Originally posted by snafu7700
Originally posted by Byrd
Never before. And proveably so.
ok, then please prove it....beyond the shadow of a doubt i mean, in a way in which there are no "missing links" to account for.
In the first place, civilizations leave traces. Large populations require food to be grown and manufactured. This requires farming and/or mining
and/or fishing and all of those activities change the area. Chemical composition of farmed soil (even if it's just dug up, turned over, and a fish
stuck in the ground to make the corn grow better) is different than that of natural soil. Places where roads have been and building have been feature
compacted soil because heavy objects have been placed on them for hundreds or thousands of years.
They trade with each other (moving quantities of raw materials) and artifacts along roads (including waterways) and receiving areas (landing strips,
roads, docks) are built in the destination city to accomodate this. They throw things away and so we get rubbish heaps and garbage dumps where the
history of the area can be seen (and technological progress can be seen.)
People also tend to favor certain places to live because of the climate (almost nobody, for example, lived in Death Valley after it stopped raining
there.)
And because we're social animals and like the familiar, when disasters happen and our homes are destroyed (think Katrina), then we rebuild in the
same location.
So... IF the "multiple cycles" theory was true, we'd know about it because we'd find very old city sites (like say, Troy or Ur or Athens) where we
had many layers... the pottery and rubbish starting out primitive, moving to a very sophisticated level, then a layer of dirt and rubble (war and
abandonment and collapse) and then primitive pottery starting again and moving up through the technological development to bronze and iron and
onward.
What are we given for evidence of these "multiple cycles"? The only "evidence" I've seen is the occasional "mysterious object" or "mysterious
stone writings" (I have quite a rant about that since I study rock art) that show up one day and are claimed to be of great age or signs of unusual
things. The finding is dated by a Mysterious Professor at a Prominent University (one who usually doesn't show up if you research the thing) and the
artifact Mysteriously Disappears.
So... my evidence is the tons (and I do mean tons) and tons and tons of artifacts in museums all around the world, including the writings of those
civilizations and the products of their techology. They all comes from well researched sites and were carefully taken out of the ground in layers and
labeled.
What's your evidence for cyclic civilizations -- evidence that would stand up before a jury of skeptics (say, a metal fabricated engine (like a car
engine) with hoses and so forth or manufactured insulation material found buried 10 feet under the first layer of the City of Troy (Troy 1)?
Actually, the ice shields covered the Earth only to about the level of Chicago. Now, I consider Chicago uninhabitable, but others disagre. This is a
proveable limit to the glaciers... they leave a lot of traces.
first, i said "much of the most livable parts of the world." second, you forget to mention that they included all of canada, all of new
england including most of new york state...not to mention the majority of northern europe. lets be fair here byrd, that's a pretty sizable chunk of
the world's population centers. and of course, we could go into the theories of continental shifts and polar reversals, in which frozen lands would
have been warm, and vice versa.
Uhm... "covered to the level of Chicago" means they also covered Canada and Northern Europe and Siberia, etc as well as the Southern hemisphere,
too"... unless you think I have no idea where Canada is. Trust me... I can pick it out correctly, five times out of six.
And if you have solid (geologic) evidence on polar reversals, do present it.
Could you cite some references and show how they're determined to be anomalous?
i clearly state "and again, as i have no proof, i am simply putting it forth as MHO." so why exactly would you attack this particular point?
Ah. Okay. The "IMHO" stuff goes in Skunk Works. We try to keep the main topics for discussing news/books/reviews/etc and I thought you were
working off some articles.
Soooo... theories it is... and I'm shifting this to Skunk Works. (for the record, I don't participate in Skunk Works and I'm not sure that many
skeptics do, so you are free to theorize in positive directions without wet blankets hopping all over you.)
)... more like straightjacketed by the constraints of conventional thought.
) 
