to hear your view point

Originally posted by jurasicdog
do you mean to imply that morals must be spiritually based? if a person has a good sence of right and wrong must it be a religious realization?

Morals do not need religion. Morals come from your soul and heart. Granted not everyone starts out with good morals and religion can help guide some of those who need guidance, but religion as we know it is not necessary imo. Morals can be taught in school, thru stories, fables, actions, events, etc.

imo all Religions try to force certain morals on you, some of which, if you look into your heart, without considering what your religion told you, you will probably find that you don't agree. It's been a long day, my husband is nagging and my words are out of reach, i'll get back to you

originally posted by Jurasicdog

"Mankind’s advances and setbacks

It seems to me that all through history mankind has built great civilizations and has achieved great technological feats. The Sumerian civilization, the Hindu culture, ruins at Baalbeck, Machu-Pichu and Yonaguni Japan just to name a few. Are things that mankind has achieved, but there is still is no satisfactory explanation as to how, who, when and most importantly, what happened. Now I know that there are a lot of high brow explanations as to this cause and that effect, and I must say they do not work for me. Because I figure if these people where smart enough to build these wondrous things in the first place then they where smart enough to overcome any thing as simple as food or water supply shortages. As I have been looking at mankind’s history the one thing that truly jumps out at you is the fact that every time we get to a point where we are getting to an advanced state (a society must first advance before technology can advance) we get knocked down, whether it is caused by war, or famine, or natural (?) disaster. The effect is always the same. We start over at a point that is below what we had achieved. We now know that the sea level is 395 ft (120 meters) higher than it was 20,000 years ago. Well a 395 ft (120 meter) raise in the sea level could easily hide countless cities, harbors, farms, factories, and temples that may have once existed in coastal areas as they do today."

It certainly seems so about the civilizations getting knocked down. Also tend to agree with another poster who said the events of different civilizations occur in cycles.
I see Jurasicdog's post about all these great "civilizations" who left their ruins for us to study but I dont see the information about what kind of social structure they had and the association with the way they lived or died. To my knowlege most of these civilizations were feudal in nature. Meaning that they had some kind of divine leaders or leaders whose reigns were blessed or sponsored by a priesthood giving them legitimacy. I doubt that in most of them the ordinary peon lived at a level of sustanance that we enjoy today. In most of them even royalty lived much poorer than a poor person today. Many of these "Advanced" civilizations fell to warfare from other "advanced " civilizations.
I see all this wonderment about Machu Pichu but never seem to hear whether they even had a language that is decipherable today. I only hear about the wonderment of ...How and why did they build this city up here??
What we know about many ancient civilizations is because of written records that can be translated for our knowlege and instruction today. Meaning they left language traces.

To me these people may have been smart...but I believe it was mostly a feudal society with certain smart intellectual people serving them for the purposes of the royalty ..not the society as a whole. A concept you can see today if you know where and how to look at this present civilization.
I am not very impressed with the ancient civilizations as a whole..yes some did wonderful things..and built huge cities and monuments for their day..but did little to raise the status or standard of living of the ordinary peon.

If you want to get a feel for todays issues among "Civilization" suggest for your reading a book like

Rescuorce Wars The new landscape of global conflict
by Michael T. Klare

Hubbert's Peak The impending world oil shortage
by Kenneth S. Deffeyes.

Here is where alot of future conflict will occur which will change the face of this world. Nothing new here by the way.
Many of us understand the concept of a oil shortage..but most of us never think that the nations which produce the most food for the other nations will not be able to do so ..if the oil doesnt flow. Translation of this is that with present world affluence in world food markets....with oil sources cut off many nations will face starvation if they cannot get access to food..and will go on a war footing to get it..or the energy to produce it.
The Orient is highly dependent on the western nations for certain food stuffs. This is not known by most people in the West.
Water resources will be another one..potable drinking water...already a important factor in many nations and reaching critical mass though this one is very downplayed in the news media. Drinking water is in short supply in the mid east..and especially in Israel..it will get worse in the future.

My point is facing these social supply problems..in the future..what recourse will civilized/intellectual nations take in the future to solve them against dwindling resource availability. What willl logical reasonable men do.???
Think it through!! Especially against a exploding world population.

Thanks,
Orangetom

wether the "peons" lived in poverty or splendor is only a small part of a much larger picture. the construction of most of these ancint megalithic structures would tax our best modern construction equipment. no to mention achieving a precision equal to of today. this bespeaks of a highly technological society with more than just one or two smart and talented people.

Originally posted by jurasicdog
wether the "peons" lived in poverty or splendor is only a small part of a much larger picture. the construction of most of these ancint megalithic structures would tax our best modern construction equipment.

Not hardly. We have machines that can lift items much larger and move larger items.

no to mention achieving a precision equal to of today.

Actually, they didn't.

Here's some closeups of the stone work:
guardians.net...

Or the Parthenon:
www.normjone.com...

...notice that not all the stones are as nice and square as our construction materials? Notice that they've had to add filler to the pavement and other places to adjust for all those tiny cracks and that the blocks aren't uniform in size?

Compare those to the evenly sized stones and more invisible joints in Salisbury Cathedral...
photos.runic.com...

And the to modern buildings like Bass Performance Hall, with their "uniformly accurate to a fraction of an inch" stonework and almost seamless joints:
www.wallachglass.com...

There's a lot of sites that make some silly claims about what the ancients could or could not do. I challenge you to go look at pictures in an objective way and see... are those rough-cut blocks REALLY straighter and more impressively uniform than the steps of the New York library or the pyramid in Las Vegas? And ask yourself what's so mystical about noticing where the pole star is and lining your north axis up with that?

Originally posted by Byrd
...There's a lot of sites that make some silly claims about what the ancients could or could not do. I challenge you to go look at pictures in an objective way and see... are those rough-cut blocks REALLY straighter and more impressively uniform than the steps of the New York library or the pyramid in Las Vegas? And ask yourself what's so mystical about noticing where the pole star is and lining your north axis up with that?

Go visit the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Look for yourself. It's big, and that is a technological achievement in itself. But look closely at the details. As mentioned above, the stonework is not all that impressive. Much is said about the fact they the Pyramids line up with true north. That is approximately true. But even after allowing for changes in the North Star after 5,000 years they are off of north, and the bases are not perfectly square.

The Egyptians invented surveying. They re-marked property lines every year after the Nile flooding. We know they were capable of better accuracy than found in the Pyramids. The question is not how did they achieve that level accuracy, but how did they screw up so badly in the layout? As for aliens -- if they are incapable of better accuracy than found in the Pyramids they are incapable of interstellar navigation. I can do better than that with my handheld magnetic compass.

Originally posted by Byrd
Not hardly. We have machines that can lift items much larger and move larger items.

I concur with everything that you said, Byrd. BUT....I was a heavy equipment operator for 13 yrs. and I beg to enlighten you. Just because we have machinery that can lift a boatload of weight, does not mean that we can put it where we want it. Take a truck mounted crane, for instance. I ran a 150 ton Bucyrce (sp) truck mounted crane with a lattice boom that was 90 ft. in length and a jib that was 20ft. Take the jib out, because that was only for reach, not lifting capacity. Even though we had a 90 ft. boom, to lift 150 tons, we had to take boom sections off to lift 150 tons not more than 15 ft. horizontally from the rear end of the truck!

As SportyMB says,"See My Point"!

I would love to think that we could correct anything from the past that could collectively be deemed a 'set-back' But I really don't think it is possible. Today's world is run on financial strength which IMHo is drastically wrong in itself. This world is build wityh money when all it was to be was a tool for goos and service. Greed currpts every facet of our lives now, and although I hate sounding pessemistic I don't see much that can right wrongs that have been made. We have to look isnide ourselves individually and just make the right choices to make our realities the right ones for us.

M@

Originally posted by jurasicdog

It seems to me that all through history mankind has built great civilizations and has achieved great technological feats. The Sumerian civilization, the Hindu culture, ruins at Baalbeck, Machu-Pichu and Yonaguni Japan just to name a few. Are things that mankind has achieved, but there is still is no satisfactory explanation as to how, who, when and most importantly, what happened.

The ones you cite were all overrun by cultures with better weapons, and frequently with better technology. A number of them suffered from being a theocracy, run by priests and temples, where dissent was not allowed and technical advances were frowned on.

Each one of them was entering a Dark Ages rather similar to the European Dark Ages when they were overrun.

...every time we get to a point where we are getting to an advanced state (a society must first advance before technology can advance) we get knocked down, whether it is caused by war, or famine, or natural (?) disaster. The effect is always the same. We start over at a point that is below what we had achieved.

Not quite true. Remember, the world isn't just ONE country and ONE civilization. While India was being hammered by invaders, China went serenely on its development path, and Egypt and Sumeria were on the rise. While the Maya were falling apart, Europe and the far East were on the rise. While Japan fell apart, China continued along. When the Aztecs were conquered by the Spaniards, Spanish and European and African and Far Eastern civilizations and technology were untouched and continued progress.

We now know that the sea level is 395 ft (120 meters) higher than it was 20,000 years ago. Well a 395 ft (120 meter) raise in the sea level could easily hide countless cities, harbors, farms, factories, and temples that may have once existed in coastal areas as they do today.

Underwater archaeology is a up and coming field. There's a nice program to produce marine archaeologists at Texas A&M, among others. And some of the digs on the oldest US sites on the Carolina coast are trying to figure out how to access material that's been submerged by the rising water.

Originally posted by orangetom1999
I see Jurasicdog's post about all these great "civilizations" who left their ruins for us to study but I dont see the information about what kind of social structure they had and the association with the way they lived or died. To my knowlege most of these civilizations were feudal in nature.

Eh... not exactly, but close enough.

I doubt that in most of them the ordinary peon lived at a level of sustanance that we enjoy today. In most of them even royalty lived much poorer than a poor person today.

Quite true for many cases (the poorest of the third world countries lead a more miserable life.)

I see all this wonderment about Machu Pichu but never seem to hear whether they even had a language that is decipherable today. I only hear about the wonderment of ...How and why did they build this city up here??

Certainly. They spoke Mayan (Quecha) and they left behind a lot of writing/pottery/decoration/etc. But only archaeology nerds know this stuff. I'm afraid the New Age folks are lazy and prefer to "channel" the information rather than learn to read the inscriptons.

I feel like adding to this post, I am not in the mood, to create a post about the technology, of mankind but I want to make a comparison here..

What I am starting to focus on with the technology of man, is how we are manipulating frequencies around us, and also how we can harness electricity and make it do magical things. From the end of WW2 up until now we have gone leaps and bounds with technology, computers, Fission, etc. etc. so many discoveries most of these breakthru's came from the military. Now up until 1945 technology did not develop like it is now in our modern day world. I am in no mood nor do I care to deal with a troll, that wants to question my opinion on this but the advancements we are making now vs's the past is amazing.

What I find interesting is this...

We are no closer to understanding the technology we live in... Yet we are making devices to utilize the frequencies and create electrical current in it, to operate machines that do magical things. This is just what the civilian world knows.

Yet all in all if you look at modern day technology we are more dependent on things we do not understand. We really do not understand how they work. That is also something that drives me crazy, you can ask a scientist WHY, and he is going to explain to you a measurement, but will not tell you why, when you ask him or her what ELECTRICITY IS or why it exists.

Yet we are creating machines that utilize electricity, efficient and effectively, as if we do understand it.

Something to me is just not adding up..

If you look at previous man made technology, nothing compares to what we have now in our modern life. Also the rate of technology expansion has never expanded as quickly as it is now.

I do not think it is alien technology, because even our greatest minds I do not think could descramble it, but I think their is some form of aspiration coming from some kind of advanced technology.

All of my research in history, and the history, of mankind, and his biggest change, all happens in and after ww2..

I think the Nazi's were either geniuses completely, who were 10-20 years ahead of the entire world, and we took that technology, and aspired from it, to create what we have now, which I highly doubt, no disrespect to Germans, some of the greatest minds I have met were German, but I think this is even bigger then them.

Yet I think that is why, magnetic propulsion has not been discovered yet, or mastered or however those crafts move, we cannot figure it out or reverse engineer it. Not to mention we prob. do not have the right material to make it.

I think Ancient civs that are buried under the sea's and oceans, may have utilized the same technology as us at one time, it really is not that hard to create electricity, and utilize it, Atlantis, was rumored to be inhabited with a civilization that was technologically advanced.

Yet this is what I do know, as I said, their is no other time, during written world and ancient history, where technology was so advanced. I mean we are just steps away from making a woolly mammoth.

Sadly thou, here is the thing, our ancestors, may have known more about the reality we live in then our current population on the planet.

I think this is my point, how can we be so technologically advanced yet, we still have no base on the moon, or we still have no advancement in propulsion to get us to and fro the planet to the moon and other planets, to explore it.

It just seems to me our focus is on the wrong items, you would assume our instincts would be to reach the stars, not focus on the technological advances we are experiencing now. So if we are aspiring to alien or not from our understanding technology is that something to fear or continue aspiring to?

Nothing can be proven in this post I am making except for the technology leap we have had from the mid to end of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st.

Yet we are no CLOSER to understanding Electricity or Gravity LOL

So in essence if you look at our technological leaps from the dawn of written history to now, we are very primitive...

It almost screams we have been inspired by something the last 60-70 years..