How Old is Civilization

~7000 years ago seems to catch both the "main" definitions of civilization - that of an agrarian lifestyle, and that of an urban lifestyle.

Humanity first needed to learn how to farm. Fertile lands would result in a population boom, which would result in a rather large (for the time) amount of people living together off the land. This would be something of a small town or village. Their homes would probably be made of mud, wattle, or hide, possibly sod, depending on what was at hand. However, since in all likelihood, these farmers weren't terribly advanced in their techniques, the soil would give out and hte community would disperse. their homes were eithe packed up, or rotted away.

The exception would be the farmers on lands that were frequently renewed - River basins, forexample. The people of the Nile, Mississippi, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, and Yangtse all ejoyed seasonal flooding that would bring new fertile soil to their farmlands. Thus their communities would not disperse after a few years, but instead continued to grow. They began using more permanant lodging in the form of hewn wood, stone, and baked bricks.

Of course, each river would have more than one tribe of farmers dwelling on it - plenty of dirt for everyone, right? These growing settlements would eventually meet and converge, necessitating the invention of "Law" rather than "tradition" - originating in the form of trade standards, perhaps a rudimentary joint language, and eventually, civil law codes.

Perhaps "civilization" is more aptly described as the intigration of non-familial tribes into a single "national" body?

Byrd, i must say that you are probably one of the most intelligent people on this site. But i feel so sorry for you, i have seen you debunk these artifacts in more than 3 posts. Good work for denying ignoracne, it must get tiring.
Abovetopsecret award.

People seem to be placing words into my mouth.

I am not claiming, that how History Books display things is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, however there is not enough evidence for it to be challenged.

If people are claiming Civilization began 20,000 years ago, 100,000years ago and so on and so fourth they need to challenge the existing evidence. On the methodology used, the evidence they have found and so on and so fourth - until you do this, their is no debate. Personal opinion, can not factor into such a debate when one side has evidence to back up their views.

If I went into a debate at College, in any of my classes on the basis of opinion I would get laughed at, by both my lecturers and the other students. We need to use facts, evidence and to display it and this is what the alternative theories lack - if you strongly hold belief that things such as the Pyramids are older than I suggest you begin to do as much research into the subject as possible and publish a paper. After all, that is part of what ATS is here for.

Challenge History but Challenge it with Evidence.

[Trust me, I don't agree it is 7,000-11,000 years old but much older myself however I am much more careful over what evidence I use to argue my point.]

I agree that human history is vastly older than the mainstream will accept now. I have read two of Graham Hancocks books on this subject, and his argument seems very hard to refute.

www.grahamhancock.com...

Check it out, or has anyone debunked this??

-- Boat

If you mean me, I wasn't meaning to put words in your mouth or anything, but took this part of your post,

He is making out, that history is wrong, he is trying to change history so he has to display the proof. My evidence is in this book...

to mean there was evidence, ie proof, of civilization's age. We may just have two different ways of looking at it; I'm not sure. The way I look at it, at least, is only that there is evidence that civilization was around back then, and that's all, you know? Again, sorry if I misinterpretted your post.

Originally posted by Odium
People seem to be placing words into my mouth.

I am not claiming, that how History Books display things is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, however there is not enough evidence for it to be challenged.

If people are claiming Civilization began 20,000 years ago, 100,000years ago and so on and so fourth they need to challenge the existing evidence. On the methodology used, the evidence they have found and so on and so fourth - until you do this, their is no debate. Personal opinion, can not factor into such a debate when one side has evidence to back up their views.

If I went into a debate at College, in any of my classes on the basis of opinion I would get laughed at, by both my lecturers and the other students. We need to use facts, evidence and to display it and this is what the alternative theories lack - if you strongly hold belief that things such as the Pyramids are older than I suggest you begin to do as much research into the subject as possible and publish a paper. After all, that is part of what ATS is here for.

Challenge History but Challenge it with Evidence.

[Trust me, I don't agree it is 7,000-11,000 years old but much older myself however I am much more careful over what evidence I use to argue my point.]

And what I was saying was that the very same evidence that scientists have been using to confirm their beliefs that civilization is only ~7000 yrs old may very well be MUCH older. The facts are that there are NO facts when it comes to the ages of these artifacts, as carbon dating can't work on something that doesn't contain carbon. And placing then at a certain time isn't effective either, because it's possible that someone found a much older tool and used it, and when they died it was left with them. Later on, scientists find it, and naturally assume that the item was their's, when in fact it was someone else's. See where I'm going with this?

Humans have such a narrow view of history because we only live out a very small portion of it, so it's our job to make sure that those people 4000 years from now remember what we did by preserving everything in as pristine a condition as we can.

TheBorg

How Old is Civilization?

Older than humanity.

I would guess, that some form of civilisation, began it's infancy, just prior to the last ice age , 70,000 give or take.
The Ice age began, and we returned to a hunter gatherer socieity, save for some technology that may have helped us through..
Most of the traces, other than some stories passed down from the remaining generations, were lost.. I include the elusive sources of the bible stories..that were eventually written, as to not be forgotten.

Like I said, the germinating seed of civilisation, has to hibernate for many many
thousands of years, before it could wake up, and prosper again..

reply to post by Merger


Sorry you feel that way, I feel though, that i MUST correct this theory of yours... it is not at all true... I don't know WHY you thought you were doomed for hell for all eternity, because JESUS saves... and that, by faith through grace, and nothing else...

So, then, there is no proof that "People or things came from sirius A" none whatsoever. I've been through all these things that you are going through, enough to realize that it is JESUS who sustains me and keeps me FIRM in the faith.

As for civilazation... it's about 6000 years old... That's about how long ago God created Adam from the dust of the earth and Eve from his rib

Originally posted by Odium

Originally posted by MarkLuitzen
there is proof enough that its much older than claimed currently.

I have asked you before and I will do again.

Display this proof, that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Civilisation is much older.

You wont find it because ( this is just a theory of mine(one of many lol)) its possible that the scientists are completely wrong on how long ago the earth was created. Isn't it possible that life on this planet has reoccured many times. Isn't it possible that civilization has ended many times and the planet went back to the beginning and life started all over again without the current civilization knowing about the past ones.

You wont find it because ( this is just a theory of mine(one of many lol)) its possible that the scientists are completely wrong on how long ago the earth was created. Isn't it possible that life on this planet has reoccured many times. Isn't it possible that civilization has ended many times and the planet went back to the beginning and life started all over again without the current civilization knowing about the past ones.

Good theory it just lacks evidence to back it up.

When I was an archaeology student in the early 1970s, all the faculty in lockstep discounted the hypothesis that the Norse had landed on or explored any part of North America. I strongly suspected that they weren't correct, but there really was no reliable evidence at the time. Now, 30+ years later, there is great evidence, and it is now an accepted fact that Vikings knew of, at the least, the Canadian Maritimes. Now, the struggle is over Phoenician visits to South America. No doubt in thirty more years that too will be an accepted fact - but only when verifiable hard proof comes to light. I first read about an ancient nuclear war in India as a kid back in the 1960s. This presents a different sort of problem because by the nature of the event, most evidence is long gone.

I personally think that there was a prototypical civilization that came into being during the warming period approximately 15,000 years ago. Then the Younger Dryas Event happened approximately 13,000 years ago (possibly caused by a small comet or asteroid impact) and smashed that very early civilization into oblivion, leaving only a few myths and some fragmentary knowledge of astronomy, agriculture and law.

I think as we get a little better at doing underwater archeology, and possibly as we start tracking DNA heritage better, a few real fragments of this early civilization will be discovered. At the moment, though, I completely understand and fully admit that it still sits primarily in the realm of conjecture.

Originally posted by spacedoubt
I would guess, that some form of civilisation, began it's infancy, just prior to the last ice age , 70,000 give or take.

I have a tendency to think that it wasn't until actual human beings evolved that we began to put our brainpower and efforts to use building a civilization. That would put it at not more than 40,000 years ago. After that, the human population would have to actually grow enough from a few thousand people to enough that would be considered a "civilization," rather than just groups of wandering nomadic tribes. So that would be at least another 20,000 years, in my book.

After that, we have enough people, and enough geniuses in the population, to start building permanent mud brick dwellings, organizing a royalty-driven government, establishing basic writing and laws, working on agriculture and domesticating animals, and so on.

Then the comet hits and we pretty much have to start from scratch again!

There were some maps that were made in the 16th Century that were based on earlier maps. They showed Antarctica's coastal outline before it was covered in ice.
There are the human footprints that the Leaky's own that are about 4 million years old. These footprints are on display and have not been explained. The primates that we are supposed to be descended from still had monkey feet.
Civilization is probably much older than is thought. There is some evidence, but no smoking gun.

It's funny how the scientific method seems to get thrown out the window by so many scientists, and therefore people who read a lot and use cold logic can come on here and pretend to be an expert.

You see, people have a supposed definition of how something SHOULD be, according to all their indoctrination and logic based off that indoctrination... so when they find something that seems out of place with that indoctrination, it seems that there is a struggle for a little while, and then eventually one fact gets replaced by another fact, which again gets replaced by another, then another, then another.... so what is a fact, if the facts are always changing?

How can anyone pretend to be an expert without sounding like a total egomaniac?

There are structures on other planets, for instance, that are clearly intelligently made and geometrical. There are MASSIVE structures underwater that have not been above water for thousands upon thousands of years, and are clearly geometrical and intelligently made... but the only way the "experts" can debunk this is by giving a complex reasoning why, in all their intellectual superiority, this can be explained away by simple natural processes. If it's so simple then why do you have such a hard time explaining it away simply?

These questions persist NOT because "we're not as IQed or edumacated as the mighty experts" but because, in all of our simple wisdom... we see expert opinion as elitist egotistical bull#!

When we see an apple, if apples were suddenly not supposed to exist, someone would offer an advanced mathematical calculation as to how what we actually saw was an orange, and through this advanced mathematical theory that only someone with an iq of 200 and 200,000 dollars worth of advanced training can understand, you actually saw an orange.... and if you don't accept that "fact" that's hand fed to you by the controllers of knowledge, then you are either insane or in denial of the facts.
The facts which change constantly every 30 to 50 years or so. So bull#, byrd. Bull#, whoever else. You know next to nothing, just like the rest of us. You are not more suited to better judge the ways of the world or the universe than anyone else. So people don't let "towering intellects" beat you down and make you feel as though your questions are naive. As a matter of fact, all answers are naive. Nobody knows what has really happened because history has been re-written so much, and common sense will tell you that the same # has been happening, just in different ages, since the dawn of "intelligent" man.

Can anybody even define what intelligence really is? Has intelligence made us kinder towards each other? Has intelligence made the world a better and more harmonious place to live in? It seems to me that the modern definition of intelligence is actually VERY stupid and narrow minded and simple in its outlook on reality and the nature of being, what has been, and what will be.

So, you're allowed your opinions, but don't state anything as fact anymore because you just don't really know, in the end. You just don't know.

Facts ARE fiction. In the end, they will all go away and be replaced by something else. Who's to say that civilization hasn't gone through just has many changes? In a day and age where we don't even have a clear idea as to what is happening HERE and NOW, to pretend to know definitively even what happened last week is BLASPHEMY! Let alone how old the Earth is or how old Civilization is or that aliens are not all over the place, or the composition of Uranus, or any of these consensus "realities".

Ignorance denied. I denied buying into ignoring the fact that facts never stay facts for very long. Power to the people!

my hands are reeaally cold







then heat them up you idiot
:fl ame:
how old iz civilization huh
:fl ame:

Originally posted by Esoteric Teacher

How Old is Civilization?

Older than humanity.

Well I have my own theory about this. I might be very much wrong but these are just my thoughts.

• Why cant civilization have their own time wheels or life cycles?
  
• What if this civilization what we live right now is evolving and may have a saturation or end point?
  
• Considering the dinosaur time was end of some other civilization where the normal earthly creatures are changed to some huge beasty dinosaurs because of mutation..!
  

reply to post by dunwichwitch


Fantastic post and absolutely correct! I salute you,my good sir


Star for you, Ignorance successfully denied

I forgot about that post. I'd like to apologize to byrd. I must have been in a cynical mood that day. I did make a good point though, I think. Sorry byrd! Your guess is as good as mine!