Civilization was destroyed at least once before

It could have happened any number of ways, nuclear destruction, a great flood, meteorite impact, it doesnt matter. Another great civilization once populated this planet many thousands of years ago and in this thread i will attempt to explain how and why.

For starters it is ignorant to assume that if another civilization once thrived, that it us who built it. There could have been another type of humanoid race on this planet that thrived that was at the time superior to us. Or perhaps we were more advanced at an earlier time. The bottom line is once of the oldest skeletons of a modern day type human that was found is in and around 9000 years old. Either way the strange thing about humans is that our physical appearance and brain size and finction have been the same for tens of thousands of years yet, it has only been in the last few thousand years that we are intelligent enough to advance scientifically and socially? I don't buy that, we have been capable of doing all the things we do now for many thousands of years. Why only now?

The biggest thing we have to understand when trying to discover past histories is that if a great civilization was destroyed, such as ours, there would be little to no evidence that it ever existed 10000 years later. One must understand what happens to a society such as ours when we arent around anymore to maintain it. It is thought that if our population were to suddenly drop to as low as 100 million worldwide, that within just 300 years everything we have built would be around 80% eliminated through natural processes. This doesnt include destruction through war, or perhaps a meteor or flood. In fact such an event would probably accelerate it.

This is explained in great detail here channel.nationalgeographic.com...

After maybe a thousand years society would start to flourish again but the problem is we would once again face religious differences, racial divides, territory disputes, we would basically have to start over from scratch and things would be like they were a couple of thousand years ago.
You would wonder though, wouldnt the survivors of our civilization carry on our history and try to preserve technology? The answer is no. They would try but you have to remember survival is a full time job. They would be too busy tending crops, fighting off bandits and gangs, maintaining their crude structures and trying not to get killed by nature and disease to be able to teach modern knowledge, and preserve technologies. Eventually the generation that has the knowledge from the previous society will die off and so will the knowledge die with them. The newer generation will just have stories and fragments of teachings of the old ways. Each generation will lose more and more of this and education will slowly get weaker as the need to revert back to more primitive methods i order to survive will take priority. Also the means of producing technology will deplete and so will the knowledge of doing so.

YOu will see new religions rise up that nowwhere resemble the ones we have today. Mythologies will be based on our previous society. Leaders of large countries in our day will be spoken of asif they were gods or perhaps heros or even possibly as the destroyers. It would be interesting to see what people would interperet things such as Mt Rushmore or the base of the Statue of Liberty. The pyramids might still even exist.

The problem is once the new society becomes interested in finding out the past nobody alive has any direct knowledge of the previous society, nobody has any proof, and all they have to go on are stories that have been handed down for thousands of years and the stories have lost their origional meaning. Stories will be changed over time due to the method of record keeping (mostly orally recorded), the level of comprehension of the persons receiving the information and the amount of words in the vocabulary of the people retelling the story. In ancient times there were no words for automobile so instead a word such as chariot would have sufficed.

A flood would have completely destroyed most evidence from the get go. Vast cities would be covered under mud. Wet structures would rot and corrode much faster after the flood. Continents would be drastically altered as coastlines would be reshaped and new lakes and seas would be created. Nothing would be the same and all would be lost. Then add 10000 years to that and what would you get? Nothing at all. But there is no evidence of a flood you say? How isnt there? Every society on the planet has an ancient flood story.

You also hear of places like atlantis. Ive often wondered why we cant find atlantis. Perhaps it was not just a city but maybe it was what Earth was called before. Or maybe it is what Mars used to be called before it was destroyed. I think when we are searching for Atlantis we arent thinking outside the box yet on this one. Yes i do believe Mars had life at one point. There are theories that suggest it could have supported life as little as 12000 years ago if in fact have supported life.

Anways i will go into detail further on any one of these subjects as they come up. I would like to hear what you all think. Was there a past civilization? I would like to think so.

You argue one of the better theories ive ever read on ATS. And ive been here for quite a while, since 2003 (had a username conflict before).

I had never really indulged my mind into past civilizations, always seemed kinda impossible, but the way you state it, it seems very possible, and youve got me thinking. Your getting a flag from me.

One of the things, though, is that when Plato described Atlantis, he decribed it as if it were a country, thus ruling out that it would be the entire planet or another planet.

And 12,000 years ago on Mars, thats something i had never heard, and if true, thats absolutely remarkable, seeing as The world has recorded human intelligent life at that time, and only 1000 years before the dog was domesticated. (That would be at about 10,000 BCE, hard to find factual info on it now that the movie 10,000 BC is out.)

I Have also pictured Atlantis as a space station.


external image

www.realatlantis.com...

See the similarities?

The walls of the city were said to be plated in metals which to us were rare and valuable, but to the original inhabitants were common and plentiful.

What else do we know of that has metal walls?

[edit on 08/3/24 by metaldemon2000]

reply to post by metaldemon2000

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Was just a few milion people living on earth in primitive conditions, scattered around the globe. intelligent? yes. inventing tv`s and stereos? not so much :p

they probably thought the world was eternaly big, with gods watching them, revarding or punishing. Takes time to evolve technologically... probably because we had to populate the planet to enough people. Then, as more people came to life, occationally a smarthead came to be. And its still like that. (Einstein? Tesla?)

And it may just be me, but when i watch out in the crowd now a days i dont eccactly see intelligence in the youngsters nowadays. So much stupid things going on now a days.

The social system you live within lies to you. It conditions your mind to think that you are the most advanced human earth has ever seen when in fact, the reverse is true. You are dependant on it for all your basic needs. Everything is already prepared for you.

Your clothes come from department stores, your food comes from grocery stores, and your home was most likely not designed and built by you either.

Do you think that is progress?





[edit on 25-3-2008 by Jbird]

The flood could have ended a civilization on one day. think about it. If a giant wave hit new york city tomorrow..it would all be gone in less that 30 minutes...So it's all very possible that many of these lost civilizations are under water and erroded over time never to be found again.

Have civilizations/cultures existed before recorded history, almost certainly. Were any as advanced as us technologically, doubtful.

Archaeologically and genetically, we may have been around for 200,000 years, but didn't start migrating out of Africa until around 85,000 years ago. With technology and populations low, we didn't stay in one place very long, nor lived very long.

Until fairly recently we had to deal with both the Ice Age and the megafauna that lived then. Most groups were probably less than 100 individuals so as to be more mobile. Also, has anyone else really taken a look at what kinds of megafauna were around when we started. I know of 24, all over 100 pounds.

Lastly, early Homo Sapiens for the most part seem to have stayed below the mountain chains running from northern Italy eastward all the way to India.

cormac

I have often wondered is these shape-shifting reptilians were actually descendants of dinosaurs, perhaps they originated on Earth. Perhaps they built a advanced civilization similar to our own, but much more advances, notice this huge rock heading this way, and escaped Earth and found a new home in space, and the reason they are interested in Earth is because it's where they came from.

Dinosaurs existed for millions of years, anything is possible, yes?

Daniem

Thanks for your post. Stupid people doing stupid things is not a symptom of the modern age unfortuneately, its just because there are more people on the planet that we are able to see a greater ratio of idiots among our ranks. Other than that history has had its share of morons and i can assure you that adolescants have always acted as such. I dont know if you can recall that 2000 year old argument where the young man and his father dont agreee with each other and it sounds exactly like an argument from modern days.

While i understand that it takes time to evolve and grow into a society given that we have been in our current state from anywhere to 200000 to 300000 years and our progression into modern day society took roughly 5000 - 10000 year , technically we could have had a society as large as ours several dozen times over. And if these societies either died out or were destroyed in such a manner that i am speaking of we would have no way of telling that these societies ever existed as the next society wipes out the evidence of the previous one.

cormac mac airt

Interesting stuff, im glad you mentioned it. It could be that we did not have the super cities that we have today or perhaps the populations were lower. To better understand where i am going with this, imagine why it is we have not found the super fuel or element that allows us to harness vast amounts of energy. It is possible that most of these resources were depleted by previous societies. You hear about things such as helium 3 and it not being totally abundant on Earth but plentiful on the Moon. Perhaps at some point there were large deposits on Earth. That being said, previous societies may have had different technology than us and may not have needed large cities and interconecting highway systems between cities. It could be that they could have maintained high technology in small cities thast were far apart and had some form of air travel to go back and forth. Air travel in early societies are evident by such things as the Nazca Lines and early south american art depicting aircraft. So perhaps the majority of the planet was untouched by man or perhaps they were ruining the planet such as we are and had a massive regreening project which created monsterous plant life. Either way it is said that if we dissapeared from the face of the planet tomorrow that nature would run rampant in ways that we couldnt even imagine to try and fill the void that we once filled.

While looking for the evidence of past societies South America is definately the place to look. As far as ancient structures are concerned it is said that we have only discovered roughly 15- 20% of what is buried under that continent. NASA is currently using satellites to pinpoint locations of lost cities and it seems that they are making a major discovery there almost every 2 years now. Also some of the cities they have found cannot be accurately carbon dated and they figure some of the cities are pushing 20000+ years. It has been thought that man migrated from Africa and then across the landbridge to north america and then finally down to South America roughly 15000 years ago but newer discoveries are now pointing in a different direction.

It is interesting also when you look at the Mayan society. There gods were described as white skinned and some times with red hair. This is why they thought when the spanish came it was their gods returning to them. When the spanish had inquired as to who built the cities the Mayan had inhabited they had said that the cities had already existed before they came and that they just added to them. Finally the story of their creation says that their gods created them to basically repopulate the planet after some sort of disaster that had wiped out their society.

When you start to look into similarities of creation stories they seem to all start after a time of chaos or destruction. If were all made by our respective gods and our religions all say that the other one is wrong then why do we all share the same basic story? And why is it that we fear global destruction? Animals only instinctively fear things that have been considered a very real danger by previous generations and it is a genetically passed on fear. This is the case with humans and global destruction. We are obsessed with it, we fear it, and the mere mention of it sparks some kind of reaction from almost anyone.



en.wikipedia.org...

Faint memories

The very faint memories of lost civilizations and also advanced ones have been passed down through stories, legends, accounts, myths, mythologies, religion.

How quickly memories fade away, evidence gets lost and history-revisionism takes place can be seen with 9/11...and that only happened a few years ago. But already we have 1000000 different versions of the story.

Which version will win? The one with the most "authority" attached to it.

Why? Because not everybody wants to think for themselves about each and every subject. I dont want to be thinking about subject X, so I´ll leave it up to the experts to look into it.

Considering there is not a shred of evidence left of the WTC having stood where it once stood you can be doubly sure that there is no evidence to be picked up on the lost and advanced civilizations...

except for in the accounts...

...the faint memories.

"Daddy...what...what...what...did it used to be like before the flood?"

"Im not sure son...but your grandfather said there were these...these birds...and people sat on them"

"People sat on birds? Thats silly. So, people were flying?"

"Yeah, thats what he says. But your granddad was senile when he told the story, so who knows. You figure I should write this down? Well, I guess not. Its getting late, time to go to bed"

This would be an account of aircraft 5 generations after a disaster destroyed and buried everything.

And after 20 000 years? Totally lost. Except for little hints here and there.

We´re slowly picking up the little hints but it´ll take another 500 years before we make sense of it all.

I applaud your sound reasoning.

So you are saying that if what, 10 million Americans die tomorrow, the other 6 billion people in the world will drop dead from the shock of it all?
You make a poor case with that New York comparison
So many people on this forum seem to forget that one city does not make a civilization.

One key factor in the argument of these ancient civilizations (not cities) seem to be that while they where obviously more advanced that us, nothing is left because... uh... everything disappear. Like if you throw a coke bottle aside and it rust to nothing. Yeah but lets just ignore something as simple as the roads cutting straight through MOUNTAINS
We have literally torn the world apart in the last 200 years. Granted, its not permanent. But it'll make quite a lasting impression on nature and wont dissappear in 300 years. Or 3000 for that matter.

I think if you want your legacy to carry on learning to carve stone might be a good method. Lets say we do have a reset. Tombstones are all that will survive?

The problem with this evocative theory is that, well, we do know pretty much what the human race was doing with itself throughout its history. We do have archeological evidence from all sorts of periods, dating back tens of millennia, and enough to be getting on with a decent fragmentary picture before that.

It is often said that so much advance has happened in just a few hundred years now, so why could it not have happened in the past. I think that is a misleading and myopic view. The last two hundred years spring as much from the great spread of the species after the last ice-age, and they are related to that as part of the very same sweep. The emergence of farming is an infinitely more important step than harnessing electiricy or the internal combustion engine. We are still in the same post-glacial limb of human social evolution.

Before the last ice age? The thing is, *IF* there were technologicaly significant civilisations in the past, why is it all we find are cave paintings? Bones indicative of poor nutrition and dentistry? Flutes made of bones? Wooden pile dwellings? Simple flint tools? etc. What we *do* have is what current anthropology builds its models on. There is a clearly drawn slow progression through the eons in the archaeology.

If there were advanced cultures then it would have to be claimed that their distinguishing advanced elements somehow disappearred in all traces (including chemical traces which may not decompose or erode), but that the traces of *contemporary* simple culture survived. A bit like saying that all our own modern culture would quicly vanish *except* for the conker on a string and the 16-year-old's pottery-class efforts, which would somehow be preserved for scientists of the distant future to study.

This is so perverse a suggestion that I think it must be discounted. I think we have to assume that the archaeological record is at least vaguely sensible, or else we may as well go home.

Cheers.

Rob.

Not to mention all the stainless steel flatware that would obviously be preserved one way or the other through almost any imaginable catastrophe and for an almost unlimited time.

Harte

metaldemon2000,

Great imagination, but where is the evidence. You can't take civilizations/cultures from around the world, separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, as well as hundreds or thousands of years, put their stories all in one bag and claim that they were talking about the same thing.

It's one thing to wonder, "what if" or "could it have happened this way", but without some concrete evidence to base those questions on, it's really an effort in futility.

A physical example of what I am saying is this. Thousands of years ago, Ancient Egyptians made flint tipped spears. Also, thousands of years ago, American Indians also made flint tipped spears. Now, just because they both made flint tipped spears, does that mean that one of them built spears for the other. No. They both created what they needed out of necessity.

Also, do natural events, monsoons, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, ice storms, floods happen at the same time all over the globe. Obvious answer is no. So how can anyone equate one cultures natural catastrophe with another, unrelated cultures catastrophe. Without evidence, they can't.

cormac

Leave it to Harte to take the wind out of ones sails with one single remark

You do pose a good point though which hasnt been explained by us yet.

metaldemon: How do we respond to this

[edit on 26-3-2008 by Skyfloating]

I disagree with this point, without maintenance even roads thru mountains will degrade and some future explorer will call them interesting natural formations perhaps resulting from a series of earthqukes in a turbulent past. Without human maintenance even the Hoover Dam will fall,
and what willl the remains of Mt. Rushmore be called by the survivors 1000 yrs after we destroy ourselves?

reply to post by Skyfloating

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May I come with a suggestion?

Steel eating nanites

reply to post by Curiosityrising

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I have to disagree with your point. East River Mountain Tunnel is a 5,412-foot (1,649 m) vehicular tunnel. Big Walker Mountain Tunnel is a 4,229-foot (1,288 m) vehicular tunnel. Both of these are located in South Western Virginia/West Virginia. The scale of both of these tunnels would preclude anyone seriously thinking they were natural phenomenon, particularly in the Appalachian Mountains.

cormac

Maybe if we put all the flatware there first, before it collapsed...


H.