Could an advanced civilization have escaped our notice?

In an earlier thread I posted this outline of reasons a previous civilization might be undetected.

The original post

It was part of Skyfloating's, Introduction to Atlantology thread, which was here

Skyfloating's Introduction to Atlantology thread

Could an advanced (with our present level of technology or higher) civilization have escaped our notice? Yes

Particularly if it fit into the following parameters

1. Much older than "10,000 BC" the farther you go back the less distinct and precise the geological and other data becomes.

2. A human or other settlement that was very small, not more than 10-20,000 people. A civilization footprint increases by leaps and bounds as the number of people in it increases. If you can keep it very small it is easier to miss it.

3. No traveling or trading, if they are isolated and don't seek contact they then leave fewer artifacts and traces. People who do travel and trade leave lots of traces.

4. Complete destruction. The farther you go back the less accurate is science's detection of events. If you go back far enough sites can be subducted and completely destroyed. Human habitations and artifacts are rather difficult to destroy completely, for example look at Thera, a great deal survived an enormous explosion.

5. The colony used unknown technologies that left no trace - but this doesn't explain the traces that would have been left BEFORE they developed that technology.

6. Unknown source, ie this colony came from some unknown source other than human evolution. This is possibility but at present no evidence supports it.

Summary for hiding from man's search. "Atlantis" or any other civilization would need to be; very small, isolated, suffer complete destruction and be much, much farther back in time than is presently speculated on.

Can anyone add more to this list or provide evidenced opinions of why the ones I've listed aren't valid.

Thanks for your input

When you say "evidence is missing" I would like to point you to the following historical events:

The Long History of Book Burnings by political and religious zealots

The Library of Alexandria burned down

U.S. Library of Congress Burned

No Access to the Vatican Library

A History of Military, Political, Religious and Social Censorship

The Inquisition: Destruction of "alternative knowledge"

In this type of atmosphere...which continues to this day...we cant expect to have a clear picture of ancient events.

reply to post by Skyfloating


All though documentary data is useful in this context archaeological data would be more germane.

I've often thought that maybe why we can't find traces of previous civilizations is because they weren't technical at all.

Look at some of the outstanding "mental" accomplishments a few of our ancestors left us. We still study the philosophy of Plato and Confucius, and marvel at the mathematics conceived by Pythagoras, and Euclid.

These civilizations may have developed far beyond the spiritual and mental abilities that we know today and material accomplishments were just not important to their success.

reply to post by zlots331


Howdy Z331

Yes, this is the eco idea in a different light. Yeah I've come to think this might be possible too. A civilization with a zen/buddhist type/style of orientation that used a very low technology.

One problem thou, stone tools. Very difficult to operate a civilization without those but it might be possible to, if you were mainly vegetarian, to make due with less efficient bone and wooden implements.

Good point, I'll expand point #5 in relation to your comments

I would like to add location factor. If this civilization was in currently remote, scarcely inhabited (or almost uninhabited) , "third world" or completely barren area then its traces can simply not be found because they are not being searched due to inability or lack of info.
I personally find story of Atlantis as it is being told as very improbable but (no offense to historians/archaeologists - they do tough challenging work) what we think we know is also not the real story. Next best thing only.

wel it could be said that an ancient civilization based off of spirituality/living off nature survived and was never destroyed. possibly that's where buddhism comes from and where the native americans got their lifestlyes.

also, civilizations could have pulled the plug on their own society to keep their youth from learning the "crutches" of their past and to start learning from the new, higher level of understanding.

also, aquatic or subterranean civilizations would be hard to find.

the only other scenario i can think of is a deliberate attempt at two opposing factions to wipe one another from the face of the earth. this would lead back point of finding their "primitive" cultures before one destroyed the other though.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge


You bring up another point that has been bandied about.

If a particular civilization is old enough, sea levels would have been drastically different. Most civilizations develop around water, for food, transportation, etc. Rising sea levels would not only submerge any traces but probably destroy any traces due to erosion or buried under sediments.

Climate changes that have resulted in huge deserts could also play a factor, burying any trace that might have existed.

Nature is a pretty powerful force to reckon with over time. There was an excellent show on Discovery (I think) lately that dealt with what the world would look like if man disappeared tomorrow. Entire new ecologies would immediately fill any gaps we left behind and traces of our highly technical society would completely disappear in an outstandingly short time. ( A few hundred thousand years if I remember correctly.)

Look at the fairly recent societies that have been uncovered in central America, completely covered by jungle, that you had to literally trip over to find. Even the Sphinx has to be continually dug out of the sand to prevent it from being buried.

Guess we'll never know. Too many factors in play to ever get a good handle on the dilemma.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge


Howdy Zero

I see your point, current inaccessibility of the site(s), will add that. I can think of a number of areas on earth that have not been properly surveyed. Not to mention under the seas.

Howdy Mozzy

aquatic or subterranean civilizations would be hard to find.

Yes, a non-human civilization far, far back in time would be very difficult to trace as they might not use the indicators we use to detect civilizations (habitation, burials, stone tools, land modification and pottery, etc)

the only other scenario i can think of is a deliberate attempt at two opposing factions to wipe one another from the face of the earth. this would lead back point of finding their "primitive" cultures before one destroyed the other though.

Certainly not impossible, based on what we've seen of how humans act. I wouldn't put it past previous people. Kinda of a 'Red Nails' in overdrive? However the act of finding every scrape of another civilization would be a daunting task - destroying cities and wiping out the people yes, but digging up their stone tools from their developmental period? Hmmmm

reply to post by zlots331


Howdy Z311

You are partially correct about water. However the early civilizations grew up around inland rivers. Mainly for the irrigation water. Sea coasts were still fairly hostile then as the bulk of food came from domesticated crops which did well in river valley's and not near the seacoast were salt content tends to be high. Later as boats, nets and other technology grew man conquered the coastal seas.

It''l only take a few thousand years to completely survey and dig over ever square centimeter of the earth's surface - dispair not!

[edit on 20/12/08 by Hanslune]

There are many spiritual civilizations even now, which are not detected by history, because they don't belong to "history" in the first place. History doesn't include them among "civilizations".
The existing criteria for what should be called civilization only includes civilizations which have developed "state" because it only values violence and oppression as "civilized".

Originally posted by DangerDeath
There are many spiritual civilizations even now, which are not detected by history, because they don't belong to "history" in the first place. History doesn't include them among "civilizations".
The existing criteria for what should be called civilization only includes civilizations which have developed "state" because it only values violence and oppression as "civilized".

I understand your philsophy there DangerDeath but how would we detect these types of 'civilizations'?

reply to post by Hanslune


Easy, wherever there are no graves

There are some ancient civilizations, before Bronze age, which had sophisticated art and even alphabet, and did not have state. But then something happened and people started to build walls...

From then on history is only about that.

Spiritual civilizations are created by people who find ways not to be enslaved and who don't participate in existing economic and political system.
There are many individuals who are like this, but we can't classify them as "groups" because their connection and "form" is personal.

Spiritual communion is personal and it is not part of public culture or tradition. They are practically invisible in society since they have no social function.

You can only detect such civilization if you participate in it, and making compromises is very difficult.

I can find some examples, maybe Christian horizontal civilization, that is, before Saul organized them into church with vertical hierarchy and which since then became visible in history.

Perhaps some of druid communions could be counted as such, but there are no material artifacts. Their literacy was verbal and they devised mnemonic techniques, which don't leave archeological traces.

It may be possible to unveil such traditions from art or myths, but one should try not to apply some stereotypical ways of interpretation.

It is commonly assumed that rituals are part of some religion or cult, but what do we know of rituals if we never participated in them.
Rituals are a form of meditation and without such experience we will only be able to register what is apparent to eye and hardly the spiritual experience which is attained.

Take a look at tradition of Australian Aborigines. What do we really know of that? It is all secret because it involves personal experience and cannot be analyzed by empirical and formal means.

Aboriginal tradition goes god knows how many millenniums in the past, and if we are looking for some historical events, like wars or kings we may find none, so we conclude they don't have history, which is practically like they never really existed.

For spiritual tradition death is never considered as a no option. They found a way to negotiate and assimilate the experience of death. Let me remind you that fear and misunderstanding of death is the basic premise of slavery on which historical societies are based.

I think it is more than worth exploring, especially because we all seem to be stuck when asking question: what to do, how to oppose the violence of the system.

Q: Could an advanced civilization have escaped our notice?
A: YES!!

I confess, this is a precarious subject and results in conceptual questions being asked by the student.

However, let's look at point 4 - Complete destruction. Consider this abstract from the ancient (6500 BC at the latest) Mahabharata:

…a single projectile Charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame As bright as the thousand suns Rose in all its splendour… a perpendicular explosion with its billowing smoke clouds… …the cloud of smoke rising after its first explosion formed into expanding round circles like the opening of giant parasols… ..it was an unknown weapon, An iron thunderbolt, A gigantic messenger of death...

Ancient Nuclear War?

The Indus valley is now the Thar desert, and the site of the radioactive ash was claimed to been found in the area. For arguments sake, let's assume an ancient civilization had nuclear weapons - but here's the question:

Could an ancient civilization have weaponry to destroy an entire empire? This, is a completely different scenario altogether.

And dragons.
Flying beast spitting fire. There is nothing such in nature. Is it just imagination?

How did American Indians call locomotive?

IRON HORSE!

Rifles?

FIRE STICKS!

If you don't have the technology, guess what you come up with?

FLYING SAUCER!

Howdy hans,

My, quite a surprise of a topic.
What are we calling "advanced civlilization"

And my answer is yes as well, within a certain set of conditions.

To acheive the level of development we have today would require a worldwide civilization, because no one place has all the requisite raw materials to support a civillization of our level.
The imprint would be so large as to not be erasible, except over VERRRY LONG time scales, on on the order of millions of years.
But an early industrial age civilization could arise and fail and leave no trace after long periods of time.
Take world wide civilization circa 1880, you have a very devolped first world in Europe, with its urbanization and industrialization.
You have the same thing in the US on the east coast and small cites across the west, but the land is still wild.
Most of asia is still agrarian as is europe and africa is still tribal.
Even though the advanced countries have manufacturing and the begginings of mechanization, they still work almost exclusively in iron and wood, stone/concrete, naturtally occuring materials.
But iron rusts, and quite rapidly, wood burns and rots conrete rots as well and stone work falls down with age.
Civilizations at this level havent yet started to change the very face of the planet with huge infrastructure projects.
They also havent yet reached the metalurgical sophistication to devlop the super alloys, alloys that wont rust away in a even a thousand years, these alloys are so tuff that you couldnt get a natural fire hot enough to work them yet melt them.
They also havent reached the ability to split the atom, once a civilazation does that it will leave a mark that will last hundreds of thousands of years.
Around here, during the gold and copper rushes of the late 19th century, cities sprang up like weeds, some reaching 20,000 people, and vanished in 30 years.
Many are no more than a name on an old map, and all trace of them has been wiped away by fire weather and scavaging.
Now only 100 years later, you might find a trace of them with a proper excavation, but other wise they are lost.
Even the mines have caved in and eroded away in many cases.

Given a long enough time span you could lose a latge advanced civilization.
Given even longer time spans all traces of any civilization could be wiped away.

I often pondered if the dinosaurs had reached a any level of sophistication before being wiped out.
Not likely but possible, there have been several bipedal, binocular visioned, opposing thumbed omnivorous dinosaurs discovered.
They had 200 million years to do it and we got it done in 3 million, who knows?

Originally posted by Hanslune
It''l only take a few thousand years to completely survey and dig over ever square centimeter of the earth's surface - dispair not!

Before that we'll probably have a 3D camera that can capture *everything* in its sight, so we'll even photograph scores of fish 5,000m below the surface from space

Anyway, to the question at hand I'd say yes, of course. You can just pick out a random time interval beginning at a random time and say "there could have been an advanced civilization here!". Say, 350 million years ago the Earth could have been populated by advanced humanoids during a time period of 1 million years (an incredibly long time!) and any trace it left would be down to pure magical luck to discover and even if we do, we probably wouldnt understand it.

reply to post by Hanslune


The Sumerians are a likely candidate:

Sumer

A man who is often regarded as a quack has found some very
interesting things about them that need to be looked into regardless
of his quack status.

Zecharia Sitchin

There is no doubt the Sumerians diagramed the ENTIRE solar system
with correct scale to size and distance, and in their writings get the
colors of the outer planets correct.

Something we did not discover til we had satellite fly out past
the outer planets.

Too many things found in the ancient writings point to an advanced
civlization having passed the information to the Sumerians or they
went and got it themselves.

From the Sumerians writings the "gods" flew down from the heavens
and passed this knowledge to them.

All of this roughly 7,000 years ago.

Drawings of "Shem" aka rocketships are seen in more than one place.

It boggles the mind, and the veracity of the cuneiform and writings
are verified.

I think that we have to rethink how we look at history.
It could simply be that we are not looking in the right places I'm working on my own new theory on that I'll post a thread soon I hope.

With all kinds of pics and links stay tuned!