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Could an advanced civilization have escaped our notice?

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posted on Dec, 22 2008 @ 06:37 PM
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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!


Maybe not. Our radar scanning gets better all the time, including underwater and subsurface, high-definition stuff. Couple that with artificial intelligence scanners designed to pick out "anomalies" from expected noise, and it might only be 100 years or so before we get some very detailed scans of places that would take us forever to dig to, with any interesting possible artifacts clearly pointed out.

Of course, I'll be long dead by then. But somebody might find out something interesting about Atlantis, or whatever. In their universes, though, not mine.



posted on Dec, 22 2008 @ 06:46 PM
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reply to post by Nohup
 





Maybe not. Our radar scanning gets better all the time, including underwater and subsurface, high-definition stuff. Couple that with artificial intelligence scanners designed to pick out "anomalies" from expected noise, and it might only be 100 years or so before we get some very detailed scans of places that would take us forever to dig to, with any interesting possible artifacts clearly pointed out.


Okay, okay I'll lop off 645 years.

Seriously, I suspect the technology WILL get much better but even then it may take a human or a robot carefully removing the dirt with a tooth pick to get to a lot of things. I think we could settle on - at some point in the future. It will be awhile before we get to the deep sea areas and under the icecaps.

Atlantis? I still hold a tiny tiny chance that the Atlantis that Plato discussed might have existed (in a form not as Plato described) the chance of us finding that grows smaller each day as we understand the planet better. Those damn ice and sediment cores make strong arguments against.

[edit on 22/12/08 by Hanslune]



posted on Dec, 22 2008 @ 09:19 PM
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reply to post by Hanslune
 


in the near term if such a society were to fail, not all of the people would die, the society just changes profoundly.
And one thing that survivors would do would be to horde the most valuable items, precious stones and metals.
These items would be recycled almost endlessly into the future, the Hope diamond is a perfect example.
This is how you would not find gemstones, they would be re-used, re-cut and so on.

Although if said society destroyed itself in a full scale nuclear war, most of the treasures would be absolutely destroyed in the hellish fire of nuclear fission/fusion.
The funny thing about gemstones is that they are somewhat tempurature sensative, they do change with extreme heat.
Diamonds turn back to graphite at 2500 degrees, I read a story about how some diamond dealer got back at another dealer, who ripped him off.
They used an oxy/acetelyne torch to graphite the other dealers diamonds.




Atlantis? I still hold a tiny tiny chance that the Atlantis that Plato discussed might have existed (in a form not as Plato described) the chance of us finding that grows smaller each day as we understand the planet better. Those damn ice and sediment cores make strong arguments against


Eventually, people will finally accept that the minoans are the prototype for plato's atlantis.
They fit with some elements of the story and almost a 1300 years passed by the time plato wrote the dialogues.
It might as well have been 12,000 years in those days.



posted on Dec, 22 2008 @ 10:58 PM
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reply to post by kidflash2008
 


Thank you, you prove my point. You listed "human" needs. How about a people made of plasma, no need for fire and they have no physical presence so personal possessions, houses and monuments would be superfluous. As for food, i would like to remind you of livestock mutilations, wildlife mutilations and even the occasional human. If you take all the information available about the "unseen" beings" and separate it by date and genre you can develope a pattern much the same as a hunter studies game trails. A lot of hunters post video's and/or pictures of unknowns and anomalies. I browse them frequently because there is a lot more then bigfoot out there. I am an outdoorsman and i love the mountains and often hunted alone. When you can travel quietly you can often find more than game.



posted on Dec, 22 2008 @ 11:03 PM
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Originally posted by Hanslune

Atlantis? the chance of us finding that grows smaller each day as we understand the planet better. Those damn ice and sediment cores make strong arguments against.


noone has ever taken into account the real geography of europe @ 9703bc. put a freshwater sea 'back' in the middle of it and see if things change.

how efficient is science at finding things? in 2005, 'western' science discovered a 1800ha middle bronze age city beside a major hiway in the middle of europe. they didn't have to dig to find it because there are 4 very very huge walls that are over 30km long. doh, it was coastal too.



posted on Dec, 22 2008 @ 11:41 PM
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Howdy Punkinworks

I would disagree on the stones. I was referring to modern style cut stones, hard to recut a half carat diamond into anything new. Older stuff, uncut or crudely cut yes it could be recycled but the modern stuff, no not without someone noting the quality. Cut gem stone are not showing up, nor synthetic stones so we can conclude that no one has ever developed that capacity before OR we’ve been very unlucky.

I believe you are over stating the power of nuclear weapons. Yes they are powerful but unless you do surface bursts and do lots of them. Stuff will survive. Nagasaki and Hiroshima are a good example.
We agree on Minoan, memories and stories about Minoan probably fed into the Atlantis myth building meme.

Howdy debris765nju

Interesting speculation, how does one find something one cannot find? Suggestions?


[edit on 22/12/08 by Hanslune]



posted on Dec, 22 2008 @ 11:48 PM
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reply to post by Parta
 


Howdy Parta

You may wish to to start a thread on your subject, you've brought it up before in other threads. Now I was born in a non-English speaking country myself but I do find it hard to understand your points and you tend not to provide links and sources.

Again I recommend you start your own thread on your Atlantis in Roumania idea.



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 06:07 AM
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There's one more thing to account for.
Every new generation is different from previous. A civilization may change due to that, in 3-4 generations it may appear or disappear.
One nation may appear or disappear in a relatively short time because of that.
The same culture may spread through several nations or tribes.

Then there is the culture of violence, immorality, slavery, etc. which spread throughout whole world - but somehow we neglect it. Does that fit into the criteria for civilization? After all, these things are a culture. People are taught to behave in a certain way, they are cultivated in certain manner.

When we look for civilizations, we want to see elaborate social structure. A proof for that would be a city with citadel, for instance. Then, we look for exchange, commerce, ports, vessels, markets, then libraries and schools, universities. But this is all projecting our own civilization, as if there is no other kind of civilization - or maybe this word civilization actually limits us to look at a precisely kind of culture built around the idea of city.

The point is, the culture of cities (polis) was created in order to ensure supremacy by force, everything else "cultural" came as a byproduct.

Maybe, what we should look for is a civilization which did not build cities, and yet thrived. So how can we use satellites and robots, or chisel, to find them?

What means to do such a work does science have?



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 06:15 AM
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reply to post by DangerDeath
 


then you'd have what this culture would leave behind, clothing, materials, trade, local accounts.
Eventually you'd have another group encounte them, and either be repulsed or absorbed.

A culture that advances would leave some evidence behind as they advanced. Tools, toys, ect.



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 06:26 AM
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You see, when Christianity spread throughout Europe, and it took 1.000 years or so, many pagan cults and customs were promptly integrated into Christian religion and they still live, but only experts may be able to really distinguish them and it is concealed by the name of Christianity.

What I am saying, it is still around, yet we have pushed it into the subconscious. And there may be other instances of this kind.



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 07:04 AM
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reply to post by Hanslune
 

Ok, you've convinced me on the gemstones.
But most people VASTLEY underestimate the destruction that a full scale nuclear war would cause.
The WWII era weapons were lady finger fire crackers compared to the modern weapons, in some cases thousands of times the yield of the nagasaki and hiroshima weapons.
And there wouldnt have been only one per city but dozens in some cases, air bursts first to maximize the heat and blast, then ground bursts to dig out any survivors and to just cause the most physical destruction.

But even if such a fate did befall any sociecty it would still leave behind un-mistakeable traces for millions of years, the glass fields, radiation, and the twisted wreckage of a thousand cities.

Given enough time though nature will erase even those things we deem indestructable.
A few cycles of glaciation willbury or grind up and wash into the sea most anything we can construct.



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 08:18 AM
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Originally posted by Hanslune
reply to post by Parta
 


Howdy Parta

You may wish to to start a thread on your subject, you've brought it up before in other threads. Now I was born in a non-English speaking country myself but I do find it hard to understand your points and you tend not to provide links and sources.

Again I recommend you start your own thread on your Atlantis in Roumania idea.


start a thread on what? atlantis? the apsu? the tuat? ahhiyawa? the real mount atlas? zeus triphylios? panchaea? etc etc etc. lotsa work, maybe too much. whatever happened to self actualization? with just a little effort you can see that you are at best 4 years behind real world events and that there are really exciting things happening.

a sea filling the carpathian basin at the end of the last ice age is not an idea, it is a fact decided by the world court almost 10years ago [hungary v slovakia re: the drying up of the inland delta] but that just confirmed prewar orthodoxy. what type of source would you prefer? a famous yale prof [bela liptak]? wiki [oceanus]? fringe author [densusianu]? royal society of geographers [prewar jstor]?

here is the city they just found [45.934736,21.233225]
google
[turn on the photos and see the walls]

you can search
google

or
google

these are exciting times we live in, really. have some fun.











[edit on 23-12-2008 by Parta]



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 09:21 AM
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reply to post by punkinworks
 





But even if such a fate did befall any sociecty it would still leave behind un-mistakeable traces for millions of years, the glass fields, radiation, and the twisted wreckage of a thousand cities. Given enough time though nature will erase even those things we deem indestructable. A few cycles of glaciation willbury or grind up and wash into the sea most anything we can construct.


I agree, glaciers can destroy most anything over the right period of time. This said, I'm not convinced that we've overlooked an advanced, ancient civilization. I'm not even convinced that there is an advanced civilization to overlook.

The OP mentions a form of discreet city with a small footprint of 10,000 to 20,000 population. A city that size could conceivably be erased from the earth over many thousands of years. Unfortunately, I don't think the idea is supported by models of human migration. All the evidence follows a kind of pyramid diagram. Huts, small villages at the base, then small towns>large towns and cities at the top. A city would be very anomolous if it were to exist without any developing society leading up to it's creation.

The infrastructure of a society would need to be long-lived and stable to culminate in a population of that size. There would need to be State organization to design 'blueprints' for roads, construction, water and food supplies, materials etc. History shows us time and again that societies can vanish eg Harappa, good powerpoint on Harappa and a Powerpoint on Mohenjo Daro. And damn! Why can't anyone decipher their script already
So intriguing and so frustrating


So in spite of societies vanishing or being lost through assimilation and vanqish, they always leave evidence of their existence somewhere. Accounts in the Rig Vedas and Mahabaratta seem like obvious references to technology. The lack of any evidence for that technology makes it more likely our interpretation is at fault. I know some people believe that any artifacts have been erased by time. I doubt it. The accounts have survived. The means of production, the results of production and the method of production has vanished. Ii think we need to be content with the mysteries we already have and can't explain.



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 10:59 AM
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reply to post by DangerDeath
 


Howdy DD

Cities seem to have arisen to provide protection by mass and to provide the labor and organization to manage irrigation projects.

As we see today, cities, where food and jobs are concentrated, tend to attract people from the countryside. As the cities grew larger specialization tended to occur and of course mutual protection bred mutual aggression.




What I am saying, it is still around, yet we have pushed it into the subconscious. And there may be other instances of this kind.


I don't think so you can find studies of how pagan practices were incorporated into mainstream Christianity and how local practices reflect former pagan rights. How would you account for the Cagot?

Hi Runespider

Yep messy humans tend to leave stuff behind, if not cultural materials, stone tools, fires, processed bone (bone looks different when its been cooked in a pot that eaten by an animal), even waste material, hunter-gathers tend to leave feces in warm coals, which dries it and allows it to be found, etc

Hey there Punkinworks

Yes fusion weapons are much more powerful but they still have the inability accept for subsurface and surface bursts of penetrating the surface of the earth to any degree. Even with those multiple megaton warheads it hard to cover every square centimeter - even if you do stone tools, stone etc will survive. After my archaeology days I was a 13A90a 5h5k. I use to teach nuclear targeting. We were never able to figure out a way to completely destroy the Soviet rail lines coming into East German to a point they wouldn't be able to repair them. Experimentation (using HE ) showed that we could melt the rails and partially incinerate the ties but the bed was resistent to anything but an on the surface blast....but I mightly digress from my own thread.

Howdy Kandinsky

They haven't been unable to translate Harappa due to the little amount of written material, mainly found on seals. Plus they don't know the base language althought it might have been proto-??? -people disagree. More importantly no bilingual texts have been found.

Yep even a glacier will pick up the stuff and deposit it, completely jumbled and out of context. A firend of mine use to pick stone tools out of glacier built rock piles.

Parta

Start your own thread



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 11:26 AM
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reply to post by Hanslune
 

I was being rhetorical about translating Harappan language. No smiley face for rhetorical inflection


Anyway, regarding the melting Northern hemisphere glaciers, I thought you'd be interested in the potential goldmine for neolithic artifacts that will be revealed. Guaranteed to be in excellent condition.

Egypt and the Sahara may be our best chance of finding any sign of older civilizations, even if not too advanced. As the cradle of mankind and an area of abundance, it's worth keeping an open mind. An expedition to the Sahara this year has resulted in some fascinating finds and photos. The rock carving of a giraffe in Niger is amazing. I never knew that people had domesticated such an animal. Who knows?



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 11:33 AM
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An old profession told me that to find an unknown civilization follow the pottery shards.

In this case we don't have any - there are some that haven't been ID as to where and when they made but they are a tiny minority.

Where to look, look for what man looked for, water, food, resources and protection. He also tended to stay in warmer areas until cloth production technology got a bit better.

Yep, Sahara, the China river valleys and watershed areas, the areas where once great forests/jungles stood in Asia. East Africa, all of the Middle East, Central Asia, the steppes and the southern Siberian woods. The Americas? Right now the evidence says no, but then there may be more evidence.



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 04:13 PM
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the oldest known ceramic objects come from central europe [dolni vestonice 25000bc] as does the earliest known weaving [olga soffer - pavlov 25000bc]



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 04:29 PM
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If we assume that as is indicated in the fossil record that periodically, the life on earth suffer periodic, catastrophic geological events, then if one were to assume one sufficient to "knock back to the stoneage" a civilized culture, then we must assume a few things.

1. As today, not every human knows every skill in every scientific arena.

2. Immediately after the catastrophe, survival basics would be job # 1.

3. Skills applicable in an ordered society would now be useless.

4. Knowledge would quickly be lost.

5. Previous sustaining technologies would be lost.

6. By the third generation after a major catastrophic geological disaster, the past would be told as legends.

7. Survivors would become adept at all areas of survival, with few to specialize.

8. Tools, basic pre-catastrophe supplies would be gone within a century.

9. Survivors begin to "tribalize" and compete with other "tribes."

10. Only after millennia would significant societies once again manfest.

Assuming around 10,000 years ago we had our last major catastrophic geological disaster, then you see that it took us until the past 150 years to reach any level of scientific and industrial achievement.

For example, if the next catastrophic geological event had happened two hundred years ago, those who would come alone 8,000 years later would see what we see today around the world in certain areas.

Advanced stone work. There would be no skyscrapers, no 10-key adding machines, no computers, no massive steel bridges, nor any other large technological advancement reminder of any kind. No satellites.

Ask yourself how it is that the two moons of Mars were discovered very recently, and yet Ares offspring were Phobos and Deimos? How is it that Jonathan Swift wrote of the two steeds of Mars a century before we discovered the moon of Mars?

If our culture had "ceased" only 150-200 years ago, out of a 10,000 year reset, we'd leave behind less than many current archaeological finds. But some of our residual memory would spark similar questions, as to the knowledge of two moons of Mars, without any possible way of knowing that in fact, there were two moons of Mars. Or the color of Neptune. On and on.



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 05:05 PM
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Howdy Dooper

Let me ask you a question. When you found out about the two satellites of Mars- did you;

1. Thought about it and then research how that might have occured?
2. Accepted it without research?

Oh good post, I'll answer and comment in detail after this query, ah I've noted that Dooper has left ATS so I'll comment further on.


[edit on 23/12/08 by Hanslune]



posted on Dec, 23 2008 @ 05:19 PM
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A good list of items. I agree with most but would question 7. People would tend to gather around as that is a normal human tendency, they would also start to specialize. In many areas we wouldn’t go back to hunter-gather levels as we do have some accumulated knowledge – even survival information is codified now. 8. Some would some would continue on, corrosion resistant metals and materials would be around for long after 1 century. A six inch iron knife have been known to last up to six generations in historic times. 9. People would tend to do that almost immediately. I would suspect that societies would begin almost immediately. Again everyone today is culturalized to do that.



Assuming around 10,000 years ago we had our last major catastrophic geological disaster, then you see that it took us until the past 150 years to reach any level of scientific and industrial achievement.


Hans: Yes but in this case that didn’t occur



For example, if the next catastrophic geological event had happened two hundred years ago, those who would come alone 8,000 years later would see what we see today around the world in certain areas.


Hans: Nope there would be massive mounds of former cities elsewhere, endless pieces of pottery, brick and glass everywhere in and under the soil. Humans leave a massive footprint, it will remain for tens of thousands of years – as is shown by what we can recover from those periods today. Think Neanderthals, over four hundred bodies, tens of thousands of artifacts – and they had a fairly small population and technology and disappeared around 25,000 years ago.



Advanced stone work. There would be no skyscrapers, no 10-key adding machines, no computers, no massive steel bridges, nor any other large technological advancement reminder of any kind. No satellites.


Hans: Perhaps but in many areas, huge chunks’ of concrete, masses of brick, glass, ceramic, gems, refined metal, plastic, etc. Besides the regular trash and buried bones. There would still be satellites up in the higher orbits and stuff on the Moon and Mars. The pyramids will still be there too!




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